The purpose of this book is clearly stated in its preface: to present "an up-to-date survey and evaluation of research by sociologists and social psychologists into the nature, conditions and implications of human conflict, and particularly conflict between nations". According to the authors, "the sociologist or the social psychologist has no special authority in prescribing the ends of social policy". He can however "contribute a great deal to rational policy-making by describing and analysing as impartially and objectively as possible, the situations with which policy-makers have to deal, and by making known the relevants facts".

These are words that so exactly state the position of the social scientist in regard to the problems which he has to analyse and describe, that it is made almost impossible for statesmen, political leaders and administrators to disregard the "relevant facts" revealed by responsible scientific research. For if responsible social scientific become too "scientific" in their research and avoid any close contact with policy-makers, the inevitable will happen: charlatans will take their place and will masquerade as "scientific advisers" to politicians. The success, in our days, of scientific research connected with physics and chemistry has given to science a prestige that includes even social science. Hence the opportunity open to charlatans to take the place of genuine social scientists if genuine social scientists to not accept the responsibility of dealing with problems such as those connected with "national character", "national stereotypes", "federalism" or "regionalism", "industrial and agrarian conflicts", "class", "ideological" and "cultural antagonisms".

This book is a really valuable book, because it makes a scientific contribution to the sociological and psychological study of problems that are being faced by policy-makers, sometimes under the pressure of charlatans, never perhaps so numerous and so bold in fields where political action and social science meet as at present. But whereas policy-makers in Brazil, as in other countries of Latin America, were, in the last century, greatly affected by the influence of French sociological Positivism as a scientific guide to political action, a substitute for Positivism is now being sought. Suspicious of false social scientists, policy-makers are looking for genuine ones. Marxism has impressed some of then; but the most intelligent of them have not failed to see that political Marxism, though apparently "scientific", is too narrow to be really reliable as a guide to political action.

I remember that President Vargas, of Brazil, once asked me if I really thought that a new "social science" was coming from Unesco, a new "social science" that could be useful to political leaders. Vargas had been deeply influenced, as a young man, by Comtean Positivism; and "social science" meant something to him. I told him of my experience in 1948, when eight social scientists met in Paris to discuss problems of international tensions, and how these eight social scientists had succeeded in drawing up "a common statement setting forth the general principles on which concerted action by social scientists for the promotion of peace should be based" - an achievement whose importance is pointed out by the authors of The Nature of Conflict. Not long after this conversation, Vargas one day asked me, to my great surprise, and to the still greater surprise of politicians, to become what he considered to be more than a member of his cabinet: the general director of a national department whose task it was to draw up and begin to put into effect a policy for immigration and colonization which he thought basic to the agrarian reform that he intended to carry out in Brazil. For personal reasons, I was not able to accept this invitation. The interesting aspect of the matter, however, is that a shrewd politician like Vargas considered this tremendous task - the drafting of a new policy of immigration and colonization for Brazil, essential, according to him, to the agrarian reform that he intended to effect - a task for a social scientist. This seems to see a concrete example of the fact, pointed out by the authors of The Nature of Conflict, that "Unesco's investigations regarding social tensions have done much to draw the attention of the public authorities to the value of accurate and unbiased information about the structure of societies and the factors making for their integration or desintegration". As the authors of The Nature of Conflict, continuing their remarks on this particular point, observe: "the fact that statesman are slow in adopting a scientific of view simply emphasizes the desirability of their 'getting together" and co-operating more closely".

Publications like the Unesco's - of which the volume The Nature of Conflict, including essays by Professors Jessie Bernard, T.H. Pear, Raymond Aron, Robert C. Angell and a detailed and well-organized bibliography, is typical - and like those of the International Institute of Different Civilizations and of the London Institute of International Affairs, are publications that are reaching statesmen are political leaders, if not always directly then indirectly, through their éminences grises. This is bound to happen to The Nature of Conflict. It is a book that from beginning to end has something in it that may enlighten policy-makers. Its first chapter - written by Professor Bernard - emphasizing the sociological approach to conflict, is supplemented by the second one, written by Professor Pear: an analysis of the psychological problem: and by the third one, written by Professor Aron - "a more focused study of war, within a political and historical setting". The fourth chapter, written by Professor Angell, indicates as a task of the social scientist the drawing upon existing theory "to project plausible hypotheses and then gather the facts that will test their validity". A specific example of this would be the hypothesis of a more inclusive social system for human coexistence, under the form of "new regularities of relationship which come to be added to the growing organism of social science".

It is true that one of the most eminent contributors to The Nature of Conflict, Professor Raymond Aron, writing of the studies that have been undertaken by Unesco on "international tensions", observes that the works published have had little bearing on practical contemporary analysis of the international tensions that are liable to cause wars, and that instead, as the yeas have passed, the field covered by the heading "tensions" has widened, becoming ever more extensive and less clearly defined... But he probably would not refuse his approval to Professor Angell's final words in his essay on "Discovering Paths to Peace": "One of the great hopes of the world is to discover through social science how to build a more inclusive social system within which States can peacefully cooperate."

No one with a scientific background for his social views of Man will deny the difficulties that separate the modern world from this type of "social system": more "inclusive" than the present narrowly nationalistic one. But it would be perhaps unscientific to exclude it as a possibility, within the new conditions of space and the new conditions of time that men are beginning to accept as normal, as a result of a new technological web of interrelations. For among these technological advances, some of those which appear favourable to a more "inclusive system" of human coexistence, in despite of differences, seem stronger than the one that are unfavourable.

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. The nature of conflict: studies on the Sociological aspects of International Tensions. Paris: UNESCO, 1957.