Somatic Elements in Social Conflict

In: The sociological review, Volume 55, Issue 1_suppl, p. 37-49

Abstract

Although social conflict has obvious ties with physical combat, the literature on social conflict ignores its corporeal substratum. Reviewing that literature yields a paradigm of sources of conflict comprising six major variables: hostility level, reactivity, rigidity, moral righteousness, weak conflict-aversive values, and ineffective dampening factors. Each of those variables has some representation in the body. Realizing this enables us to ask what kinds of conflict-relevant meanings emanate from processes within the human body itself, and what supra-organismic variables imbue bodily conduct with meanings that relate to conflict. That analysis in turn opens up a new dimension of the general theory of action by way of amending Parsons-Lidzes's concept of the behavioural system. The chapter suggests calling this the actional organism – the subsystem of action where the organism's input of energies and the inputs from sources of meanings meet and interpenetrate.