ABSTRACT
Political conflict among parties with different programs is a requirement of democracy, and economic competition and conflict among firms is a prerequisite for a market economy. This chapter distinguishes two major sources of conflict, one of which has its roots in excessive ingroup salience, the other in the conflict of interest over the distribution of resources. Ingroup tendencies are inevitable, and cohesive ingroups on many levels are essential for the members of large societies to become integrated and receive social support. Yet ingroup salience contains the seeds of outgroup rejection and group conflict. It is when two major sources of conflict—strong ingroup salience and much inequality—occur in combination that their conflict potential is most likely to be realized in overt conflict. Criminal violence is more frequent in the South than in other parts of the United States. For the 125 largest standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs), the correlation between location in South and total rate of violent crimes is 41.
