Continuous Conflict Research Articles

A generalized war of attrition

In the “War of Attrition” model of animal conflict, introduced by Maynard Smith, a reward is obtained by whichever of two opponents displays longer, each individual incurring a cost associated with the length of the contest. This model is generalized to allow more general reward and cost functions, and restrictions on the length of contest permitted. This permits unification of the “War of Attrition” model and the “Graduated Risks” model, and also the extension to models in which contests may end either due to injury, or to retreat. In each case it is demonstrated that either (i) there is no evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) or (ii) there is a unique ESS, which is fully specified. In the case where only a finite number of pure strategies are available, global convergence to the ESS is shown. A variety of interesting conclusions of biological relevance emerge, perhaps the most striking being the occurrence of a dichotomous behavioural pattern in an essentially continuous conflict.

The paradoxical results of corporate conflict

The prevailing view of modern theorists is that conflict is increasingly perceived as legitimate, inevitable, and even desirable under certain organizational and environmental conditions. Katz claims that without conflict a company would have few problems, hardly any stimulation, and little incentive for constructive effort. In fact, the organization would soon see its own dissolution! If this is true, then a dynamic and healthy organization must be in a state of continuous conflict of varying degrees. The purpose of this paper is to examine the constructive and destructive consequences of that organizational conflict.

Moral Anxiety in a Modern Instance

T HOUGH established as Howells' first major novel and one of his four or five most impressive works, A Modern Instance (1882) has nonetheless been a problem for Howellsians. Though they have generally agreed that moral issues are central to the novel, they have notably failed to agree about the specific terms in which these issues are to be understood, and, more important, about the degree of intellectual and artistic coherence with which they are dramatized and resolved. At times the approach has been engagingly blunt, as when Professor Cady calls the first three quarters of the novel masterful and the last quarter verbose and confused. Usually, however, the critical effort has been devoted to seeking the coherence that underlies allegedly superficial inconsistencies, on the sound assumption that serious problems become evident well before the final quarter of the novel.' The result has been a great deal of intelligent commentary which never quite manages to be convincing because coherence and consistency are simply not among the many conventional virtues of A Modern Instance. In a word, an almost continuous conflict between apparent intention and latent meaning is the crucial feature and a primary source of interest in the novel, and the critic would do better to attempt to explain this conflict than to explain it away. Obviously intended as a critical analysis of changes in American morality during the Gilded Age, a concern meant to be embodied primarily in an account of the steady moral deterioration of the protagonist Bartley

Notes from Underground: A Horneyan Analysis

In attempting to make sense of the vacillating, inconsistent, and often bizarre behavior of the underground man, critics have employed two distinct modes of analysis, thematic and psychological. The psychological approach seems more appropriate; the novel is essentially a portrait of a character. As yet, however, critics have not approached the work with a psychological theory that is congruent with it and adequate to its complexities. The underground man's character structure, attitudes, and behavior can be understood in terms of Karen Horney's analysis of neurotic processes. In Horneyan terms, the underground man is a detached person whose aggressive and compliant trends are very close to awareness and rather evenly balanced. He experiences severe and almost continuous conflict between all three of his trends and is caught in a devastating crossfire of contradictory “shoulds.” He compensates for his feeling of worthlessness by self-glorification and then hates himself even more because he cannot live up to his idealized image. The novel's philosophic passages are an integral part of Dostoevsky's portrait of his character. The underground man's worship of freedom, will, caprice, and individuality, and his phobic reaction to anything suggesting coercion, conformity to law, or ordinariness are all aspects of his detached solution.

Social conflict and problems of mental health

Future historians, I suppose, will try to find some way of describing our times succinctly. Some suggestions may be that this was a period of chronic crisis or continuous social conflict or of terrific pressures by society upon individuals. I would like to suggest that our times might be accurately de scribed by future historians as that period in which man succeeded in getting to the moon before he had developed a fool-proof public address system. This is a period of almost normal, normative conflicts with types of conflicts related to extraordinarily rapid changes in various aspects of our society. The most obvious are tremendous technological changes, industrial ization, changes in modes and techniques, and rapidity in transportation and communication. And with these, of course, come increased demands for

The Rebirth of the Fine Arts and Franciscan Thought: II Giotto di Bondone

The Crucifixion THE REBIRTH OF THE FINE ARTS AND FRANCISCAN THOUGHT II GIOTTO DI BONDONE ON a colorful historical scene, and within surroundings where Franciscanism played a significant rôle, at the turn of the thirteenth and during the first decades of the fourteenth century, we see Giotto at work. He was a painter, a sculptor and an architect. He won praise and high respect in all these fields. Yet painting was the center of his artistic activities. According to Vasari,1 Giotto was born in 1276. Pucci2 informs us that he died in 1336, at the age of seventy, thus indicating his birth in 1266. The reference to his age might well be only approximate. In the face of these contradictory statements Giotto's date of birth remains an unsolved problem. There is an amazing discrepancy between the darkness and cruelty of the epoch in which Giotto lived and the purity and peacefulness emanating from his pictures. During Giotto's lifetime, the last of the great medieval Popes, Boniface VIII, was impetuously steering St. Peter's ship through the turbulent seas; the Papal Court was transferred from Rome to Avignon; Philip Le Bel of France pursued his power politics ruthlessly; the Hapsburgs entered history, and the emperors Henry of Luxembourg and Louis of Bavaria took up anew the policy oí intervention in Italian affairs as practiced by their Swabian predecessors. It was in the last year of Giotto's life that Edward III of England succeeded in winning the assistance of Louis of Bavaria and the Flanders cities against France and initiated the bloody and ruinous period of the Hundred Years' war. In Italy there were continuous conflicts. Venice fought Genoa, Boniface fought the Colonna, Florence struggled against 1.Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccelenti architetti, pittori e seultori Italiani . Con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, Firenze, 1878-1880, vol. I., Giotto di Bondone. 2.Antonio Pucci, "Centiloquio," in Delizie degli eruditi Toscan!, Firenze, 1772. 4 THE REBIRTH OF FINE ARTS Arezzo, Prato, Pistoia, Pisa, and Siena. Great captains like Uggocione di Faggiuola, Castruccio Castracani and the first Visconti battled in the field. The city of Florence was torn by civil wars between democrats and nobility, Guelphs and Ghibellines, Black and White Guelphs, Black Guelphs of the party of Corso Donati and Black Guelphs of the party of Rosso della Tosa. The democrats, under the leadership of Giano della Bella, proclaimed the right to liberty based upon self-determination as demanded by the laws of nature and forbade the sale of bondsmen. Among the enemies of freedom and democracy, the sinister figure of Corso Donati, the "worst of the culprits,"3 fascinates the imagination. Almost every page of Dino Compagni's contemporary chronicle is stained with violence, bloodshed and murder. It closes with this exclamation: "Thus our city is endangered! Thus, our citizens persevere in their misdeeds!... In this city, and by these citizens, nothing praiseworthy is done which would not be distorted and reviled. Men kill one another; crime is not punished according to law; he who has friends or can pay flaunts freely in spite of his crime. "Oh you godless citizens who have bribed all the world and demoralized it by your wickedness and unjust profit! It is you who have introduced in the world all that evil. Yet, the world is about again to be down upon you: The emperor with his mighty hand will lay hold of you and will bereave you by sea and by land." Over and over again, we meet the same bitterness in Dante's Divina Commedia: Florence From day to day of good is more depleted And into dismal ruin seems ordained* or: Rejoice, oh Florence ! Since thou art so great, That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings, And throughout hell thy name is spread abroad ! 5 Spirits of less high morality than Dante veer from extreme to extreme, from exalted piety to godlessness, from wild joys to 3.Dante, Divina Commedia, Purg. 24, 82. 4.Dante, Divina Commedia, Purg. 24, 79, translated by Longfellow. 5.Dante, Divina Commedia, Inf. 26, 1, translated by Longfellow. HARRY B. GUTMAN5 despair, cynicism and destructiveness. The well...

Expansionist and Isolationist Tendencies of Totalitarian Political Systems: A Theoretical Note

A NUMBER OF EXPLANATIONS have been offered for the expansionist tendencies of large totalitarian powers. Sigmund Neumann, writing of the Third Reich, sees . . unlimited expansion . . . [as] . . . the fourth characteristic of modern totalitarian rule ... Dictatorial regimes are governments at war, originating in war, aiming at war, thriving on war ... [They] ... find in international adventure a safety-valve against internal upheaval. The dictatorship becomes the exploiter of continuous conflict.' This safetyvalve theory of totalitarian expansion has found currency in a variety of applications. There are also other views, emphasizing economic and demographic interests; strategic and military interests; the psychopathology of totalitarian leaders, such as megalomania and paranoia, and psychological maladjustment of the nation as a whole. Nor does this exhaust the list: exuberance of nationalism, power-drive or vagaries of the nation-state system, the presence of aggressive or insecure elites in society and maladjustment of the capitalist system have been singled out as sources of imperialism. The ideologies of totalitarian powers are another source of explanations for these nations' aggressions. The Nazis expounded the mission of the superior race; the Communists, that of world revolution. These explanations have a common limitation; they are concerned with expansion only. They ignore the twin tendency which complements totalitarian expansionism, its equally strong impulse towards isolation. Totalitarian isolationism-that is, its protective Iron Curtain shielding the regime from external influence-is as striking as totalitarian expansion. In the course of this discussion, a set of factors is suggested which can explain both seemingly contradictory tendencies. The two impulses are seen as necessary protective devices without which

Power Balance and Staff Conflict in Correctional Institutions

As a part of a larger study of correctional institutions for juvenile delinquents, an attempt was made to account for the level and patterns of staff conflict in five institutions. Analysis reveals that the level of conflict is lowest in the most custodial institutions, and is higher in institutions with mixed goals or predominantly treatment goals. The pattern of staff conflict is found to be linked to the power balance in the institution, the degree of divergent perspectives among groups, and the amount of interdependence and intercommunication among groups. Since custodial and treatment institutions allocate power among cottage parents and social service workers differently, the patterns of conflict are also linked to institutional goals. Some implications of continuous problem solving and high conflict for organizational operation are discussed. Mayer N. Zald is assistant professor of sociology, University of Chicago.

Behavior of rats in continuous conflict.

Behavior of rats in continuous conflict.

The Rural Community and Political Leadership in Saskatchewan

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) movement in Saskatchewan is the first avowedly socialist group to win an electoral majority in any province or state of Canada or the United States. Many have expressed surprise that a socialist party should have won office in the most rural province in Canada. This paper is an attempt to throw some light on this question through a study of the leadership of the C.C.F. as compared with that of other community groups and political parties in that province.The significance of the growth of the C.C.F. party can best be expressed in economic class terms. The movement has two important aspects. Essentially, it represents the latest historical phase of the almost continuous conflict of the western grain farmers of the United States and Canada with eastern business interests. Secondly, within the province, success of the movement has resulted in a political transformation in which the representatives of the rural majority supported by the working class of the cities and towns rejected the political control of the urban middle-class business and professional groups which dominated the Liberal and Conservative parties and the government of the province.Since 1901, the farmers of the West and of Saskatchewan in particular, have been attempting to reduce the hazards of a one-crop wheat economy which is perennially subject to extreme fluctuations in income, as a result of the variability in grain prices and climatic conditions. At the turn of the century, Saskatchewan farmers organized the Territorial Grain Growers' Association (later the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association) to force the Canadian Pacific Railroad to provide loading platforms and freight cars for their wheat.

The Development of National Opera in Russia

The history of the development of national music—like that of every other popular movement in Russia—presents a continuous conflict. On the one hand we see a strong natural impulse moving irresistibly towards fulfilment; on the other, a policy of repression, and, at times, even of active persecution. That the close of this century has witnessed the triumph of Russian music proves how strong must have been the innate capacity for this art, and how deep the love of it, which could overcome every obstacle to its development.