Challenges in Modelling Social Conflicts: Grappling with Polysemy

This discussion paper originates from the preceding annual workshop of the Special Interest Group on Social Conflict and Social Simulation (SIG-SCSS) of the ESSA. The workshop especially focused on the need to identify and examine challenges to modeling social conflicts. It turned out that the polysemous nature of social conflicts makes it very difficult to get a grasp of their complexity. In order to deal with this complexity, various dimensions have to be taken into consideration, beginning with the question of how to identify a conflict in the first place. Other dimensions include the relation of conflict and rationality and how to include non-rational factors into conflict models. This involves a conception of organized action. Finally, guiding principles for model development are being discussed. We would like to invite readers of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation to 'sow the seeds' of this debate.