Intercultural Conflict Mediation

Abstract

Conflict mediation refers to the dialogue-based process by which a third person supports two or more parties, constructively managing their conflict. In North America and Europe, the term “conflict mediation” is usually associated with procedural principles that originate from the US-based “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) movement. Originally, conflict mediation in the United States had been introduced as an alternative to court-based conflict resolution. Mediation was meant to produce results that were more sustainable and more satisfying for all concerned parties. From the 1980s onward, conflict mediation has increasingly been considered to be particularly suitable for the management of conflicts in intercultural settings; its inherent high procedural flexibility may help in adapting the concept to other cultural contexts, as well as taking cultural aspects of the parties concerned into consideration. The dialogue orientation of the tool was expected to give equal voices to all participants, balancing hidden power inequalities resulting from different cultural affiliations. This general and basic assumption has laid a very fruitful groundwork for the emergence of a highly diverse landscape of approaches to the idea of intercultural conflict mediation since the late 20th century. Researchers on intercultural communication (see also the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Communication article “Intercultural Communication”) and intercultural competence took mediation as a long-expected hands-on tool to finally manage problems resulting from interculturality. This transfer from an alternative to courts to a tool promoting intercultural understanding, however, will leave some gaps open for research, since the tool does not match perfectly: research on intercultural communication and intercultural competence has so far seen its main challenges in rather subtle irritations and everyday interactions instead of focusing on escalated disputes. Parallel to this, although numerous different notions of culture have existed in research for ages, academia concerning interculturality has started to include a wider variety of paradigms since the late 20th century, resulting in widely different notions of culture and its effects. Depending on what paradigm authors adhere to, they will produce widely different understandings on what intercultural conflict mediation is supposed to be. This article will illuminate the range of these understandings. It will also focus on concepts of mediation, taking single individuals into consideration and leaving aside the mediation of large ethnic groups as a different scenario to be located in international politics.