The Division of Labor, Technology, and the Organization of Production in Twelve Countries

may vary in different social-organizational settings. However, if one can establish that a participative political structure promotes conduciveness to conflict in one setting, it becomes a more plausible hypothesis for other settings. For example, this may explain why apparent improvements or efforts to remove strains may be accompanied by increases in conflict. Such changes may have their initial or most radical effects on conduciveness or on sources of structural integration or control and only secondary effects on the removal of sources of discontent. The study of such limited phenomena as conflicts in communities may teach us something more general about social movements and social change. Because of the negative connotations of a term like rancorous conflict, some final observations about the towns studied here are worth making. Many of the conventional communities are rather dull and stagnant, while some of the ones are among the most vital. Some of the conventional towns not only have an absence of conflict but a general absence of change; the towns have the strains that accompany change but some of them also have the advantages of stimulation and growth. The absence of conflict is no necessary sign of an ideal community.