Conflict between individuals, mores and codes
Man suffers from several forms of conflict. There are conflicts within self. There are conflicts between self and society. There are conflicts within society. The conflicts between man and the social mores and codes are of special interest to sociologists. The term mores refers to social actions with which high sentiments and sanctions are attached; codes refers to different domains such as social, religious and economic, of activities. The conflicts may arise because of several reasons:
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Full or partial failure of socialization due to biological or social reasons and lack of abilities to follow values and norms of society.
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Clash between personal interests and prevailing social codes.
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Conflict between different codes when two or more codes are applicable in the same situation.
MacIver and Page (1988, 197-201) show that although the belief that in the primitive society there was no clash between individual and society is far from truth, in the modern, complex society the problem of conflict between individual and society has become more acute. The reason is that the modern society is a complex society and the individual is taught different things in different contexts. It must be recognized that the major source of value crisis in modern society is not because the individual carries no values but that he carries some values (most acquired from family and peers) which are in conflict with the larger social values. A person takes bribe because in his early socialization he has been indoctrinated into the value of money and power and he wants to pursue his own isolated interests; he does not see the conflict between his particularistic values and the universalistic values on which society is based.
The problem has become much more vivid in the twenty-first century, borderless world, in which social structure no longer determines the movements – “physical, imaginative and virtual” – and society’s power to “draw together their citizens” has been weakened (Urry, 2000).
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