Park’s Theory of Conflict and His Fall From Grace in Sociology

Introduction

To steal a line from NBC nightly newscaster Bryan Williams, there is not a single day that goes by that a story about human conflict does not appear in our newspapers. Why do newspapers across the country and the world cover human strife with such constancy? The short and simple answer is obviously that the topic of human division and discord is always “newsworthy.” And, like all short and simple answers, this one raises a question. What exactly makes an event newsworthy?

Robert Park (1940/1955a, p. 110), the ex-newspaper man turned sociologist, still provides the most insightful answer to this question. According to him, “It is this notion of importance which seems, finally, to be the distinctive and the determining specification in the conception of news.” He adds that “events, if they are to have for the reader the character of news, must be not merely interesting, but important.” He argues that for an event to be important, it must fulfill at least two requirements. First, the public must perceive the event reported on to be of potential consequence to their lives. Regarding this important point, Park (1940/1955a, pp. 107-108) notes that large papers are usually divided into sections—world, national, state, and local news—each directed at a different audience. The second requirement for news is that the event’s course must be in some doubt so that action can be still taken to alter its outcome. In Park’s words, “when there is nothing to be done about events recorded in the newspapers they have ceased to be news” (1940/1955a, pp. 109-110). Thus, unless an event is reported on in a timely manner, it no longer constitutes news, but history.

Human strife and violence is always newsworthy because it has the potential to “rock both our and other people’s worlds.” As Park and Ernest Burgess (1924, p. 575) observe, conflict “has its roots deep in human nature.” People not only place a great deal of importance on their individual status in a group, but the groups to which people belong place a great deal of importance on their collective status in the community. Moreover, the outcome of conflicts between individuals or groups can have a dramatic impact on their respective statuses in their group or in the respective community in which they live. If an individual or group prevails over another individual or group during a conflict, it could dramatically raise their social status; whereas if their opponent prevails, then their social status could be dramatically lowered. Since people’s or groups’ statuses are ultimately related to one another, the outcome of a dispute can dramatically affect not only the disputants’ statuses or rank but also that of the noncombatants. Thus, groups and individuals always keep their antennas up for any news about conflicts going on in their own or anybody else’s backyard, which could possibly improve or harm their status in their group or community (Park, 1927/1955b, p. 20).

Over the past several decades, sociologists have written enlightening reappraisals of Park’s work (Fisher & Strauss, 1978; Joas, 1993, pp 32-36; Lal, 1990; Maines, Bridger, & Ulmer, 1996; Reitzes & Reitzes, 1993; Strauss, 1996, pp. 277-278; Turner, 1967). But so far these have done little to enhance Park’s tarnished reputation because the authors have elected to avoid the sensitive racial issues largely responsible for it. In my article, I hope to fill this important void by concentrating my attention on Park’s analysis of conflict (which, in my opinion, has contributed more to our understanding of the subject than has that of any other American sociologist) and by examining head-on the racial issues that have besmirched Park’s sociological reputation. More specifically, my critical examination of his work will have two purposes. The first will be to determine why his work on race relations, which is directly related to his general theory of conflict, led to his fall from grace in the field of sociology. The second purpose will be to identify his works strengths and weaknesses thereby, laying the foundation on which we can directly build in the future. Thus, my critique of Park’s analysis of conflict is not done for the sake of criticism itself, but for the following two reasons: demonstrating its continuing relevance to our present study of conflict and developing the best possible strategy to extend his analysis even further, thereby, more fully capitalizing on his important intellectual contribution to our understanding of this troublesome and ineradicable occurrence in all our lives.

Park’s Analysis of Conflict

Although, like most thinkers, Park changed his ideas about conflict over the course of his career, most appraisers of his thought have failed to recognize it ( see, e.g., Fisher & Strauss, 1978; Joas, 1993, pp. 32-36; Lal, 1990; Maines et al., 1996; Reitzes & Reitzes, 1993; Strauss, 1996, p. 277-278; Turner, 1967). In his early work with Burgess’s (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 41) assistance, he viewed conflict as the master principle on which human social existence is based, whereas later working alone, he (1934/1952a, pp.159-164; 1936/1952b, pp. 151-155) changed his mind, concluding that this principle was domination. Working earlier with Burgess (Park, & Burgess, 1924, pp. 575, 797), he also viewed war as an institutionalized form of conduct, but later he (1941/1955c, pp. 54-56) concluded that war had defied institutional control. Nevertheless, in both phases of his work, conflict remained an important topic of concern. Even though Park eventually switched the master principle on which he believed human social existence is based from conflict to domination, this change represented only an important refinement in his thinking, not a complete break with his earlier thought. For Park, conflict and domination worked closely together because peace exists only as long as the status quo is accepted and conflicts erupt only when the status quo is openly challenged. Thus, for Park, domination ultimately became the root cause of all human conflict, although he never fully recognized and, hence, never worked out all the major implications of this for his theoretical position.

Park provided his most extensive discussion of conflict in the classic textbook written with Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1924). Here, “conflict” is included along with “competition,” “accommodation,” and “assimilation” as one of what they (1924, pp. 506, 574, 785) labeled “the great types” or “forms” of “interaction,” but which Park (1940/1955d, pp. 301-302) later spoke of more accurately as “social processes.” Before discussing Park’s and Burgess’ notion of the four types or forms of interaction, however, some serious potential misconceptions need to be avoided. First, this notion does not merely explain the different types or forms of interaction that take place between individuals and groups in a community; it also explains the successive stages in an endless cyclical process by which an individual’s position in the social order of their group or a group’s position in the social order of the larger community changes. A second serious potential misconception is that it only applies to groups and individuals of different races when, in fact, it can be applied to individuals and groups of all races, ages, creeds, religious persuasions, and even sexual orientations. When Park was originally developing his ideas about race relations, the term race was a much more inclusive category than it does today because it included people who were from different nationalities, such as Armenian, English, Egyptian, Irish, Italian, Jews, Mexican, Polish, and Spanish, and who were native or foreign born (Drake, 1984, pp xxx-xxxvi; Park & Burgess, 1924, pp. 646-648).

A final serious potential misconception of Park and Burgess’s cyclical process is that it operates in a mechanical and uniform manner. However, they neither viewed the individual’s nor the group’s passage through its successive stages as inevitable, or uniform, but as contingent and, thereby, uneven. Thus, different groups and individuals could pass through these stages at different rates of speed with some of them remaining stuck in a stage indefinitely under different conditions. If, for example, a lower ranking person or group waged a successful revolution or war against higher ranking individuals in the same group or against a higher ranking group in the same larger community during the conflict stage, then the lower ranking groups or individuals would set the conditions for their accommodation and assimilation into the new social order.

As it should now be clear from what has been already said, it is necessary to fully understand how Park conceived of conflict and the part it plays in human social existence to view it as an integral stage in rather than separate from this larger cycle. Competition is the most fundamental of the four stages in the cycle because all the other stages merely represent steps in transformation of the competitive process (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 506). Moreover, during this stage, people not only compete against each other on an individual basis for work and better jobs, but the groups to which they belong also compete against each other on a collective bases. According to Park and Burgess, this competition among human beings and groups for work and ever better jobs sets the basic terms and conditions for their existence on earth. Despite this, their struggle during this stage remains an “unconscious” and “impersonal” affair for them (1924, p. 574).

The next stage in this cycle is conflict. It is during the conflict stage that the competition among these different individuals and groups intensifies until it becomes “conscious” and turns “personal.” Here, the former competitors now become “rivals,” and, ultimately, “enemies,” which quickly transforms their competition into conflict (1924, p. 574). According to Park and Burgess (1924, pp. 578, 641), the conflicts among rival groups and individuals represent the par excellence example of “rational” conduct. The critical part that finding work and getting better jobs play in generating conflict stems not merely from the need for people to provide food on the table, a roof over their heads, and clothes on their backs. It also derives from the “status” jobs give an individual in a group and a group in the community (p. 670). Park and Burgess (1924) describe the impact of conflict on individuals and groups in their statement:

Just as the individual, under the influences of contact and conflict with other individuals, acquires a status and develops a personality, so groups of individuals, in conflict with other groups, achieve a unity, group consciousness and assume the forms characteristic of conflict groups—that is to say they become parties, sects, nationalities, etc. (p. 642)

Thus, whether we like it or not, “who is who” in a group or a community springs ultimately from how an individual in a group and a group of individuals in a community earn their living (Park & Burgess, 1924, pp. 512, 574, 670).

During accommodation, the third stage, an arrangement is brokered to stop the conflict among individuals and groups over work and better jobs (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 735). The arrangements is based on redistribution of jobs that individuals and groups perform not only to earn their bread, but also to gain or maintain their ranks or statuses in their group and the larger community in which they live or work (1924, pp. 665-667). Unsurprisingly, the terms and conditions of the new arrangement worked out for distributing jobs always favors those that in the opinion of a group or community won the conflict (1924, pp. 574-575, 791-794). If neither side is vanquished during the conflict, however, then the brokered arrangement only temporarily halts the open warfare; it does not brings a permanent end to all hostilities among the combatants. Thus, for Park and Burgess (1924, p. 509), the vanquishing of an opponent, which sets into motion the consolidation of the brokered arrangement, is necessary to bring about a lasting peace.

Assimilation is the last stage. It is during this final stage in the cyclical process that a new social order formed from the arrangement brokered earlier during the accommodation stage becomes consolidated (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 785). The consolidation of this new social order is by no means a done deal. Among other things, it requires that the tide of public opinion, which arose during accommodation stage, set in motion the development of new mores for determining statuses in a group and in a community (1924, p.795). Thus, it cannot be concluded that the new social order has been consolidated until prevailing public opinion in a community leads to the creation of new mores. The best litmus test for consolidation is whether a group’s or community’s present generation passes onto the next generation their new attitudes and mores for superordination and subordination (1924, pp. 509, 645, 785).

The analysis by Park and Burgess (1924, pp. 504-784) of the four stages in the interaction cycle—competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation—has important implications for the cessation or prolongation of hostilities in the wake of conflict. According to them (1924, p. 509), if a conflict among groups or individuals ends with none of the combatants vanquished, then it is highly unlikely that a accommodation will be worked out among them that will lead to their peaceful assimilation into a new dominance order. On the contrary, if a conflict fails to end hostile actions among the combatants, then the long-term change in the combatants’ relative positions in their group’s or community’s pecking order cannot be predicted because it ultimately rests on the outcome of future conflicts fought between them for dominance. Unless divine providence, some powerful third party or other exigent circumstance intervenes to bring a halt to the hostilities among the combatants, their conflict will only metastasize later (see Park, 1928/1955e, p. 32; Park, 1941/1955c, pp. 55, 68). Thus, the paradox is that long-term peace usually requires that at least one of the warring parties suffer some debilitating major defeats because anything less will prolong the hostilities between them. To paraphrase Park and Burgess (1924, pp. 576, 645) and Park (1936/1952c, p. 228; 1940/1955d, p. 302), the main reason wars are fought is to create a new dominance order that ensures an enduring peace that is more viable than the order it supplanted.

In addition to explaining the part conflict plays in the cycle of change in the social order, Park and Burgess (1924) single out wars and revolutions as two special forms of conflict deserving our utmost attention. According to them (1924, p. 576), wars are the “outstanding example” of conflict because it is only during wars that “conflicts in social life present themselves in their clearest outline.” For Park (1941/1955c, p. 61), wars are not only the most important form of conflict, they are also the most important form of collective action that human beings engage in: “Of all common enterprises and all collective action that men have undertaken, war is undoubtedly the most imposing.” Thus, it should not be surprising that he (Park, 1941/1955c, p. 50) believed with new advances in technology, war would become “our number one social problem.”

According to him (1936/1952b, p. 153; 1940/1955d, p. 302; 1941/1955c, pp. 62-68; Park & Burgess, 1924, pp. 576-579), like all conflicts, the main goal of war is to improve, or at least protect large acting units—such as a nation-state, a race, a class, a nationality—or, a tribe’s rank or status in the world’s dominance order or some region of it. However, the reason that large-scale conflicts are so hard to prevent is not different from that of smaller scale conflicts. It requires the acting units involved to relinquish their quest to raise their present status or to maintain only their present one to at least avoid the risk of armed conflict (see Park, 1927/1955f, p. 36). Consistent with Park’s (1941/1955c, pp. 54-55) mature beliefs that the conditions for waging wars defy institutionalization, he is pessimistic about the prospects for stopping acting units, large or small, from striving for higher statuses or trying to keep their present ones, as a means of avoiding armed conflicts.

In fact, Park and Burgess (1924) contend wars can perform an invaluable service to the community. According to them (1924, p. 669), wars can make it possible to replace no longer endurable and, thereby, unviable dominance orders, whose replacement cannot be brought about by any other means: “The problem, therefore, must find a solution in some method by which the conflicts that are latent in, or develop out of, the conditions of peace may be adjusted without resort to war.” However, as they are quick to point out the difficulty in finding such a solution is “devices that render life more secure frequently make it . . . harder to bear” adding that “competition, the struggle for existence, and for, what is often more important than mere existence, namely status, may become so bitter that peace is unendurable [italics added]. (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 669, see also Park, 1940/1955d, pp. 301-302)

For Park (1927/1955f, pp. 36-37; 1928/1955e, pp. 30-31), wars and revolutions closely resemble one another. Like wars, revolutions are conflicts waged over the issue of domination. On the one hand, an acting unit wants to preserve its community’s existing dominance order and keep in place the present mores on which it operates, and, thereby, protect the status quo. On the other hand, the other acting units want to destroy the community’s present dominance order and replace the existing mores on which it operates, and, thereby, overthrow the status quo (Park & Burgess, 1924, pp. 576, 933). Like wars, revolutions are always large-scale conflicts in which the opposing parties are large groups of people who have become united in their struggle against one another by some ideal (Park, 1927/1955f, p. 36). Unlike in wars, however, in revolutions, the opposing groups or aggregates always belong to the same larger community and, thereby, these are internal rather than external conflicts where the opposing parties belong to different communities. Of course, in the case of international wars involving many nation-states, the conflict may be simultaneously considered a war and a revolution because it occurs within the same global community, and what is at stake is the mores governing the world’s existing dominance order (Park, 1941/1955c, p.55; 1942/1955g, pp. 329, 337). Finally, Park draws a critical distinction between what he refers to as “revolutionary” and “reform” movements (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 933), which Herbert Blumer (1939/1969b, pp. 112-114 ) later adopted in his classic statement on “collective of behavior.” A reform movement only seeks to bolster compliance with the existing mores governing domination in a community, whereas a revolutionary movement seeks to replace these mores altogether. Thus, Park (1927/1955f, p. 36) views revolutions, like wars, as “special forms of social change,” which potentially can be a progressive force in shaping a society’s or the entire world’s social order.

The Discounting of Park’s Analysis of Conflict

Robert Park, the undisputed leader of the Chicago school of sociology during its halcyon years of 1918-1932, is today the “forgotten man” not only in the general field of sociology but, more important for our present concerns, in “ symbolic interactionism.” In fact, Blumer, who was a former graduate student and later a junior colleague of Park’s at Chicago, rated his contribution to this perspective’s development as of only secondary importance and rarely mentioned him in his writings on this subject (e.g., see Blumer, 1928, 1937, 1939/1969b, 1953, 1962, pp. 179-181, 1969a, pp. 1-2). Blumer was not alone in discounting Park’s importance to contemporary interactionism. Unfortunately, many later-day interactionists, such as Collins (1994), Kuhn (1964), Lauer and Handel (1977), Meltzer, Petras, and Reynolds (1975), Reynolds (1994, pp. 6-24), Musolf (2003, p. 2), Rose (1962), Stryker (1980), Wiley (2011), apparently seconded Blumer’s opinion on this matter.

Moreover, few contemporary sociologists know much about Park (Grosby, 1998, p. 51) beyond that he was the leader of the famed Chicago School, a coauthor of the classic text book written with Ernest Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, which was later dubbed the “green bible,” and an early important contributor to the field of urban sociology. Unlike Park’s colleague in the department of philosophy at Chicago, George Herbert Mead, whose reputation has skyrocketed since his death in 1931 (Athens, 2007a, p. 2862), Park’s reputation has nosedived since the Chicago school of sociology’s heyday. Thus, the puzzling question that naturally arises is how did the undisputed leader of the Chicago School of Sociology, who gave birth to the perspective now known as “symbolic interactionism” (Wiley, 2011), become relegated to only a minor figure in the subsequent development of this sociological perspective and warrants barely more than a footnote in the history of American sociology?

Although many reasons have been given for Park’s fall from his pedestal in sociology (Maines et al., 1996, pp. 525-526; Matthews, 1977, pp. 179-193), there is one that has rarely been mentioned, at least, in print. This seldom written about reason, which in my opinion is the most important one, surrounds his work related to racial issues, which have attracted a firestorm of criticism that has raged for over a half a century (see, e.g., Bowser, 2002a; Cox, 1944; Deegan, 2001/2007, p. 21, Drake, 1984; Ellison, 1964, p. 308; Lal, 1990, pp. 151-159; Lyman, 1972, 1994; Stanfield, 1985; Washington, 1993; Watts, 2002). Perhaps, the most important of these criticisms was that Park’s notion of the race-relations’ cycle was inherently conservative (Bowser, 2002b, p. 55; Lyman, 1972, 1994; Stanfield, 1985, pp. 51-53; Washington, 1993, p. 104) because Park assumed that progression through the stages was not only inevitable, but also uniform, so all “minority” or subordinate groups are ultimately forced to assimilate the dominant group’s culture. In a highly influential book, The Black American in Sociological Thought, Stanford Lyman (1972, pp. 27-70) provides without doubt the most thorough and the most damning criticism of Park’s notion of the race-relations cycle that can be found in the literature. In his opening remarks, Lyman (1972, p. 27) describes the importance of the task before him: “Robert E. Park’s race-relations cycle is indisputably one of the most important contributions to sociological thought. However, despite widespread discussion and criticism, neither Park’s philosophical assumptions nor the full potentiality of the theory has been examined completely.” Lyman quickly adds that: “As theory and ideology, as a guide to the past and a measure of the present, Park’s cycle has seen wide service in sociological theory, social reform, and practical politics.”

The single most important thing to keep in mind while weighing his criticism of Park’s notion of the race-relations cycle is Lyman’s (1972, pp. 27-28) representation or should I say his misrepresentation of it, which 20 years later, Lal (1990, p. 41) repeated in her book, The Romance of Cultures in an Urban Civilization: Robert E. Park on Race and Ethnic Relations in Cities. I will quote here at some length Lyman’s (1972) characterization of Park’s race-relations cycle to thwart any later charges that I have purposefully distorted it:

The race relations cycle proceeds in four stages—contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation—in the course of which there unfolds a great cultural and social drama. Each act of this drama is dictated by laws of history and culture . . . and the sequence cannot be halted or diverted [italics added]. The first stage, contact, occurs when two races meet on a “racial frontier” and are obliged to interact. Conflict arises when the races compete for valuable resources. The conflict is resolved by accommodation, in which a stable but asymmetrical and unequal social order is established. Finally, accommodation gives way to assimilation, when the two races merge culturally and, ultimately, physically. In the end, society becomes homogeneous. (1972, pp. 27-28)

Over Lyman’s long and distinguished career, he continued to promulgate this erroneous conception of Park’s notion of the race-relations cycle. Almost 20 years after his publication of The Black American in Sociological Thought, he (Lyman & Vidich, 1988,p. 55) wrote that, “According to this theory, each new racial and ethnic group would pass through three progressive and irreversible stages—contact, competition, and accommodation, and then finally be assimilated.” Finally, in Color, Culture, and Civilization, published over 5 years later, Lyman (1994, p 17) concluded once again that “Park . . . is best understood as a theorist of assimilation.”

As explained earlier in my discussion of Park’s generic theory of conflict, he (Park, 1937/1950a, pp. 194-195) definitely does not presume that passage through all the stages in the cycle is inevitable. Thus, he does not contend that all subordinate groups must sooner or later reach or pass into the assimilation stage, where they ipso facto lose all their cultural distinctiveness (Carey, 1975, p. 175; Kivisto, 2004, pp. 149, 161-162; Washington, 1993, p. 107; Watts, 2002, p. 33). This is a crucial point, which, at rare moments in Lyman’s (1972, pp. 34-35, 47) evaluation, even he is forced to begrudgingly admit. To the contrary, it is perfectly possible both under Park’s generic theory of conflict and his more specific notion of the race-relations cycle for these groups not only to remain in the conflict stage indefinitely, but also to escalate the conflict, if they believe they can possibly prevail by mounting a war of liberation (Park, 1926/1950b, p. 151). If this war of liberation, which in effect constitutes a revolution, proves successful, then the former racial subordinate group would set the terms for the former superordinate racial group’s accommodation to and later assimilation of their mores rather than vice-versa. In fact, Everett Hughes (1964/1984, p. 549), a former prized student of Park, observed him shock “a young political scientist by asking why there should be racial peace before there was racial justice.” Even in his discussion of the race-relations cycle, Park (1926/1950b) makes this very point abundantly clear, stating that “It does not follow that because tendencies to the assimilation and amalgamation of the races exist, they should not be resisted [italics added] and, if possible, altogether inhibited” (p. 151)

According to Park (1937/1950a, p. 194), race relations should be viewed as just another form of conflict: “What are popularly referred to as race relations ordinarily involve some sort of race conflict.” If his race-relations cycle is properly viewed as merely a special case of his generic theory of conflict earlier described, however, then it becomes even more abundantly clear that the criticism that Park’s theory somehow provides a conservative or ultraconservative theory of race relations is unfounded (see Drake, 1984,pp. xxiv-xxv). According to Park and Burgess (1924, p. 578), “racial conflicts, like wars, are fundamentally the struggles of racial groups for status.” Everett Hughes (1950) made this same critical point about Park noting that “His essays on race relations are, in fact, essays on social processes and social interaction in general” (pp. xiii-xiv, italics added). In Quest for American Sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School, Fred Matthews (1977, pp 177, 182) paints a portrait of Park as a conservative. There is no possible logical way, however, that Park, who considers resistance a viable option to assimilation and revolutions as an effective possible means of achieving progressive social changes, can be considered a conservative, much less an ultraconservative on race or any other sociological matters. In my opinion, a more accurate portrayal of him would be as a realistic radical (see e.g. Park, 1935/1955h, p.45).

A second criticism of Park that he had associated with Booker T. Washington, principal of Tuskegee Institute, who allegedly held very conservative opinions on racial problems (Bowser, 2002a, p. 14; 2002b, pp. 54-55) and, thereby, served as a mouthpiece for the white establishment. W. E. Du Bois (1903/2003, pp. 43-61), a brilliant sociologist and historian, prolific author, cofounder of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and the leading Black intellectual of his day, was one of the first to chastise Washington for his conservative racial views:

It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has stopped movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro. . . Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression that left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. (Du Bois, 1903, p. 59)

A century later, Benjamin Bowser (2002b), a Black sociology professor at California State University at Hayward, depicts Washington and Park as friends whose conservative views on race nicely dovetailed with each other’s: “Like his good friend Booker T. Washington, whose most famous public position on race-relations was presented at the 1892 Atlanta Convention, Park’s formal theoretical perspective actually provides a theoretical rationale for racial inequality” (p. 54).

However, it is open to question whether, in fact, Booker T. Washington actually held conservative views about the resolution of our race problem and whether he was only a mouthpiece for the white conservative establishment. Regarding Washington, Everett Hughes, a protégé of Park’s at Chicago, notes in a letter written in July, 1976, that “the wind is already changing about the first ‘head start’ Black Educator” ¹ [italics added]. Since Hughes’ letter was written over half a century after Washington’s death, the characterization of attitudes toward him as “already changing” is inaccurate. Later, the highly touted sociologist, St. Clair Drake (1984, p. xli), who is Black and coauthored with Richard Cayton (Drake & Cayton, 1945/1993), the now, long-time classic, Black Metropolis, opined that:

Publication of the first nine volumes of the Washington papers . . . brings additional evidence to shatter the stereotype of Booker T. Washington as an “Uncle Tom,” unconcerned about such issues as abolishing segregation in public places or restoring Black voting rights in the South. The picture is emerging of an “accommodationist” leader who wore his mask well, but who was also a shrewd clandestine tactician in trying to move toward some limited civil rights goals, and who opposed the crystallization of race relations into a caste system. (Drake, 1984, p. xli)

Almost two decades later, Jerry Watts (2002), a Black professor of American Studies at Trinity University in Hartford, expresses similar sentiments to Drake’s:

Washington did not authentically endorse the status quo, for he concertedly believed he was at the front of the correct strategy to change the living conditions of black Americans. He just believed that he could affect such a program by using existent political options available in the South during the turn of the century. (pp. 30-31)

Of course, even if Washington had held conservative beliefs about race relations, this does not necessarily prove that Park held them or that that they compromised the validity or value of Park’s notion of the race-relations cycle, much less his general theory of social conflict (Drake, 1984, p. xxiv). Guilt by mere association has been repeatedly proven an unsound means of drawing judgments about either people or their actions (Watts, 2002, pp. 30-32).

Next, we can examine the insinuation that Park’s work for Washington was inappropriate. It is true that before becoming a professor at the University of Chicago in 1913, he worked from 1905 to1912 as a secretary and publicists for Booker T. Washington, Principal of Tuskegee Institute (Raushenbush, 1979, p. 43; Washington, 1993, pp. 104-105). The suggestion that Park’s acquisition of or performance on this job was less than honorable ignores the realities surrounding his appointment and later employment by Washington. Among other things, it conveniently overlooks that Washington not only employed Blacks previously in this position, but also had offered it 3 years earlier to W. E. B. Du Bios, who rejected it. Moreover, Washington sweetened his offer to Du Bois with the assurance that he would not have to play the role of “ghost writer,” although it failed to change Du Bois’ decision. Park neither asked for nor received any such assurance from Washington about not playing this role for him. In the letter Park wrote to Washington’s secretary accepting his job offer, Park made it clear he had no problems playing second fiddle to Washington (Drake, 1984, pp. v-vi, xvi-xx; Ellison, 1964, pp. 306-308; E. Faris, 1944, p. 323; Raushenbush, 1979, pp. 39-40; R. Washington, 1993, p. 106).

Secondly, it overlooks the grave danger posed to Whites, especially if they were from the North, who worked on behalf of the improvement of Black’s living conditions in the South. As is commonly known, at least among Whites who lived in the South during the “Jim Crow” period, Southern Whites held Whites who helped or fraternized with Blacks in greater contempt than they even held Blacks (Sumner, 1906, p.78). In fact, they perceived such Whites as traitors to their race and contemptuously referred to them as “Nigger lovers,” “race agitators,” and “carpet baggers.” Moreover, even Park’s “relatives and friends could not understand why he continued to work in the South, for niggers as they put it” (Stanfield, 1985, p. 40). This may have been one of the unstated reasons that Park could not persuade his wife and children to move with him from the North to Macon County, Alabama, where he worked for 7 long years without them (Raushenbush, 1979, pp. 41, 63, 87).

Third, the insinuation that Park’s work for Washington was somehow inappropriate overlooks that Park did not play the role of Washington’s “race broker”—a White person who acts as ambassador for Black leaders to White society and presumably profits handsomely from it. Park did not greatly profit materially from his work for Washington (Drake, 1984, pp. xii-xiii). I am unaware of any evidence, including that put forth by John Stanfield (1985, pp. 40-43), a professor of Afro-American Studies at Yale, that Park ever lived a luxurious lifestyle before, during, or after his stint at Tuskegee. The main thing he got out of it was intangible—an invaluable fund of firsthand knowledge about the nature of race relations in the South, which few Whites from, at least, outside the South possessed at that time (Bowser, 2002b, p. 68; Drake, 1984, pp. xl-xli; Ellison, 1964, pp. 306-307; Park, 1950c, p. vii; Raushenbush, 1979, pp. 49-50; R. Washington, 1993, p. 103). Park later put this knowledge to good use as a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. Of course, Park would never have gained this knowledge if Washington had not offered him the job and Park had not accepted it. Since Washington was a perceptive observer of human nature and shrewd judge of individual character, however, he never would have hired Park in the first place or quickly fired him, if he thought Park sought to exploit him or his position at Tuskegee. On the bases of what it is now known, it appears that Park never betrayed Washington, performed his duties for him admirably, and undoubtedly helped to improve to some small degree the conditions at Tuskegee and the lives all those associated with or touched by its work (Drake, 1984, pp. xi-xii, xli; E. Faris, 1944, p. 323; Raushenbush, 1979, p. 39; R. Washington, 1993, p. 104; Watts, 2002, pp. 31, 39-40).

Last, we can take the harshest criticism of all that Park had a racist’s streak that was inferred primarily from his belief that Blacks inherited a special temperament. Among other things, he believed this gave Blacks certain artistic talents, which led him to imprudently characterize them as “the lady among the races” (see Denzin, 2001, pp. 243-245; Ellison, 1964, p. 308; Drake, 1984, pp. xxxvii-xxxix; Lal, 1990, pp. 153-155; Stanfield, 1985, pp. 50-51; Watts, 2002, p. 34; Young, 2002, p. 85):

The Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor a brooding introspective, like the East African; nor a pioneer and frontiersman, like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving of life for its sake. His métier is expression rather than action. He is, so to speak the lady among the races. (Park, 1918/1950d, p. 280)

In reaction to this incendiary statement by Park, the awarding winning author and the renowned American intellectual, Ralph Ellison (1964), who was also Black, angrily commented that

Park’s descriptive metaphor is so pregnant with mixed motives as to birth a thousand compromises and indecisions. Imagine the effects such teachings have had on Negro students alone! Thus what started as part of democratic attitude [toward blacks] ends not only uncomfortably close to the preachings of Sumner, but to those of Goebbels as well. (p. 308)

Park’s (1918/1950d, pp. 279-283) belief that different racial and ethnic groups had distinct biologically inherited temperaments, was not only intellectually regressive, but also gratuitous. While Park was promoting his regressive ideas about biological sources of our temperaments, which for him, were an element of human nature, his colleague in Chicago’s philosophy department, George Herbert Mead (1909, 1910a, 1910b, 1912, 1913/1964, 1922) and John Dewey (1922/1930), his former undergraduate mentor at University of Michigan and later professor of philosophy at Columbia, were busy developing their much more progressive ideas about their social sources. Moreover, if Park (Park & Burgess, 1924, pp. 138-142) had not been so hell-bent on retaining the idea of biologically inherited temperaments, he could have easily conceived of racial temperaments, like his other presumed aspects of human nature, as culturally rather than biological transmitted from one generation to the next, which would have been perfectly consistent with his larger evolving theoretical framework.

In fairness to Park, several points must be underscored. He (1918/1950d, pp. 279-283; Park & Burgess, 1924, pp. 68-72, 146) contended that human nature was a joint product of our “biological inheritance,” which was responsible for our racial temperament and our “social inheritance,” rather than only the former. Park (1918/1950d, pp. 263-264) also seconded Franz Boas’s conclusion that there did not exist any reliable body of evidence demonstrating Blacks were as a group intellectually inferior to Whites. Moreover, Ellison’s (1964) suggestion that Park had a racist streak in him was undermined by Ellison’s frank acknowledgement that:

The positive contributions of Park and those men connected with him are well established. American Negroes have greatly benefited from their research; and some of the most brilliant of Negro scholars have been connected with them. Perhaps the most just charge to be made against them is that of timidity. (p. 307)

According to Edward Shils (1991, p. 125), “W.I. Thomas said that [Park] was as free from prejudice as any white man could be,” an opinion with which Shils, Park’s former graduate student, shared. Finally, St. Clair Drake (1984), whose initial view of Park was as negative as Ellison’s, later conducted a careful investigation of all known facts about Park’s relationships with Blacks, from which he concluded that “it was obvious that he was not a ‘racist’” (pp. lvii, italics added). Thus, as Robert Faris (1970, p. 47) originally noted and Drake (1984, pp. liii-liv) seconded 14 years later, all that Park’s misguided notion of racial temperaments and imprudent prose about Blacks’ place among the different races ultimately proves is that he was much more an intellectual creature of his day than he recognized.

Despite the dubious nature of all these various criticisms of Park, it did not prevent them from seriously damaging his sociological legacy, from which he still has not fully recovered (Matthews, 1977, pp. 157-189). The problem Winifred Raushenbush, another Park protégé, encountered in trying to publish her biography of him gives a sense of the degree of social radioactivity that existed in some academic circles surrounding both Park’s ideas about race relations and the work he did earlier in his career for Washington. When she submitted her manuscript to the University of Chicago Press, they rejected it, although the editor of its Heritage of Sociology series at the time, Morris Janowitz apparently had been in favor of its publication. In excerpts from a letter Everett Hughes (1976) wrote to Janowitz concerning Raushenbush’s manuscript, he suggests Park’s relationship with Washington may have been behind the rejection:

My first idea is that we—that means you—tackle the University of Chicago Press again. Let me tell you some reasons why:

Park put the press on the road in social science. You have got to get it moving again with your series. Without the Raushenbush account, your series is like an arch without a keystone.

The Press evidently considered the book as a general analytic critique . . . It is not that; it is the story of a man’s work and of the development of his interests and ideas. If it was judged as a critique, the judgment was made on the wrong premise.

It seems evident that the press judged the book as something it was not meant to be, but failed to see its place in American sociology and your series.

This is one of several kinds of accounts of a scholar. Marianne Weber wrote [one] of her cousin-husband. Martindale has done the story of sociology at Minnesota, one of the old solid departments, in the Romance of the Profession. Raushenbush has done one about Park and Chicago sociology. It is an essential part of the story of Chicago and the world [of] sociology. Chicago is the Press who owes it to itself to publish the book.

After making this argument to Janowitz, Hughes (1976, personal communication) later drops the hammer in his letter, interjecting that “the book may have been rejected because of the relationship of Park to Washington” ¹ [italics added]. Although the University of Chicago Press never published Raushenbush’s biography of Park, fortunately for her and for us, Duke University Press published it 3 years later with both Hughes and Janowitz’s help (Raushenbush, 1979, p. xi).

An Appraisal of Park’s Analysis of Conflict

Unfortunately, not all the problems with Park’s work on conflict can be attributed to misunderstandings about his work for Booker T. Washington. In addition, they cannot be attributed to Washington’s impact on Park’s views of race relations, his (1926/1950b, pp. 149-151) specific notion of the race-relations cycle, and Park and Burgess’s (1924) more general notion of cyclical process by which individuals and groups raise, lower, or maintain their rank in a group’s or larger community’s social order. In my opinion, Park’s analysis of social conflict suffers from three main shortcomings completely unrelated to any of these matters.

The first shortcoming is that neither he alone nor with Burgess ever identified the stages by which competition, conflict, accommodation, or assimilation, each individually unfold during social action. Although to Park’s and Burgess’ great credit, they did identify the successive stages in the cyclical process by which the dominance order of a group or community changes over time, they never pressed their analysis further to identify the specific stages in the process by which conflicts emerge during social action. Despite their great accomplishment discovering these four stages, they also failed to identify the subprocesses by which all their four stages emerge. More important for our present concerns, neither one identified the specific stages in the process by which different specific types of conflicts, such as wars and revolutions, progressively unfold.

In light of Park’s (1940/1955d, pp. 301-302, 1928/1955e, pp. 31-32; 1927/1955f, pp. 35, 37; 1926/1950b, p. 149) later relabeling of his and Burgess’ four types or forms of interactions as “social processes” and his more general belief that sociologists should seek to uncover the processes by which different forms of collective behavior emerge, I think he would have agreed with this criticism of his work. Moreover, although Park (1927/1955f) never came close to completing this task, he definitely recognized the enormity of it in the remarks he made about the study of revolutions:

It would seem that what remains to be done is to reduce this revolutionary cycle not merely to a conceptual, but a temporal sequence . . . that can be measured in temporal units. This involves a much more complete analysis of the revolutionary process than thus far has been anywhere measurably achieved. It is perhaps an impossible task, demanding a precision that is quite beyond the present limits of the social sciences. (p. 37, italics added)

A second shortcoming of Park’s analysis of conflict is that he and Burgess not only failed to identify all the main forms of conflict, they also oversimplified the two types of conflicts—wars and revolutions—they singled out for special treatment. Park viewed wars and revolutions in much too narrow terms by restricting the participants to large acting units and the major form of power used to physical force. Small acting units, like individuals and gangs, can also wage wars and revolts, and like large acting units, they do not necessarily need to include physical force as one of the major or even minor sources of power that they draw on while fighting these conflicts against one another. Park (1941/1955c, p. 51) opined that “the conception of war as a procedure in which issues that cannot otherwise be adjudicated are decided, if not by force of arms, at least by physical combat, has persisted to this day,” adding that “it is interesting, and, in a sense, reassuring to note that the conception of war upon which warfare is conducted today is not substantially different from what it was fourteen hundred years ago.” Whether or not this is true, it can be safely concluded that in his viewing of wars and revolutions as something only engaged in by large complex acting units through their use primarily of brute physical force, Park has not broken from this long tradition. In the case of revolutions, Park and Burgess (1924) also failed to distinguish partial from complete revolutions. In partial revolutions, the present occupants in the existing dominance order change hands, but not the mores governing its operation, whereas in complete revolutions, both the occupants of the existing dominance order and present principles governing its operation change.

A third serious shortcoming from which Park’s analysis of conflict suffers is that he did not identify the basic building block upon which all human conflicts, both small and large, and fleeting and long lasting, are constructed. As far as I am aware, he came closer than anyone else, except for perhaps Simmel (1950, 1955, 1971), to recognizing that all conflicts among both individuals and groups, however large or small, spring ultimately from disputes over dominance and over who should perform the superordinate or subordinate role during the construction of a social act in which the combatants are jointly implicated (Athens, 2002).

If Park had formulated this notion more clearly in his mind, he could easily have deduced later (a) that all dominance disputes display the form of what I (Athens, 2005) have elsewhere described as “dominative encounters,” (b) that dominance encounters may be highly complex, as in the case of battles, campaigns, and wars, or relatively simple, as in the case of tiffs, skirmishes, and engagements, (c) that complex dominative encounters are always composed of simpler ones, and finally (d) that the sheer size of the acting unit does not necessarily determine the complexity of the dominative encounter they can wage; so that large organized groups, like nation-states, and smaller organized groups, like clans or gangs, as well as individuals, can become entangled in either complex or simple dominative encounters against one another. If Park had made these four deductions, he quickly would have realized that dominative engagements, the simplest form of completed dominative encounter, supply the basic building blocks from which the more complex forms are constructed. Thus, dominative engagements constitute the proverbial “social atom” from which all conflicts between individuals and groups, both big and small, are built.

A final serious criticism of Park’s analysis of conflict is that, like many contemporary and past thinkers, including Mead and Blumer, Park (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 642) never distinguished domination from power in his work and, thereby, remained unaware not only of the difference, but also the intimate connection that exists between them (Athens, 2010, pp. 349-351). Power represents the tangible and intangible resource that an individual or group can immediately draw on or later mobilize to achieve dominance. Although such resources may take many different forms—ranging from physical and cultural annihilation to psychological or economic extortion, to social exclusion and isolation, to communicative blackouts or disinformation campaigns—domination always exhibits the same fundamental one: the implicit or explicit creation of a formal or informal dominance order among different individuals and groups, which may change, however slowly or quickly, over time (Athens, 2007b). Thus, while Park (1934/1952a, 1936/1952c) deserves enormous credit for recognizing early on that human social existence cannot be fully understood without taking into account the critical roles both conflict and domination play, it escaped his attention that all conflicts ultimately stem from dominance disputes that manifest themselves everywhere and every time in the form of dominance encounters. Whether people or groups win or lose them largely depends on the types and amounts of power they have at their fingertips or can later muster, if the need should arise for them to fight one.

Conclusion

The criticisms made against Park for his partial adoption of Washington’s ultraconservative views about race relations, his conservatively biased notion of the race-relations cycle, his alleged improper performance of his duties as secretary, publicist, and ghost writer for Booker T. Washington, and his racist streak have little bases in actual fact. They provide absolutely no reason for sociologists discounting or ignoring today the great relevance of his theory of conflict for furthering our understanding of this important problem. Thus, it constitutes a grave mistake for anyone with a serious interest in social conflict not to familiarize themselves thoroughly with his ideas.

Despite the specious character of the criticisms of Park as a person and his work on race relations, there are several serious weaknesses in his general theory of conflict. These can be traced back to his failure to develop key points in his explanation of conflict. First and foremost, he failed to identify the stages through which most conflicts must pass. This prevented him from explaining why far more conflictive social acts are started than ever completed. Second, he unduly restricted the acting units that engage in wars and revolutions to large-scale ones, such as nation-states, ignoring that smaller scale acting units, such as individuals or gangs, can also engage in long-term conflicts, which also can be fruitfully conceived as wars or revolutions. Third, he remained oblivious to the fact staring him in the face that what may be termed a “dominative encounter” is the generic form that all conflictive actions display, no matter how large or small (Athens, 2005). Finally, Park made the monumental mistake, in which he is definitely not alone, of failing to differentiate power from dominance (Athens, 2010, pp. 349-351). This stymied his advancing our deeper understanding of why some people or groups are more likely than others to win or lose the dominative encounters in which they find themselves entangled.

If our goal is to overcome the three shortcomings identified in Park’s analysis of human conflict, then the job before us should be clear. First, we must view all conflicts as taking some form of dominative encounters. Second, we must identify the different sequence of stages through which both completed and uncompleted dominative encounters pass. Third, we must identify the factors that prevent and foster the completion of dominative encounters and, thereby, differentiate inchoate from completed ones. Fourth, we must distinguish power from domination so that we can better understand both why and how dominative encounters are fought and who wins and looses them. Finally, we must not be reluctant to apply the notions of wars and revolutions to all dominative disputes in which they are applicable, no matter whether the combatants are small or large acting units

While Park never came close to completing these five crucial tasks in his work, I am unaware of any other sociologist who has done so either, although nearly a century has passed since Park and Burgess first published their Introduction to the Science of Sociology in 1921. Nevertheless, he did leave behind the critical intellectual clues for us to follow to accomplish all the tasks just described. We owe Robert Park a great debt for the clues that he left behind in his work on conflict, clues for which contemporary sociologists interested in this problem have never given him nearly enough credit and, thereby, have foolishly never closely examined in their work (see e.g., Collins, 1975, 1994, 2008; Kriesburg, 2003; Schellenberg, 1982).