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The people in the United States are experiencing an extreme degree of division, political polarization, and civic disorder. In
Fighting Better, Louis Kriesberg argues that the crises confronting the US presently are the result of changes in dynamics along three societal dimensions: class, status, and power. Those changes were brought about to a great degree by people waging conflicts constructively, destructively, or avoiding overt conflicts altogether. Assessing major domestic conflicts in the United States since 1945, Kriesberg evaluates how well conflicts were waged in terms of advancing justice, liberty, and equal opportunity for all Americans.
List of contents
- Prologue and Acknowledgments
- 1. Reflecting Backward and Looking Forward
- 2. Class-Related Conflicts, 1945-1969
- 3. Rising Class Inequality, 1970-1992
- 4. Hyper Class Inequality, 1993-2022
- 5. Reducing African American Inequalities, 1945-1969
- 6. African American Advances and Backlashes, 1970-2022
- 7. Conflicts about Gender and Other Collective Identities, 1945-2022
- 8. Conflicts Related to Political Power, 1765-2022
- 9. Issues in Recent Conflicts about Changing Power Inequalities
- 10. Recovering and Advancing Equality in the Future
- Notes
- References
- Index
About the author
Louis Kriesberg is the Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict Studies and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Syracuse University. He has published widely on diverse areas of sociology and social conflicts, including the US-Soviet Cold War, Israeli-Palestinian-Arab relations, non-governmental organizations, and social movements. His recent work focuses on constructive ways of fighting, conflict transformation, and conflict resolution methods. Kriesberg has been highly active in regional, national, and international associations of sociology, conflict resolution, and international peace, for which he has received numerous awards. He was also the founding director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC) at Syracuse University.
Summary
The people in the United States are experiencing an extreme degree of division, political partisanship, and civic disorder. Destructive fights are waged about matters such as misinformation, voting rights, school curriculum, government spending, and personal privacy. How can these distressing circumstances be overcome? More specifically, what makes the difference between conflicts that result in progress versus those that further contribute to a greatly polarized, extremely unequal, and distressed society?
In Fighting Better, Louis Kriesberg argues that the crises confronting the US presently are the result of changes in dynamics along three societal dimensions: class, status, and power. Those changes were brought about to a great degree by people waging conflicts constructively, destructively, or avoiding overt conflicts altogether. Assessing major domestic conflicts in the United States since 1945, Kriesberg evaluates how well conflicts were waged in terms of advancing justice, liberty, and equal opportunity for all Americans. Moreover, he offers ideas for how some of those fights might have been waged more effectively and with longer-term benefits, connecting current US crises to past mistakes. In doing so, Kriesberg deepens our understanding of how the way conflicts are waged can help to reduce inequities in class, power, and status, particularly with regard to gender and race.
Additional text
Fighting Better highly recommended for any serious student of conflict studies as well as anyone else excited to learn from Kriesberg's legacy as one of the foremost conflict scholars of our time.
