CONFLICT AND GEOPOLITICAL THEORY
Randall Collins’ Conflict Theorizing
In his early work, Collins attempted to overcome the deep polarities that underpinned 1960s and early 1970s sociological thought – the epistemological splits between conflict and consensus focused theories of social order and the methodological ruptures between the positivists and the interpretivists. Hence in Conflict Sociology (1975) Collins rejects structural-functionalist explanations and Parsons’s one-dimensional reading of Weber while also being critical of the conventional Marxist accounts of social conflict. Instead, Collins develops a wider theory of conflict that incorporates Weber, Marx, Durkheim and Goffman. In methodological terms Conflict Sociology challenges hard positivism and relativist interpretivism, arguing that sociological research can still generate cumulative knowledge without adopting the science-driven paradigm. Although sociology does not possess the cognitive consensus or the rapid discovery model, both of which characterise the natural sciences, sociologists can build predictive theories that can be tested empirically. Thus, Collins demonstrates how empirical studies on state formation and social stratification have fostered development of sociological knowledge over time.
Randall Collins wishes to erect the framework of a new “conflict sociology,” building on the work of Max Weber in sociology on the utilitarian philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, with major assistance from as diverse a congeries of scholars as K. Marx, É. Durkheim, H. Garfinkel, E. Goffman, R. Dahrendorf and S. Freud.
In sociology, conflict theory has a long history. Without a doubt, Karl Marx's work from the early to mid-1800s served as the foundation for this viewpoint. Marx, as you may know, was preoccupied with class and the dialectics of capitalism. He said that capitalism will create its own gravediggers by creating conditions conducive to the emergence of class consciousness and a collapsing economy. The working-class revolution would occur at this confluence between structure and class-based collective experience.
Collins sees a significant symbolic aspect in the fight for stratified resources. Materials aren't the only kind of resource. In order to function, both stratification and conflict require symbolic resources and emotional involvement. Collins also introduces us to a new perspective on warfare. Conflict isn't limited to rivalling political parties. Face-to-face contacts and rituals are essential to conflict, and it happens in subtle forms. Collins also draws our attention to a distinct type of conflict: the internalisation of symbolic meanings conveyed via faith in established legitimacy. In essence, Collins is suggesting that the majority of what we know about conflict can be reduced to four things.
The unequal distribution of each scarce resource produces potential conflict between those who control it and those who don’t:
Max Weber agreed with Marx but added that, in addition to economic disparities, political power and social structural imbalances also generate conflict. Here, Weber lays forth the fundamentals of the three categories of limited resources, which Collins interprets as control over the rituals that generate unity and group symbols.
The potential conflicts become actual conflicts to the degree that opposing groups become mobilized:
There are at least two main areas of mobilization: The first is emotional, moral, and symbolic mobilization. The prime ingredient here is collective rituals. This is one of Collins’s main contributions to conflict theory. Groups don’t simply need material goods to wage a battle; there are also clear emotional and symbolic goods. The more a group is able to physically gather together, create boundaries for ritual practice, share a common focus of attention, and common emotional mood, the more group members will
Have a strong and explicit sense of group identity
Have a worldview that polarizes the world into two camps (in-group and out-group)
Be able to perceive their beliefs as morally right
Be charged up with the necessary emotional energy to make sacrifices for the group and cause
The second main area for mobilization concerns the material resources for organizing. Material mobilization includes such things as communication and transportation technologies, material and monetary supplies to sustain the members while in conflict, weapons (if the conflict is military), and sheer numbers of people. Despite this fact, the ability to mobilize material resources is a key issue in geopolitical theory.
Conflict engenders subsequent conflict:
Parties must have a feeling of moral rightness in order to initiate a prospective dispute. Here, if you support or believe in one side of a conflict, the definition of atrocities or terrorism used by that side will appear to you to be ethically right. The trick is to recognise and comprehend that no party has ever started a fight knowing or believing that they are wrong. For example, the people who flew the aircraft into the World Trade Center felt morally justified in doing so. Many instances from throughout the world come to mind, such as the Croats and Serbs, and the Irish Catholics and Protestants.
Conflicts diminish as resources for mobilization are used up:
Collins put two main areas of conflict mobilization, there are two fronts where demobilization occurs. For intense conflicts, emotional resources tend to be important in the short-run, but in the long-run material resources are the key factors. Many times the outcome of a war is determined by the relative balance of resources. Collins gives us two corollaries.
In milder forms of conflict tend to go on for longer periods of time than more intense ones. Fewer resources are used and they are more easily renewed. This is one reason why terrorism and guerilla warfare tend to go on almost indefinitely. Civil rights and relatively peaceful political movements can be carried out for extended periods as well.
Relatively mild forms of conflict tend to deescalate due to bureaucratization. Bureaucracies are quite good at co-optation. To co-opt means to take something in and make it part of the group, which on the surface might sound like a good thing. But because bureaucracies are value and emotion free, there is a tendency to downplay differences and render them impotent.
For example, one of the things that our society has done with race and gender movements is to give them official status in the university. One can now get a degree in race or gender relations. Inequality is something we now study, rather than the focus of social movements. In this sense, these movements have been co-opted.
The second front where conflicts may be lost is deescalation of ritual solidarity. A conflict group must periodically gather to renew or create the emotional energy necessary to sustain a fight. One of the interesting things this implies is that the intensity of conflicts will vary by focus of attention. Conflict that is multifocused will tend not to be able to generate high levels of emotional energy. The conflict over civil rights in the United States is just such a case. The civil rights movement has splintered because the idea of civil rights isn’t held by everyone involved as a universal moral.
Geopolitical Theory
In geopolitical theory, there are two factors to keep in mind.
Geopolitical processes are long-term in nature:
These factors take time to develop and aren't always visible. Individual and immediate pleasure are prioritised, and even economic planning is geared toward short-term portfolio management. In the long term, geopolitical theory in sociology. It describes how countries develop and perish. Thus, we can't see the processes and dynamics merely by looking at our everyday problems and must soar beyond ourselves and gaze back in time.
State-centric geopolitical theory rather than economics:
World-systems theories, such as Immanuel Wallerstein's, are primarily concerned with economics. Collins understands the world system in more Weberian terms, where the nation-state is the key actor on the world stage. Nation-states are relatively recent inventions. Up until the sixteenth century, the world was not organized in terms of nation-states. As with feudalism, people were typically grouped ethnically with somewhat flexible territorial boundaries. Land stewardship was created through the lord-vassal relationship in feudalistic nations. Its main qualities were homage, wardship, and forfeiture, as well as the service of tenants under arms and in court. A nation-state, on the other hand, is a group that inhabits a defined area, has a shared history and identity, is founded on free labour, and believes it shares a common fate.
The State
In Weberian terms, the state is defined as exercising a monopoly over the legitimate use of force within and because of a specific geographic territory. First and foremost, nation-states have a monopoly on force. In fact, one of the main impetuses behind the nation is the ability to regularly tax people for the purpose of creating a standing army. Previously, armies were occasional things that were gathered to fight specific wars. A standing army is one that is continually on standby; it is ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
The nation-states are organized around the legitimate use of power. Thinking about power in terms of legitimacy brings in cultural and ritual elements. If power is defined as the ability to get people to do what you want, then legitimacy is defined in terms of the willingness of people to do what you want. In order for any system of domination to work, people must believe in it. Part of the reason behind this need is the cost involved in the use of power. According to Collins, this legitimacy is a special kind of emotion: it’s “the emotion that individuals feel when facing the threat of death in the company of others”.
Geopolitical Dynamics
The territory is also important because specific geopolitical issues are linked to it. All forms of the political organization come and go, including nation-states. Nations are born and nations die. Sociology in the long-run ought to explain and predict if it is scientific the life course of a nation. The geopolitical factors that predict and explain the rise and fall of nations are linked to territory. There are two territorial factors:
Heartland advantage: It is defined in terms of the size of the territory, which is linked to the level of natural resources and population size. The logic here is simple. Larger and wealthier territories can sustain larger populations that in turn provide the necessary tax base and manpower for a large military. Larger nations can have larger armies and will defeat smaller nations and armies.
Marchland advantage: It defined in terms of a nation’s borders: nation-states with fewer enemies on their immediate borders will be stronger than other nations with similar heartland advantage. Marchland nations are geographically peripheral; they are not centered in the midst of other nations.
From the above two territorial factors, Collins gives us an example of these geopolitical forces in the case of the USSR. On Christmas day in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic officially collapsed. Five years prior, Collins published a book with a chapter entitled “The future decline of the Russian Empire.” Collins’s prediction of the fall of the USSR was based on geopolitical theory. The historical expansion of Russia illustrates the first two principles of geopolitical theory. As Collins projected, “if Russia has shifted from a marchland to an interior position, it may be expected that in the long-term future Russia will fragment into successively smaller states”.
Conclusion
As Randall Collins Conflict and Geopolitical theory, we understand the inequalities in the allocation of valued resources, notably power, material well-being, and prestige (a very Weberian view of stratification), are inherent in social organisation at all levels, resulting in conflict. The theory aims to establish conflict propositions at many levels of social organisation, from face-to-face interactions through organisations and social categories like gender, as well as societies and inter-societal formations.
People must be emotionally driven and maintained a sense of moral justification, and be symbolically concentrated and united for conflict to become overt. Conflict tends to replicate itself through a ritualised exchange of atrocities once it has started. The back-and-forth exchange of atrocities reproduces and amplifies emotional motivation and moral justification and provides new representational symbols for subsequent ritual performances. Conflicts are won or lost over time based on the acquisition or loss of two different types of resources.
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References
Chapter_7_Web_Byte_Randall_Collins ~ Link
Randall Collins - Interaction Ritual Chains (2004) ~ Link
Randall Collins - Violence_ A Micro-sociological Theory (2008) ~ Link
Randall Collins - Weberian Sociological Theory (1986) ~ Link
Randall Collins_ Stephen K. Sanderson - Conflict Sociology_ A Sociological Classic Updated (2009) ~ Link
Malešević, S., & Loyal, S. (2019). Introduction to special issue: The sociology of Randall Collins. Thesis Eleven, 154(1), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513619874435
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