Group conflict as social contradiction

This paper is a contribution to the development of an ontology of conflict. In particular, we single out and we study a peculiar notion of group conflict, that we suggestively label ‘social contradiction’. In order to do so, we shall in- troduce and discuss the methodology of social choice theory, since it allows for defining the notion of collective attitude that may emerge from a number of possibly divergent individual attitudes. We shall see how collective attitudes lead to define a specific notion of group and therefore a specific notion of group conflict. As a conclusion, we shall present our abstract analysis of group conflicts and we shall position social contradiction with respect to other types of conflicts.