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Four Major Social Processes

Park distinguished four major social processes: competition, conflict, ac- commodation, and assimilation. Competition he took to be "a universal phe- nomenon . . . first clearly conceived and adequately described by the biolo- gists" and "defined in the evolutionary formula 'the struggle for existence.' " "Competition is the elementary universal and fundamental form'' of social interaction. It is "interaction without contact whether the competition is among members of a plant community struggling for a share of sunlight or among human beings competing for prized goods or values, the individual unit is unaware of its competitors. "It is only when minds meet, only when the meaning that is in one mind is communicated to another mind so that these minds mutually influence one another, that social contact properly speak- ing, may be said to exist.'' When this is the case, unconscious competition be- comes conscious conflict and "competitors identify one another as rivals or as enemies." Competition is as universal and continuous in human society as it is in the natural order. It assigns persons their position in the division of labor as well as in the ecological order. Conflict, on the other hand, is inter- mittent and personal. While competition is a struggle for position in the ecological and economic order, "the status of the individual, or a group of in- dividuals, in the social order . . . is determined by rivalry, by war or by subtler forms of conflict." "Competition determines the position of the individual in the [ecological] community, conflict fixes his place in society. Location, posi- tion, ecological interdependence--these are the characteristics of the [ecologi- cal] community. Status, subordination, and superordination, control--these are the distinctive marks of a society.''

Accommodation implies a cessation of conflict, which comes about when the system of allocation of status and power, the relations of superordinates to subordinates, have been temporarily fixed and are controlled through the laws and the mores. "In accommodation the antagonism of the hostile elements is, for the time being, regulated, and conflict disappears as overt action, although it remains latent as a potential force. With a change in the situation, the ad- justment that had hitherto successfully held in control the antagonistic forces fails." Accommodation, like social control generally, is fragile and easily up- set. To Park, accommodation and social order, far from being "natural," are only temporary adjustments and may at any moment be upset by underlying latent conflicts that press to undermine the previous order of restraint.

In contrast to accommodation, assimilation "is a process of interpenetra- tion and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons and groups, and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common culture." While Park seems to have felt that the other three fundamental social processes operate in a very wide variety of social interactions, he reserves the discussion of assimila- tion more especially to the sociology of culture and to the process by which ethnic groups or races are slowly incorporated into a wider whole through assuming a common cultural heritage. When assimilation is achieved, this does not mean that individual differences are eradicated or that competition and conflict cease but only that there is enough unity of experience and com- munality of symbolic orientation so that a "community of purpose and action" can emerge.

From Coser, 1977:359-360.