The meaning of modern discussions about the phenomenon of ethnicity is somewhat different from previous attempts to understand this phenomenon as such, as a subject of scientific interest in itself. The main focus in the discussion of the problem of ethnicity in the 1990s. comes down to finding an answer to the question: is ethnicity a source of conflict, does ethnicity itself create conflicts, or is it only involved, used or even constructed for other forms of struggle and the attainment of other goals?
In this aspect there is a certain difference between the approaches, or, more correctly, between the scientific stylistics used in works on general conflictology, in which ethnic conflict is considered along with other types and types of conflicts, and in works specifically and fully devoted to ethnic conflicts. .
This is especially clearly manifested in the understanding of such a problem as a function of conflict. If in a general conflictology it is almost universally recognized that conflicts have a constructive, constructive function, with the recognition of which conflictology proper begins, in works on the analysis of ethnic conflicts, these conflicts are understood almost exclusively as evil, as dysfunction, which should be prevented, and failed to do then minimize the negative effects. A rare publication on ethnic conflictology does not begin with listing those human tragedies that brought ethnic conflicts of the 1990s. in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Chechnya. Criteria for evaluating brokering have begun to change.
If within the framework of a conflictological approach, such a way out of a conflict can be considered effective, as a result of which a new system of relations between conflicting subjects is being constructed, the analysts of mediation in ethnic conflicts are increasingly talking about such an efficiency criterion as matching the results of mediation to the goals.

Ethnic conflictology

In different works, these schools are defined differently. In our works, we proposed to highlight the following schools, more precisely, the traditions in ethnoconflictology:

1. The “realistic” tradition in ethnoconflictology, going back to the analogous tradition of general conflictology (L. Coser, K. Boulding, and others), many supporters of which argue that the basis of ethnic conflicts, like other social conflicts, is the struggle for mastering material resources for power in order to achieve economic goals and that, behind the national-ethnic form of social struggle, it is necessary to look for real material motivations. The popularity of this school in foreign ethnoconflictology came in the 1970s - the first half of the 1980s, but it still has quite a few supporters today;

2. The “evolutionist” tradition in ethnoconflictology, supporters of which consider that the causes of ethnic conflicts are rooted in the ever-changing ethnic stratification of society. This tradition includes numerous supporters of the status concepts of ethnic conflict;

3. The socio-psychological tradition in ethnoconflictology, which has a few specifications and which is based primarily on the Freudian methodology;

4. The anthropological tradition in ethnoconflictology, within the framework of which one can distinguish two main trends - cultural-anthropological and socio-biological. Proponents of the first proceed from the fact that the deep-seated sources of conflicts are rooted in the cultural characteristics of peoples, in their value systems; Supporters of the socio-biological course of many components of human behavior in ethnic conflicts are considered as normative, determined by human nature.

As is usually the case in such cases, each of these schools has introduced and continues to introduce new knowledge into the scientific search, and at the heart of each of the trends lie certain empirical generalizations that make the theoretical conclusions of the authors more reasoned. At the same time, the study of the works of representatives of various schools and trends indicates a certain reductionist methodology used by many authors, i.e., striving to reduce the various causes and factors determining ethnic conflicts to any one, is certainly realistic existing and, perhaps, very important, but still hardly the only reason.

It seems that ethnic conflictology (as well as conflictology in general) can and should develop not as a set of schools and trends, not just as an interdisciplinary (or, as it is sometimes said, "adisciplinary") branch of knowledge, but also as an integrating, uniting various worldview and theoretical and methodological approaches as a whole.

Ethnic conflictology

1. Three stages of development of ethnic conflictology
Ethno-conflictology, being one of the youngest “branch” responses of the world conflictology, plays a very prominent role in the formation and development in the domestic conflictology, modern social science and socio-humanitarian culture in general. It would not be an exaggeration to say that domestic conflictology was born primarily as ethnoconflictology: in many respects it was within the framework of the ethnoconflictological problem that sharply actualized in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s that the conceptual concepts of national conflict were developed. And on this basis in the 1990s, other “sectoral conflict studies” began to “bud off”, brought about by other important events in our country, primarily in the midst of politics, labor and market conflicts.
Different authors define differently the period when ethnic conflictology was formed as an independent branch of conflict science, as, often, the starting point for the emergence of conflict science in general is also differently defined. What is today called an ethnic conflict has been to some extent the subject of analysis since ancient times: after all, conflicts between groups of people differing in ethnic characteristics accompany all of human history and are among its most noticeable events.
Nevertheless, the formation of ethnic conflictology should be considered in the context of the emergence of both conflictology as a complex branch of social science knowledge and a conflictological approach to the analysis of social processes as a specific research paradigm. This process can be attributed only to the second half of the 20th century, and ethnic conflicts were by no means a priority object of research at the initial stage of the formation of conflictological knowledge, although the first works in which an attempt is made to analyze ethnic conflicts in foreign social science begin 1950s, i.e. at the same time, as well as work on general, as well as labor conflict studies. The priority in the development of a new scientific direction belongs to the Anglo-American science, mainly to American researchers. Nevertheless, this can hardly be considered a beginning of the ethnic conflictology: ethnic conflicts are interpreted in early works most often as secondary, derived from other meso-and macro-social conflicts, primarily economic. One of the classics of the world ethnoconflictology, the American scientist Donald Horowitz, whose voluminous book “The Conflict of Ethnic Groups” [1] has withstood several editions and has become a reference book for many ethnic conflict conflictists around the world over the last two decades, notes that neither statesmen nor social scientists were not prepared for the growing importance of ethnicity. After the Second World War, the scientist stresses, the impression has arisen that at least the industrialized countries have “outgrown” political processes based on ethnicity. “Until recently,” wrote D. Horowitz, “the area of ​​ethnic relations was a quiet backwater into society, and the first response to the growing wave of ethnic conflicts was the interpretation of the latter as epiphenomena” [2]. Especially noteworthy for the late 1950s - early 1960s. there was the notion that ethnic conflicts (and, more broadly, ethnic problems) would recede into the background as the countries of the “third world” became involved in the modernization process. As for Western society, the ethnic conflicts that occurred in these countries were generally viewed as phenomena uncharacteristic of this part of the world, rather as costs, echoes of the colonial past.
The transformation of ethnic conflict (and, in the Anglo-American works, sometimes ethno-racial conflict) into an independent subject of scientific analysis takes place in the 1960s and 1970s. The studies of M. Benton, K. Deutsch, G. Con, D. Campbell, R. LeVine, R. Segal, G. Seton-Watson, P. Shibutani, S. Enlow and other authors are published. In these works, ethnic conflict becomes, if not still an independent object of study, then, at least, it occupies one of the main places. In addition, many scholars studying inter-ethnic relations in general are affected by the problem of conflicts. But publications with a description and analysis of specific ethnic conflicts around the world were especially abundant during this period. The sixties and seventies can be considered as a stage of accumulation and primary analysis of empirical material. This indicates that the science industry is in the era of its youth. Of course, certain theoretical generalizations were also made in the works of this period, but the formation of theoretical ethnoconflictology dates back to the 1980s.
In the eighties, in Western social science, attempts were made to reach the theoretical and methodological level of problem analysis, although such searches in general are not characteristic of the Western, especially Anglo-American, social studies. Several theoretical works of the English researcher E. Smith, who had already been known in scientific circles due to earlier publications on the problems of ethno-racial relations [3], are being published. Although it cannot be said that these studies are entirely devoted to the study of ethno-racial conflicts, since they have a wider context, however, it is this broad context of problem-solving that inevitably leads the author to a theoretical and methodological analysis of the phenomenon of ethnic conflictology. The most famous, ”is acquired by the theoretical work of E. Gellner“ Nation and Nationalism ”, published in 1991 in Russian [4], and the study by P. Van den Bersch“ The Phenomenon of Ethnicity ”[5]. It was during this period that the aforementioned was published; higher work D. Horowitz "Conflict of ethnic groups." The theoretical and methodological aspects of the analysis of ethnic conflicts are touched upon in the works of many other foreign authors (J. Voucher, X. Blalock Jr., F. Gross, N. Gonzales, J. Kip, U. Connor, E. Kofman, D. McCurdy, S. McCommon, M. Levin, R. Premdas, S. Ryan, S. Samarasinghe, S. Williams, M. Chisholm, R. Sherwood, G. and E. Elmery, M. Esman, etc.). So, the 1980s. can be described as a theoretical and methodological stage of the developed world ethnoconflictology.
From the second half of the eighties, and especially in the nineties, the leading subject of the study of foreign ethnoconflictology was the problem of getting out of social conflicts, their settlement and resolution. In most works, the way out of ethnic conflict is investigated as a particular case of the outcome of social conflicts. At the same time, the problem of ending an ethnic conflict is studied much less than of other social conflicts. Such works should be primarily attributed to the works1 E. Azar, J. Alexander, F. Dukes, J. Cockley, B. O''Liari, R. McGarry, \ 'M. Rabi, L. Rangarajan, J. Richardson , M. Ross, J. Rotman, J. Rubin, K. Rupersinghe, T. Saati, K. De Silva, J. Tolanda, and others. Thus, modern foreign works on ethnic conflict studies are primarily applied in nature, and the stage of development ethnoconflictology in the 1990s can be designated as applied, or technological.
The result of several decades of empirical and theoretical search was the formation of a number of ethno-conflict schools.