Week 11 / The Cause of War and Conflict Theory / Kiara Juliane Annisa

1.     Summary :

As a a human being who lived in a world we often heard about wars in another country, a war that is written in our history book, or even a war that happens in your country. But what is actually the thing that causing war? How can that happened? Well there’s many debates about this and there’s also many attempted to explain what is war. From the historians point of view, A.J.P. Taylor said that war is like a traffic accident. We cannot predict when or where would it happened. This theory is contrary to the psychological theory that said a war is caused because human is inherently violent, especially men. And because we have those nature, we would likely to channel it through a violent way. The next theory is an anthropological theory. Anthropologist define a war in a really different way, where they see it as fundamental cultural that caused by nurture. So it was something that already happened since the first society exist, and we cannot eliminate war unless we reformed the society. The next theory is sociological theory. Within the sociologist they have a different opinion about the definition of war, Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler define war as a product of domestic condition hwile Karl von Clausewitz and Leopold von Ranke think war is a decisions of statement and the geopolitical situation. One of the most theory that popped up when we talk about war is Marxist theory. Marxist theory interpret war as something that happened because the class system. This theory believed that because we have a hierarchical and caste system in the society that define our position it leads to the happening of a war.

The next topic still related to the war is a conflict theory. What is conflict theory? Conflict theory is a study that see society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and social change. This theory is based on Karl Marx, where he saw there’s a clash between class. A modern examples of conflict theory are social stratification, wealth and power inequality, drug abuse and crimes.

2.     What interesting/what did you learn :

It’s quite interesting to see the examples of conflict theory in the modern world is not that different with the one that occurs back in the day. For me it shows how a human ego is remain the same even though the era is getting more modern.

3.     Discussion point :

We have talk about war and it’s theory, interestingly it’s also brought up an inequality that happened in the society. I want to know whether inequality that occurs in a society plays a big role in making a war?  Is there any way to prevent war or is it simply impossible?