Publisher's Synopsis
Family rows, strikes, riots, election campaigns, hijacking and wars are all conflicts. They have in common at least one feature - the deliberate infliction, or threat to inflict pain, damage or loss, by one human being, or set of human beings on another, or others. This prompts us to ask "How do such unfriendly dispositions towards our fellow human beings arise?" "Given that they do arise, what makes them follow the course that they do?" and "How can they be controlled?" It is with such questions as these that this book is concerned. It starts from the assumption that any given conflict cannot be explained solely by reference to its own distinctive history; in other words, conflicts exhibit recurring features that can be analysed in general terms. The aim is to provide the reader with a framework with the help of which any given conflict can be better understood and its critical points identified.
