(Post)modern social conflicts: looking for the concept

Abstract

The article opens a set of publications aiming to discover the essence of contemporary social conflicts which “migrate” from material plane to informational (symbolic, semantic etc.) plane, and to find out relevant methods of research and regulation of such conflicts. We assume, that the semantic space or dimension of social conflict must be the main subject of postmodern theories of conflict. Thus, we have to raise the question about the suitability of existing concepts and methodologies for such analysis. To get an answer, we review methodological changes which are taking place in humanities and social sciences since the last third of the twentieth century within a set of paradigmal «turns». This excursion lets us to make a conclusion that the process of renewal of theoretical and methodological approaches in the conflict studies goes on much slower than similar changes in neighboring research areas. To fill this methodological gap, modern researches of social conflicts should pay more attention to linguistic, semiotic, hermeneutic and other methodological approaches which can provide a basis for postnonclassical methodology of social conflicts research. It lets us to consider that social conflict arises in unusual perspectives: as a sign system, discourse, event, space, game, carnival, ritual, collision of possible worlds etc. Ukraine, which is currently going through a unique experience of such new kind of war, which can be described as “notional” or “semantic”, may become one of the flagships in the creation of such methodology.