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The conflict theory is a way for people to explain scientifically why conflict arises in a society. Conflict theorists look at how conflict in society arises, is resolved and how every conflict is different. Conflict theorists explain that the reasons conflict arises in societies are because there is not enough resources and power and there is an unequal balance for these things, resulting in people fighting over them. Most conflict theorists don't have the same ideas o f what the resources people fight over include, but most look at it the same way Max Weber did. Weber viewed class, status, and power as ways people are defined in any given society. These rankings of class, status, and power result in conflict throughout society. Conflict theorists also believe people in a society abide by the rules and expectation because of power. Where the power comes from is where the standards come from. Social conflict is the struggle between segments of society over valued resources. From the perspective of social conflict theory, in the West, by the nineteenth century, a small population had become capitalists. Capitalists are people who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits. In other words, they own virtually all large-scale means of production. However, capitalism turned most other people into industrial workers, whom Marx called proletarians. Proletarians are people who, because of the structure of capitalist economy, must sell their labor for wages. Conflict theories draw attention to power differentials, such as class, gender and race conflict, and contrast historically dominant ideologies. It is therefore a macro level analysis of society that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and social change. Karl Marx is the father of the social conflict theory, which is a component of the four major paradigms of sociology.[citation needed] Other important sociologists associated with this theory include Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois. This sociological approach doesn't look at how social structures help society to operate, but instead looks at how "social patterns" can cause some people in society to be dominant, and others to be oppressed. However, some criticisms to this theory are that it disregards how shared values and the way in which people rely on each other help to unify the society.

The general theory of crime: States that the main factor behind criminal behaviour is the individual's lack of self-control. Theorists who don't distinguish differences between criminals and noncriminals are called classical theorists or control theorists. Classical theorists see criminals as people who view criminals as people who do deviant things for fun and don't care about the consequences, these criminals are believe criminals participate in criminal acts for fun. Positivists believe that it is the characteristics of the person, they view the criminals actions as a result of the person themselves instead of the nature of the person.