Group conflict as social contradiction

This paper is a contribution to the definition of an ontology of conflict. In particular, we single out and we study a peculiar notion of conflict, that we suggestively label as 'social contradiction'. In order to do so, we shall introduce and discuss the methodology of social choice theory, since it allows for defining the notion of collective attitude moving from a number of possibly divergent individual attitudes. We shall see how collective attitudes lead to define a specific notion of group and group conflict. As a conclusion, we shall present our abstract analysis of group conflicts and we shall position social contradiction with respect to other types of conflicts.