Mediating Conflict from the Inside Out

Abstract

Re-Centering Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice. By Mary Adams Trujillo, S. Y. Bowland, Linda James Myers, Phillip M. Richards, Beth Roy. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. 344 pp., $45.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-815-63162-0). Ending Wars (War and Conflict in the Modern World). By Feargal Cochrane. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. 176 pp., $49.95 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-745-64033-4). International Conflict Management: An Introduction. By Michael J. Butler New York: Routledge, 2008. 304 pp., $170.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-77230-3). The conflict management scholarship is peppered with terms that sound mystifyingly similar, including peacebuilding, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, conflict resolution, conflict prevention, conflict mediation, and conflict negotiation, to name but a few. As if this were not confusing enough, different terms are often used to refer to the same thing, and the same terms are used to refer to different things. While some—such as peacekeeping—have a clearly delimited and widely understood meaning, others—including peacebuilding and peacemaking—are broad enough to encompass nearly anything related to external conflict management. Readers may be forgiven for wondering whether there are any agreed-upon definitions in the discipline at all. Although the three books reviewed here are unlikely to resolve this semantic ambiguity, they have the virtue of contextualizing these concepts in concrete practice, cutting through the abstraction to offer the readers a real-world view of the successes and pitfalls of third-party mediation over the past sixty-odd years. Notwithstanding their different approaches, all three texts are concerned with the broad question of how to turn conflict environments into “ripe moments” for normalized ethnic relations. The first book is focused on the negotiation setting itself. Re-Centering Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice is a 344-page edited volume consisting of twenty-two contributions from conflict resolution practitioners, scholars, and activists. The authors were encouraged to write from a personal perspective based on their own experiences in the field. The central premise is that mainstream mediation is grounded in European or “white” cultural norms of adjudicating disputes, which further marginalizes or disadvantages disputants from non-Anglo cultures. Some of the texts are stunningly personal and moving, such as the first-person account of an African-American whose daughter was raped and subsequently committed suicide. Others, such the essay on structural oppression of African-Americans in education, employment, family, and relationships, resemble more traditional …