THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Conflict analysis involves the study of conflict at all social levels by looking at it as a social science. I have been rather vague about what I meant by a ‘social science’, a vagueness I shall now remedy.

The social sciences are the study of the actions of people in relation to other people. Economics, social psychology and anthropology are all examples, though the divisions between them are often arbitrary. This much is agreed, but all else is controversial. There is a fundamental debate between those who argue that the social sciences can be constructed on a recognisably similar basis to that of the natural sciences, and those who hold that this is impossible as an issue of principle and not because of some practical difficulties such as the supposed greater complexity of social systems. Underlying this debate is a disagreement about the ways in which we can analyse social behaviour. Crudely there are those who argue that an investigation of human behaviour involves the reconstruction of how the actors in any situation viewed it. Proponents of the strong version of this view hold that this is all we know or can know about behaviour; this version leads directly to the view that social science in some sense akin to a natural science is impossible (Winch 1958).