ABSTRACT
Environmental conflict research increased significantly in the past decades, mainly through analyses of single cases and case studies, but it remained an under-theorised interdisciplinary field in which conflicting views, paradigms, concepts and theories compete with each other. To approach the diversity of environmental conflicts, concepts and frameworks for connecting empirical research and theory construction are discussed, using for knowledge integration the key concept of social-ecological systems. The integration of concepts and theories of conflict and natural resource management is a methodological key question for the further development of environmental conflict research and for the social practices of conflict resolution. Three components of knowledge integration are discussed in this chapter: the construction of pluri-dimensional typologies of environmental conflicts as a step for developing interdisciplinary frameworks; the embedding of environmental conflict research in thematically specific theories and conceptual frames as an alternative to general theories of conflict and conflict resolution; and the framing of theories and concepts for environmental conflict analysis in social-ecological analyses of sustainability transformations and nature–society relations.
