Energy dynamics in social conflict: An interdisciplinary approach to conflict analysis

This thesis seeks to identify and characterize the role of energy and its contributions to the larger picture in social conflict. To do so, the study explores energy behavior in biological science and builds an analogy between its consumption in transition between two biochemical states and a pre- and post-conflict society. The hypothesis suggests there are indicative patterns to social energy and structural transformations. The thesis investigates the hypothesis by building a tool to measure energy in a social setting, utilizing the tool in a Northern Ireland case study and examining the output for trends seen in biological observations of similar data. The results exhibit revealing patterns that suggests two transformations occurred in the time frame. Both were confirmed by historical review. The thesis informs peace and conflict resolution theory by providing a method of analysis that can incorporate multiple streams within the paradigm and contextualize their influence in a dynamic display. Commonalities between energy behavior in molecules and people may be surprising but offer a new way of understanding social conflict, particularly the intractable kind.