ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the roots of conflict theory in the sociology of Max Weber and Georg Simmel and the resulting "conservative" view of conflict theory found in Ralf Dahrendorf. It focuses on two illustrative contributors: Austin Turk, whose ideas closely follow those of Ralf Dahrendorf, and Richard Quinney, whose theory was more derived from George Vold's approach. The chapter explores the ideas of radical theorists, beginning with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and the first application of radical theory to crime by Dutch criminologist Willem Bonger. It examines that the crimes and laws resulting from the conflict between different racial and ethnic groups in a society, and the political and legal struggle surrounding how this is played out, are not easily explained by the theories. Although the chapter presents three different approaches like conflict and instrumental and structural Marxist, the disagreements between them may be less problematic for critical theory than they at first seem.
