Advances in Justice Conflict Conceptualization: A New Integrative Framework

A thorough understanding of conflicts is crucial as conflicts may be destructive to the welfare of individuals, groups, and societies. Conflicts are closely related to justice concerns in that perceived injustices give rise to conflicts and destructive conflicts give rise to injustices. However, the notion of conflict is rather underdeveloped and the definition of it often taken for granted in justice theory and research. In this chapter we propose a useful conceptualization and classification of justice conflicts. Specifically, five types of conceptual distributive justice conflicts, five types of social distributive justice conflicts, and three types of a mixture of both are defined and described. Some of these basic types, in turn, encompass two or more subtypes of conflict. These result in different dilemmas and processes, the natures of which are likely to have important implications for conflict resolution. The present chapter highlights several shortcomings of current conceptualizations of justice conflict, and provides a new integrated framework for a more systematic approach.