Social conflict emerges and develops on the basis of the meaning and interpretation people involved attach to action and events. From this starting point, conflict is connected to meaning, meaning to knowledge, and knowledge is rooted in culture. We must be careful not to push a single theoretical approach as the only mechanism for understanding social conflict. However, in exploring the questions of culture and training, which I suggest is the packaging of social knowledge, a theoretical approach that places primary emphasis on the construction of meaning and the role of knowledge is especially justified. Conflict is a socially constructed cultural event.
People are active participants in creating situations and interactions they experience as conflict.
Conflict emerges through an interactive process based on the search for and creation of shared meaning. The interactive process is accomplished through and rooted in people's perceptions, interpretations, expressions, and intentions, which all grow from and cycle back to their common sense knowledge. Thus an important working assumption from this perspective is the idea that a person's common sense and accumulated experience and knowledge are the primary basis of how they create, understand, and respond to conflict. Culture is rooted in the shared knowledge and schemes created and used by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to social realities around them. Understanding the connection of social conflict and culture is not merely a question of sensitivity or of awareness, but a far more profound adventure of discovery and digging in the archaeology of accumulated shared knowledge common to a set of people.