THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONFLICT METHODOLOGY T. R. Young The Red Feather Institute October, 1975 (Revised September 3, 1994) No.007 Presented at the 5th Annual AKD Research Symposium. Raleigh, N.C. Distributed as part of the Red Feather Institute Transforming Sociology Series. The Red Feather Institute, 8085 Essex, Weidman, Michigan, 48893. An earlier version of this paper appears in Sociological Inquiry 46:1. Circulated with permission. It is no co-incidence that our words for theory, theology and theatre have the same origins in sanskrit; from thea, meaning to gaze, to speculate. Theory deals with the eternal, unchanging laws of nature; theology with the gods which, presumably, set these in motion while theatre offers a globalized look at the comedies and tragedies of those who fail to observe the lessons of the gods. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONFLICT METHODOLOGY Abstract Critical Theory postulates three human interests central to the construction of a rational society. For each interest, a qualitatively different methodology is required. While the empirical-analytic methodology serves a purposive-instrumental interest, and phenomenology and ethnomethodology serve a second interest for interpretation and understanding, an interest in emancipation is not adequately served in contemporary sociology. Conflict methodology is presented as a research approach by which the emancipatory interest is better served. Propositions from information theory, social psychological theory as well as modern systems theory are used as the theoretical foundations for grounding principles of conflict methodology. Fifteen principles of conflict methodology are generated. The role of conflict research in entering back into the construction of social reality is implicit in the set of principles presented here; social research is not, can not and should not be value-free. INTRODUCTION The transformation of sociology to its full potential as a profession linked to human purpose and human endeavor requires a careful specification of the theoretical and practical interests which guide its research endeavor. In this article I want to delineate the social psychological and informational theoretical grounds for a conflict methodology and, as well, initiate interest in formulating some principles of conflict research. Following Marcuse and Habermas I agree that contemporary Western methodology is a one dimensional enterprise for the most part having lost its dimensions of critical interpretation and critical participation. This loss came with the acceptance of arguments of Comte, Weber, Lundberg, and other sociological politicians that sociology is and can be an objective, value free endeavor. The restoration of humanity to sociology as profession and sociologists as persons requires a restoration of the critical capacity in the practice of sociology (Horkheimer, 1973; Habermas, 1971). Habermas identifies three human interests which orient the researcher to action. (NOTE 1) The first is an interest in technical control. This interest invests the scientific researcher with predilection toward empirical deductive methodologies for sociology. It is generally represented in the positivistic science of surveys, general systems theories, cyber- netics, and statistical inference in the quest for prediction and rational control of the factors of reality construction. The second interest is a practical interest of knowing what and how intersubjective meaning is possible in the process of constructing social environments. In the West, this interest shapes such scientific enterprise as phenomenology, symbolic interaction, dramaturgical analysis, and the sociology of knowledge generally. The quest for the grounds of Intersubjective understanding gives Western sociology a second dimension. Such a quest began with the German anti-positivists who understood that social behavior was different from the behavior of inorganic or of simpler forms of life...but did not understand just how that behavior differs. From that beginning, husserlian phenomenology and its American cousins emerged. [Note: a postmodern phenomenology is coming forth to add, modify and greatly expand the mostly psychologist phenomenology of Husserl. (NOTE 2) In postmodern sensibility, the sources of authentic social knowledge are many ranging from poetry to the telling of stories by excluded minorities to the deconstruction of past theories to show their socio-political origins]. A third human interest, largely ignored by professional sociologists in both communist and capitalist societies, is an interest in emancipatory knowledge. For Habermas and for critical theorists generally, emancipatory knowledge requires a reflexive self knowledge for individuals as well as for societies such that the general laws of human behavior can be transformed, wherever possible, to create a praxis society. The methodology by which this third set of interests is achieved is one which augments the capacity of a given population to construct its own social life world in forms sensible to their interests and responsive to the continuing need for change and renewal. The concept of a praxis society subsumes these interests. Praxis, as a concept has an ancient and venerable record. In ancient Greece, praxis was the exercise of wisdom and reason in pursuit of community values while techne referred to the skilled management of farm and household. Theory, a third part of the triad of human action, involved the quest for understanding of the eternal laws of nature and society; the larger plan of the gods with which human beings could live in harmony. Each such labor was assigned to different social sectors in classical philosophy; techne to women and slaves, praxis to free men while theory was the province of the gods and those of a priestly class which served them (Markovi‡, 1974). In Marx, a praxis society is one in which human beings, collectively, make their own history--instead of being subject to the blind laws of nature or with the advent of science, being subject to the new elites which used these sciences to pursue their own interests in profits or power. Marx (1972) assumed that the laws of society, far from being eternal, varied with the political economy in which a society was immersed. Slave, feudal, capitalist societies have their own laws which are valid as long and only as long as human beings remain in that economic formation. With good theory, good organization and good tactics, human beings could change from one economic system to another. Communism, in Marx' view, offered the best social context in which human beings could be fully human since they, themselves, would build the social institutions in which they had to live out their days. Marx presumed that they would build institutions in which all competent individuals could participate in such constructions of social reality. The human capacities which are developed by emancipatory knowledge include resourceful unification of paired opposites; autonomy and sociality, creativity and predictability as well as self-development and community integrity, conformity and rebellion, practicality and idealism, repression [of that which negates praxis] as well as tolerance and generosity. The successful integration of these opposites are to be done as a whole; not each pair in isolation from other pairs; thus one cannot be creative or rebellious apart from sociality and generosity. In Marx theory, praxis and techne are reunited in such endeavor. Praxis research, too, requires the same unification of opposites. However, in societies organized to exclude significant portions of the population from involvement in the conditions of work, school, market or religion in which they, perforce, must live out their days, a certain emphasis on conflict is required in order to 'negate the negations' in which these many peoples find themselves. The task of this article is to ground conflict methods of knowledge acquisition in traditions which parallel Marxian theory. The purpose is not to displace the marxian interest in resistance and rebellion against oppression but rather to augment that tradition by noting other, less provocative grounds for a practice of sociology which goes beyond the good and gentle canons of scholarly endeavor adopted by sociological associations; themselves beneficiary to that same exploitation and oppression. Conflict Methodology There is, in professional sociology, no explicitly delineated methodology by which to serve the emancipatory interest coherently and systematically. The interest which informs this article is an interest in developing a set of research principles by which the emancipatory interest is better served. While there is much in the way of critical analysis of western society and much of it very good indeed (Wolff and Moore, 1967), a first concern here is to systematize and ground some principles of conflict methodology such that critical analysis is more effective in transforming society into a more rational and praxis social life world. A second interest is to make critical analysis itself more visible and more amenable to systematic development. The more general emancipatory point from which this paper works is that social research is but one component in mass society with which intersubjective understanding and co-operative endeavor is enhanced; both in the personal realm and the public realm. The use of conflict methodology as a means by which to improve/expand communication processes in the public sphere is woven into the fabric of the principles of conflict methodology discussed here. In order to ground the principles of conflict methodology, I will develop some propositions from information theory, from social psychological theory as well as from social organizational theory with which to generate these principles. One should bear in mind the fact that other propositions from other theoretical domains could be used to anchor methodologies of critical analysis. INFORMATIONAL THEORETICAL GROUNDS FOR CONFLICT METHODOLOGY: Perhaps the most compelling case for a conflict methodology for the purist comes from premises in information theory. The later are more trustworthy for the political skeptic, devoid as they are of substantive hostile content. A central proposition to examine from information theory is that all information sets are sets of constrained information (Rapoport, 1968). Any given social system may be viewed as an information set whose boundaries are maintained by erecting constraints on the content and flow of information. If the system is to exist as an independent entity, it must carefully control the kind of information permitted to enter and leave the system. However, if the system is to be interdependent with other systems in an eco-system, then those external systems must have routine access to quality data concerning the operations of that system. At the same time, constraints on the flow of information into the system must be changed. Both facts underwrite conflict methods for prying quality data loose as well as forcing information into any system if functional interdependence is to be achieved. The question of whether such interdependence should be the point of political action is, of course, a moral and ethical question. The moral question reaches to the boundaries of the 'Universal We.' If the 'We' is confined to family, then information flow to 'outsiders' is morally correct; if the 'We' is confined to the tribe, nation or bloc of nations, then withholding of information from other tribes, nations or blocs is justified. In a globalized world in which the action of one group affects others, then ethical questions about the reach of research methods arise. In a society organized under the managerial ethic, (NOTE 3) formal organizations have an inner imperative to control information flow in and out of the system. This imperative derives from the need of the formal organization to withhold adverse information about purposes, policies, activities or outcomes of that action. The ability of various publics to understand the fraudulent character of official pronouncements of service and economy is impaired absent an adequate scientific research apparatus geared to the public interest. The canons of consensus research as well as the ethical code of the American Sociological Association presently constituted are particularly helpful to withhold such information flow from those who are harmed by information control tactics employed by large scale organizations. They call for 'informed consent' and decry the secret collection and public release of data. Consensus research requires that the researcher operate within the constraints of the system for which he is doing research. The obligation to direct the research focus one way rather than another is an information constraint. The obligation to report back to the sponsor is another information constraint. The obligation to maintain confidentiality of the results of research is a third constraint on the flow of information. These constraints, taken together, define the researcher as a partisan on behalf of the sponsoring organization. A conflict methodologist, by contrast, is constrained by no such obligation. Rather, the conflict researcher is constrained to focus on, report back and be fully responsible to the information needs of persons in discharge of their efforts to participate and control the conditions of their own existence. As a first and guiding principle of conflict methodology, we can say that it is a set of techniques organized to obtain quality information from organizations which stand in hostile contrast to the interests of people generally for reflective self-control over their own social life world. A second principle for conflict methodology derives from the fact that social organizations under the managerial ethic erect barriers to information originating from the public outside. In addition to careful control on information leaking out of the system, social organizations under the managerial ethic define information sets from the public affecting policy and purposes of the organization as noise, nonsense, socialism, criminal conspiracy and/or economic folly. A companion task for conflict methodology is to use its knowledge of large scale organizations in order to introduce "unacceptable" information into the system. There is no scientific reason why information flow specialists should be restricted to consensus research. In like manner, there is no scientific reason why sociologists should deal only in information outflow. There are good political reasons, however. These constraints on social research to deal in methods of information acquisition only establish a finely tuned research apparatus geared to serve the information needs of a managerial elite on terms specified by that elite. For a second principle, we can say that a mature conflict methodology accepts as a principle of social research the dictum that the role of the researcher is to facilitate the negotiation with social reality rather than merely describing it. To that end, it is necessary for the conflict methodologist to make available to those excluded from public policy processes, a set of guidelines which enable the client population to participate in evaluating and in controlling those social organizations which purport to serve them. Another useful premise from information theory is that the amount of information transferred (T) is a function of the amount of information common to both the systems in question. It follows that if system X has information in it that is not available to system Y, then information exchange is impaired. If information exchange is impaired, the ability of system X and system Y to interact and minimize unnecessary costs on each other and their environment is impaired. Withholding information reduces negentropy (a measure of order in the system) as well as synergy (a measure of the efficiency which order is shared) for any two systems presumed to be in functional interchange. The conflict implication of this discussion is that, under assumptions of functional interdependence or co-ordinated planning, system X and system Y cannot be permitted to withhold information from each other (nor from other systems which purport to be subunits within the larger system). Should such information be withheld, that synergy which is the central emergent characteristic of that organization is lost. Consider also the case of system X which has perfect knowledge of system Y but where system Y has less than perfect knowledge of the contents of system X. The net effect of this situation is that "T" is reduced for system X, zero for system Y, and greatly reduced for the supra-system (XY). Rapoport (1968: 137) has emphasized the relationship between information and negentropy while Raymond (1968: 157) has speculated on how information works to increase and decrease negentropy. Tradi- tional literature in sociology deals with the increase and decrease of order as the "hobbesian problem of order." Both structural-functional theory and conflict theory try to deal with the relationship between order and information flow although not nearly so clearly focused as in information theory. The structural-functional position is that the problem of order is solved, for the most part, by a process of symbolic interaction which brings agreement and commitment to the same social life-- world for members of different groups. Conflict theory, while conceding integrated behavior could be produced by symbolic interaction, argues that, in differentiated societies, especially those with class and power hierarchies, coercion and management augment, replace, or obstruct symbolic interaction as a means to generate order. For our purposes it is sufficient to say that communication does increase order in the system in a matter proportional to the amount of information transmitted. For the supra-system, the withholding of information by system X means that the expenditure of energy to communicate does not result in appreciable negen- tropy increases for system X and certainly not for system Y. A third principle of conflict methodology derives from the foregoing discussion. In order to maximize synergy, methods by which information in any part of the system is available to all parts of the system are necessary, even over the objections of such sub-units. In larger social systems where face to face interaction is difficult, this means that policy procedures are made visible and accessible to the public sphere. The conflict methodologist resists efforts to withhold information from the public sphere. In information theory, questions relating to the quality of information exchange also focus on the idea of redundancy. In the given situation, system X can sequentially improve information exchange with system Y by storing some information about the pattern of information flow of system Y. (If "U" always comes after "Q", then "U" provides no new information, if "H" sometimes comes after "W", then other times it provides new information.) The most desirable situation involves sufficient redundancy to minimize errors but not so much as to preempt the capacity of the channel. Conflict methodology provides a means for double-checking the information flow from system Y and, by comparing output from system Y with statements from system Y about that output, improve the quality of information flow from system Y, whether system Y agrees or not. Even if system Y objects to such comparison and acts to reduce redundancy, system X will know that it does not know the quality of information flow from system Y and can respond accordingly. This is more than system X could know if there were no redundancy. A fourth principle of conflict methodology is that no "fact" from a social system is to be accepted at face value without checking for external validators. This principle provides for sufficient redundancy. In a particular case, a large scale organization, using its information-flow specialists from the world of theatre, psychology, and sociology could mock up a convincing impression of quality and economy of service. The fourth principle would require research by which to check claims of service against objective criteria which are publicly established indicators of norms of quality and quantity in order to improve the quality of information flow between systems. Information theory also instructs us that the information conveyed is not an intrinsic property of the message itself... The meaning is always dependent upon the variety available to the sender and the variety of meanings available to the receiver. Ashby (1968:129) provides proof that given a message, only the ability of the receiver to reduce the variety of meanings possible enables any meaning at all to emerge; noting however that if the sender had no variety of meaning possible, no information would have been transmitted in the first place. In terms of our interests, it is absolutely imperative that sender X and receiver Y know of each other's constraints and variety if information is to flow. In a particular case, if system X has a great many options and system Y has none, then meaning is unilaterally determined by system X and the message is nonsense to system Y. The same is true for system X with respect to the situation where system Y controls the constraints on meaning. In human systems, the implication of this discussion is that system Y must have some ability to constrain the behavior of system X and, as well, have some variety in response to messages originating in system X or else there is no intersubjective meaning possible. This generally means that system Y must participate in the policy determination of system X. Since, in a complex system, each member of the system is in a different environment from every other member, if messages are to be meaningful, each component must have sufficient variety by which to cope with the variety in that environment. The emancipatory point here is that, for any given set of instructions for constructing a shared social life world, there must be some situationally determined meaning available for those engaged in such activity. There is only one condition under which information as ideology is meaningful; that of an undifferentiated stable environment. A fifth principle of conflict methodology deriving from the foregoing discussion is that conflict methodology attempts to negotiate the constraints on information flow such that meaning within systems is maximized. Let us assume for the moment, that it is right and proper to build informationally rich and interactionally rich communications between people, peoples and nation-states. There are technical solutions but, again, the prior question is one of politics; how well connected shall these information channels be and what shall be the content of them. Solutions of the Problem of Information In the politics of information transfer, there are three general solutions to the problem of inadequate information transmission; one is to establish sequential and cooperative interaction in order to improve match between system X and system Y; another way is to replace system X with system X' (when X' is better matched to System Y). A final way is to bridge system X and system Y with a third system Z which shares constraints and variety with the first two systems even if the first two systems do not share constraints/variety with each other. In the first case, social system X and Y may share enough values, role-relationships or interests such that sequential interaction proceeds easily between the two systems. Even if values and/or role relationships are absent, still the sharing of interests might be a sufficient basis upon which to begin to reduce mismatch. In which case, conflict methodology is not necessary; trust and mutual effort to bridge common errors, mistakes, or flawed efforts can be repaired without overt conflict. In a second case, system X may have nothing in common with system Y and there may be nothing to serve as a basis for integrating initiating sequential interaction. Partnerships, marriages, or international alliances are impossible in such a case. Replacement of Partner X with Partner X' is a common and essential solution if interaction is essential in order to achieve something together that neither could achieve alone. The third case is that where two systems are mismatched but a third system can bridge the gap. Judges can bridge the difference between parties in civil suit of each other; mediators can bridge between employees and employers; translators can bridge the information gap between those who speak very different languages while trusted third parties can bridge between hostile nations. All three cases are of interest to the conflict methodologist both in the acquisition of quality data from a system as well as in the introduction of policy by which to constrain that system. In the first case, intensive reciprocating interaction will help increase match between system X and system Y. That interaction will always have the political effect of reorganizing one system or the other as a means to gain the necessary match in coding and decoding routines. The specific pattern of reorganizing will depend upon the power of the system in question; more powerful systems forcing less powerful to bear the social and economic costs of reorganizing. It is important to note that information about system X is most helpful to system Y where system Y is the less powerful of the two systems. Conflict methodology has a built in bias toward the 'underdog' in that it can provide system Y with information by which to gauge the equity/balance of sharing and social costs. Conflict methodology in effect redresses power imbalances while - consensus methodology tends to exacerbate power imbalance by providing the more powerful system with information about the weaker system. As a sixth principle, we may say that conflict methodology requires a set of techniques for forcing sequential interaction where one or more parties refuse to reciprocate. It is worthwhile to note that forms of sequential interaction are also a creative dialectic by which the order in system X is changed, the order in system Y is changed, and the order in system XY is increased. The second case is even more interesting since, if match is to be made, one or the other systems will have to initiate contact and this entails the social cost of instituting new role relationships, discarding old values or transcending special interests. In a specific case, the values, interests, and role relationships between the U.S. Congress and organized labor might be so tenuous that all messages between the two social entities might have the technical character of noise. In the American case, organized labor forced reciprocity of interaction by a variety of tactics; by using the strike, by electing congressmen who shared values and/or interests and by other legal and extralegal means. There was some attempt on the part of Congress to reduce the options available to organized labor by banning strikes, token minimal-wage legislation, company unions and the like, but at present, information flows readily between Congress and organized labor. Unorganized labor, however, has no such share in policy formation. Generally, conflict methodologists can do much to serve the information needs of marginal workers, women, consumers, ethnic groups and other excluded social minorities by the servicing of an adequate technology of participation. For the seventh principle, we may state that conflict methodology aids in the construction of alternative information linkages between systems or individuals where none exist as a means to maximize the quality of information flow. The third case, that of the information bridge, is an inefficient and costly alternative since it requires the expenditure of time and energy of three systems where two would do. However, there are some advantages in synergy increase which might more than offset the cost of the mediating system. The role of Dr. Kissinger in bridging between the Arab states and Israel is a case in point. Mr. Kissinger was able to stress shared interests as precedent over existing values in the course of establishing role relationships. Conflict methodology was important here by down-grading some information sets to a minor status and by augmenting the value of other information sets (by promises of power, wealth, power, as well as by threats of- withdrawal of support and more war). Mr. Kissinger was able to persuade the Israelis and Arabs that interests and roles at the international level transcended interests and values at purely national levels. The eighth principle of conflict methodology is that, under some conditions of information organization, it is necessary to destroy or radically revise existing information sets for systems without sufficient bridging. Third parties, again, are helpful to this principle. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL GROUNDS FOR CONFLICT METHODOLOGY: The crucial test of human existence is the capacity to participate in the construction of a symbolic environment. George Herbert Mead has said, correctly, that mind, self and society are twinborn. It is via the media of symbolic interaction that such birth occurs--or is aborted. There is ample reason to think that one cannot be a human being unless one is part of a social group in which one is defined and taken to be one of a 'we.' And, again the very organization of such groups depends upon the degree to which information exchange can occur in a fairly free, equitable and substantive manner. It well may be the case that information flow should be carefully restricted; one can come up with many reasons for defeating the appropriation of information. Yet all of these reasons presume conflict and an exploitative animus which guides contact and connection. However, as travel, industry, commerce and banking become more and more globalized, some concern for the equitable exchange of information within and between groups becomes pressing and perhaps, inevitable. Given conflict relations, equity implies conflict methods to equalize and to expand the sphere in which information is available and knowledge is shared. Obstacles For each person and society, the form and content of the life-world thus constructed might vary but the process of participation does not. It is clear that there are obstacles to full and meaningful participation for many individuals. Some of these obstacles are individually centered; organic or psychological impairments which reduce the capacity to communicate, to remember or to retrieve information. Some obstacles are technical; access to every data base by every person requires an information flow system far too large and complex to work well. Some obstacles are cultural; the integrity of the several hundred cultures in the world require that some of the more aggressive methods for insuring the flow of information not be used. However, many of the obstacles to full and authentic participation of the individual are social organizational in nature. The mix of factors in any given case of distorted symbolic interaction varies of course; however in modern times, several social organizational forms have developed by which the capacity of each member of society to contribute to the symbolic interactional processes is impaired. Among these factors one finds systems of stratification wherein power and wealth differences bestow an unequal role in the constructing of social- life worlds. There is also the rise of a professional cadre of managers which attempts to defeat the reflexive and critical capacities of customers, workers, students, as well as "enemies." And there is the structure of information flow which is unidirectional as in bureaucracies and in mass media. Of considerable interest also is the rise of scientific and commercial languages wherein human concerns are stripped from the set of symbols out of which an interactional frame is to be constructed. At a more basic level, the transition toward a society wherein social roles are episodic, short-term and narrowly focused means that the linkage between self and society is greatly changed. Without a trans-situational self, it may be difficult for one to take the social form as the object of reflection and regulation; who then has responsibility for the general good when each of us sees ourselves as and only as a customer, a client, a viewer, a passenger or a fan. Some argue that the government has such responsibility yet when moral agency is centered in but one of the institutions of society, moral responsibility becomes diluted. Conflict methodologies come to be salient in such a case. In a dramaturgical society oriented to sociology of fraudulent imagery wherein a manager, public relations specialist or politician takes and creates a role without its being vested into the structure of self, there then is no permanent accountability of self-reflexive nature. One experiences no shame at one's own performances since that performance has no bearing on one's own moral standing--it is merely a job oriented to the generation of markets or the management of public impressions. When roles are scripted and performances managed, then there arises considerable doubt that the premises in Symbolic Interactional Theory are valid about one's social self being a product of interacting persons. One does not take the role of the other; there is no looking glass process; symbols do not elicit the same response in the artful actor as in the passive viewer; there is no shared symbolic environment nor is mind, self and society twinborn. From the micro-analytic perspective, a human has no way of knowing, epistemologically, that one exists unless something in the external environment responds or reacts to him. One may fell a tree, kick a cat, praise a child, or affect a friend and elicit that response. In a folk community, one who is defined as a social object regularly observes people responding to oneself. In a mass society, the significant features of one's social environment; the government, the marketplace, the work place, the school place, even the church does not respond to one as an individual unit of existence. The manager, the preacher, the professor respond to people as objects to process en masse rather than as separate subjects with whom to engage in dialogue. In order that individuals might achieve individuation it is necessary to organize social research so that individuals mediate the research question, the research findings and the research use. At the macro-level, this means that sociologists observe the ninth principle of conflict methodology just mentioned. At the micro-level it means that social research is also tailored to the information needs of the single individual to confront and to force social institutions to respond. A single worker who is the subject of private animosity on the part of a bureaucrat or political repression on the part of an administrator requires a research design by which that animosity/repression can be ascertained. That person needs a technology of scaling and inference available just as do ethnic groups and feminist groups need technologies of scaling social distance and of inferring racist or sexist attitudes and behavior at the macro-level. The individual needs the structure of social research scaled down to his individual needs and focused in on those monolithic establishments which create the illusion of service to the mass by ignoring endemic disservice to discrete individuals. A ninth principle of conflict methodology is that some part of the research capacity of sociology must be organized such that specific individuals can mediate the research process. In some forms of legal practice, of medical practice, and of educational practice, the individual does, in fact, mediate that practice. This is seldom the case in sociology even if there is much research of merit aimed at serving the information needs of similarly situated blocs of individuals. The implication of all of this for conflict methodology is that it has a bias in favor of self-reflecting, self-organizing, self-controlling individuals. This bias augments the capacity of such individuals to engage in a process of communication which enhances the subjectively meaningful production of self and society. This is what Habermas meant by a "substantively rational society." A tenth principle of conflict methodology is that the social rules of research always serve the needs of sentient human beings in the production of a social-life world rather than the administrative needs of non-sentient entities in the production and management of merely industrial, military, financial, commercial, or educational systems. This means that conflict methodology is directed at opposing those social organizational features which objectify individuals and preclude intersubjective processes of reality construction for the individual. SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONAL GROUNDS FOR CONFLICT METHODOLOGY: An eleventh principle of Conflict Methodology derives from the fact that, in the usual course of constructing social reality, there is a self fulfilling prophecy involved. The prophecy has two major subprocesses components; the prophesying itself first and then a run of behavior which is held to be the publicly understood embodiment of that prophecy. These two processes stand, initially, in a very shaky causal relationship. Their synthesis is the final social product. Much can go wrong in the transformation of prophecy into fact; the remarkable thing is that, over so many such 'wrong' events, still the human creature is able, in concert with others, create a reasonable facsimile of a family, a church, a tribe or a society. When market considerations pre-empt social considerations in product safety, worker safety, community values or the integrity of the market itself, a company can hire public relations firms to manage the impressions of the public by a wide variety of devices. When foreign competition forces companies to desert a community or a nation, advertising agencies can be hired to create the dramaturgical image of national loyalty. When a set of companies dominate a product line and set prices apart from market considerations, actors, musicians, writers, and editors can artfully divert attention away from monopoly pricing to special, heart-rending stories in which the product saves the life of a child or restores the sight of a mother. In a mass, stratified society in which market considerations take precedence over social considerations, a systematic break can thus occur such that prophecy and product do not merge. Since the 1930's, a whole industry has arisen in which the prophecy is put forward with art, skill and expense; in which the embodiment is adjusted to fit those same market considerations. Thus an dangerous environmental product is produced by a company 'user friendly' to the waters, soils and air of a nation. A company with a poor record of labor relations will bring forth a set of actors who are presented as 'ordinary workers' to testify how much they like their job, how careful the company and how dedicated to quality are both management and labor. Products, nowise different from each other, are vested with special qualities by movie stars, sports heros and literary figures themselves embodying special grace, skill and esteem. The 'transfer of charisma' is an artful presentation of image in lieu of substantive difference. If any group, class, agency or large scale organization claims to be in functional interdependence with society, then information about quality, quantity, and economy of production and service must be forthcoming in order to test that claim. As a principle of conflict methodology, it is more important to test performances against prophecies rather than to test hypotheses against chance. This principle restores social meaning to a disembodied statistical inference. Conflict methodology, as a social scientific enterprise, is responsible for evaluating the congruence between the prophecy and performances. The eleventh principle may be stated as follows: Conflict methodology advances creative social synthesis by testing dramaturgical prophecies against social performances in the reality creating process. Acquisition of Order From modern systems theory, we know that all irreversible thermodynamics systems, including social systems, must draw on order in their environment if they are to survive. It is necessary to understand that any social organization will continue to be in conflict with its environment on a number of counts. In the first place, seeking and obtaining order from the environment is a political act in which other systems in the environment lose energy and others gain. The interesting question then becomes, at what level of systems organization is order to be taken; one can take food from the good earth or one can import food from third world countries in an unequal exchange system. The same kind of questions arise for all other kinds of essential order; energy, skill, natural resources or labor. A twelfth principle for conflict methodology requires that research techniques must be developed by which to obtain full and open information about the nature and effects of such exchanges of order. This kind of conflict is a more general way by which to refer to Marxian theory. While Marx properly focused upon historically existing conflict relationships between owners and workers, a systems theoretical basis for conflict theory and conflict methodology generalizes it to all system transactions. Change and Conflict Methodology The dependence of every social system upon its environment (which of course includes other social systems) means that when the environment changes, the system must change as well in order to maintain sufficient match by which order is transferred. If the changes in the environment are irreversible then either the system must change or perish. The implication of this fact for conflict methodology is that science (i.e., research generally) is to be used for change and renewal rather than the mechanical reproduction of society in patterns which precisely duplicate nonfunctional forms of social organization. The position of positivism is that research can only reproduce society-as-is; the researcher is to avoid political activity which makes values judgments about the subject of research. The researcher is to have no hostile intent to discredit a corrupt union, to destroy a monopoly, to prevent a harmful social policy or to advance the interests of excluded minorities. This tenet of positivism is hostile to a rational society, i.e., one which can transfer order from its environment without destroying it. For our purposes, a thirteenth principle of conflict methodology states that the acquisition of quality data on the match between system and environment is necessary for system irreversibility. (NOTE 4) Global Interdependence System interdependence in a globalized society requires an ability of every society to take the perspective of every other society with which it does business. This reciprocity of knowledge requires a technology of information exchange by which information from the perspective of system X is routinely incorporated in the policies of system Y even over the objection of system Y. When a nation obtains food, labor, raw materials and profits from another country in ways which destabilize the families, communities or school systems of the second country, the conflict methodologist is obliged to make that information widely available in both the exploitive nation and the exploited country. A fourteenth principle on conflict methodology specified here states that systems must have some means for mutuality of information exchange with those systems which purport to be in functional interchange with them. The point of conflict over balance requires that one speak to the larger question about the purpose of research endeavor itself. In this formulation, the conflict methodologist does research with a global bias rather than for and only for a special society. The responsibility here is to maximize the competence of a globalized community to engage in unrestricted, uncoerced dialogue with which standards of quality and quantity of service are set. The fifteenth principle of conflict methodology to be specified here may be stated as: The form and balance of the social-life form produced by social research is always mediated by a whole-system perspective sensitive to the limitations of the environment from which it draws its order. Since social systems draw order from a population base, the integrity of that population base is a first concern. CONCLUSION: There are a wide array of solid reasons why the social research process should be value-full; reasons which justify the acquisition of information otherwise forbidden by those 'ethical' canons of the American Sociological Society which limit the research act to cooperative and benign relations with the subject of research. I have used information theory, social psychology as well as social organizational considerations with which to ground a wider, most praxical research format. (NOTE 5) Beyond these methodological points about the boundaries, channels and contents of information flow, there are serious social organizational points to consider; what shall be the boundaries of a group; how open shall those boundaries be; where and what shall be the places of privacy for the individual as for the nation; what are the equities and imbalances of information flow and, not least important, who shall be the custodians of information? All these questions dwell in the realm of morals and ethical principles. In the final analysis they are religious questions since religion has to do with that which binds people together and that which profanes them. Putting these principles into action, the conflict methodo- logist is concerned with serving the epistemological needs of human beings for participation in the construction of a rational society. As scientific methods and theories augment/replace folk methods and theories with which to construct society, science as such takes on greater value relevance. The instant social science knowledge is generated, it stands in hostile contrast to preexisting folk ways of constructing social reality. The concern must always be that, ultimately, social science is a human enterprise and helps build a social life-world at least as substantively rational as the one it is destroying. This last point defines and informs the most general thesis of conflict methodology; the enduring concern of conflict methodology is the construction of a rational and decent society. FUNCTIONS OF CONFLICT METHODOLOGY: 1. To establish the research capacity for critical analysis and reportage. 2. To provide the data of repression and exploitation in everyday life. 3. To ascertain the essential features of the social paradigms produced in everyday interaction. 4. To gauge the degree to which prophecies of social life are fulfilled in given social domains. 5. To oppose mystification and false consciousness in a managed society. 6. To generate data from the past and from the future in the effort to enhance the reflexive capacity of a society. 7. To ensure that social research technology is vested with the capacity to construct a rational and decent society. REFERENCES Ashby, H. R. 1968 "Variety, Constraint, and the Law of Requisite Variety,'," in Buckley, op. cit., p. 135. Bertalanffy, L. 1968 General Systems Theory, George Braziller, New York. `Boulding, Kenneth. 1956 "General Systems Theory." in Management Science, 11, 197-208. Brillouin, L. 1968 "Life, Thermodynamics, and Cybernetics," in Buckley, op. cit., pp. 147-156. Buckley, W., Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist, Chicago, Aldine, 1968. Cadwallader, M. 1968 "The Cybernetic Analysis of Change in Complex Social Organizations," in Buckley, op. cit. Dreitzel, Hans, "Social Science and the Problem of Rationality," in Politics and Science, Vol. 2, No. 2. Winter, 1972, p. 165. Garfinkel, Harold. 1974 "Origins of the Term 'Ethnomethodology,"' in Turner, Ethnomethodology, Penguin, p. 15. Habermas, Jurgen. 1970 Toward a Rational Society, Boston. Habermas, Jurgen. 1971 Knowledge and Human Interests, Boston. Hearn, Francis. 1973 "The Implications of Critical Theory for Critical Sociology." in Berkeley JournaL of sociology, Vol. XVIII, p. 127. Horkheimer, Max. 1973 "Traditional and Critical Theory." in Critical Theory. Lehmann, T. and Young, T. R. 1974 "From Conflict Theory to Conflict Methodology,," Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 44:1. O'Connor, James, 1970 "The Fiscal Crises of the State: Part I, Socialist Revolution, January-February, 1970. Markovi‡, Mihailo 1974 From Affluence to Praxis. Boston: Beacon. Marx, Karl 1972 "Theses on Feuerbach." In Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Rapoport, A. 1968 "The Promises and Pitfalls of Information Theory," Buckley, op. cit., p. 137. Raymond, R. 1968 "Communication, Entropy and Life," in Buckley, op. cit., p. 157. Schrodinger, E. 1968 "Order, Disorder, and Entropy." in Buckley, op. cit., p. 143. Weiner, N. 1968 "Cybernetics in History," in Buckley, op. cit., p. 35. Wolff, K., and Moore, B. 1967 The Critical Spirit, Beacon Press, 1967. Young, T. R. 1971 "Social Stratification and Modern Systems Theory," in General Systems Yearbook, Vol. 16. Young, T. R. and Boland, J. 1972a "The Dramaturgical Society," A.S.A. meetings, New Orleans. Young, T. R. 1972b "Social Change and Modern Systems Theory," Transforming Sociology Series, No. 5, The Red Feather Institute, Red Feather, Colorado. ************ ADDENDUM TO THE REFERENCES More Recent and Related Work on Conflict Methodology by the author 1974 "From Conflict Theory to Conflict Methodology," with Timothy Lehmann, Sociological Inquiry 9:135-139 1976 "Theoretical Foundations of Conflict Methodology, Sociological Inquiry 46:1 1977 "Research in the Land of Oz," Sociological Inquiry 47:1 "Radical Dimensions in Modern Systems Theory: A General Theory of Social Order and a Special Theory of Social Change," Western Sociological Review 8:2 1978 "The Dramaturgical Society," Qualitative Sociology 1:2 With Garth Massey. 1980 "The Division of Labor in the Construction of Social Reality," Urban Life 9(2):135-162 "The Sociology of Human Rights," The Humanist Sociologist (November) "Sociology and Human Knowledge; Scientific vs. Folk Methods of Reality Construction. In the 75th Anniversary Issue of the American Sociologist on the State of the Discipline. 16(2) (May) 1984 "The Public Sphere and the State," Critical Communications Review III 1985 "Public Opinion, Mass Opinion and Social Opinion," Popular Culture and Media Events issues of The Critical Communication Review 3 (August) 1986 "The Structure of Democratic Communications", in The Mid America Review of Sociology, Spring 1991 The Promise of Sociology: C. Wright Mills Revisited, in Readings in Critical Sociology, L. Chorbajian, ed. The Archeology of Human Knowledge: Premodern, Modern and Postmodern Missions and Methods for the Knowledge Process. The Michigan Sociologist. Fall. 1994 The Drama of Social Enquiry: Politically Correct Knowledge. The Wisconsin Sociologist, Winter. Chaos Theory and The Knowledge Process: Explorations in Postmodern Methodology. With James Yarbrough. Forthcoming in Proceedings of the Second Annual Meetings of the Society for Chaos in Psychology. Robin Robertson, ed. NOTES 1: I think it is possible to accept the analytic categories of Habermas for orientation to the question of science and social knowledge without committing one to a position that these three interests exhaust the universe of interests which frame and give meaning to the forms of scientific knowledge. See Hans Peter Drietzal for a more complete discussion of rationality. 2: Husserl held that there were natural categories of perception which followed and fit the natural world. Postmodern phenomenology holds that the world is far too complex to adopt and such natural set of analytic categories. 3: In any society in which social organizational values supersede human values, monopoly capitalism in the West and bureaucratic socialism in the East (Young, 1971). 4: For a more detailed discussion of irreversible social systems, see Young, 1972b. 5: Since writing this article in the early 70's, I have written several articles which offer a much more programmatic approach to praxis research. See references for such articles.