Conflictology

Abstract

Conflictology is the science of conflict, including concepts such as crisis, change, problems and violence The term was used by J. Galtung and is internationally accepted in Academia, Scientific Societies, universities, the United Nations and at major NGOs as a synonym for conflict resolution. Conflict researchers and theorists such as J. Burton, M. Deustch, K. & E. Boulding, Hobbes, Lederach, Rapoport, Sandole and Marlow, among many others, have contributed to laying the foundations of a body of theory and pragmatic considerations on how to address all types of conflicts. Thousands of books, hundreds of training programmes and dozens of research centres around the world bear witness to a plurality of approaches drawing on philosophy, sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, and even mathematics, medicine and neuroscience in their studies of the biological bases for human emotions, stress and individual and collective human behaviour.

Although humanity’s interest in understanding and containing or channelling its conflicts is as old as humanity itself, it was only in recent decades that a process was undertaken to gather all such efforts under a single umbrella: conflictology or conflict resolution. In recent decades, peace studies, conflict transformation, conflict management, irenology, polemology, mediation and negotiation have converged in their interest to identify the multiple key factors that cause and give rise to conflicts and violence, as a system to be able to understand them fully and, thus, be able to intervene in a positive, practical and effective way. The aim is to overcome the limitations and contradictions of violent methods for solving conflicts.