Social conflict

This book revives what should be one of the most central themes in sociology. Some would say that it should be the central theme. Surprisingly, however, it is a theme which was lost in university sociology departments after the turbulence of the late 1960s. One might have thought that the atmosphere of those times would have led precisely to a rethinking of social and political
issues in terms of conflict theory. That this did not happen was due to the fact that so many of the conflicts which aroused the
passions of students and junior staff were internal to the campus itself, and that when they sought to revise sociological theory in
order to deal with other problems, they turned to deterministic theories about the functioning of the various state apparatuses
which were as fatalistic as the functionalism of the 1950s. The problem for sociology, therefore, is how to revive the notions of
conflict and change in sociological theory without relapsing into utopianism. If this text helps to restart that argument it will
have performed a useful function.