ABSTRACT
Societies require a certain proportion of attraction and repulsion, harmony and disharmony, association and dissociation, integration and differentiation, co-operation and competition among their elements to obtain a definite organization. A contest implies a form of association, and the norms for this association are usually much more strict and impersonal, and are lived up to with a finer sense of honor, than are the norms of co-operative associations. Struggles and conflicts have a positive sociological significance in contrast with dissolutions and repudiations of socialization, which are both negative. The positive sociological function of tension and repulsion is most clearly manifest in social structures which consist of a hierarchy of classes. A special type of correlation between unity and opposition occurs in the different forms of competition. Competition is distinguished from an ordinary struggle by the fact that it is an indirect conflict.
