Cultural Conceptions of Conflict and Variability in Conflict Boundaries—A Moroccan Example

Abstract

Anthropologists and sociologists have long been concerned with the question of finding meaningful boundaries for social situations. This interest, however, has not been extended to the analysis of those highly complex and elusive interactional sequences-conflict situations. In this paper, an analytic unit—the conflict chain of events-and a process-redefinition-are presented as analytic constructs in order to tackle this problem. A more meaningful representation of conflict, one that reflects universal psychosocial processes and one that is responsive to culture-specific tendencies, is sought. Moroccan case material on interpersonal conflict is used to illustrate the approach. </jats:p