What Is Conflict Resolution?

What is Conflict Resolution?

The field of mediation and conflict resolution is full of authors and practitioners trying to define what it is they do. Is it alternative dispute resolution? Is it conflict provention? Is it conflict management? Is it conflict engagement? I think it would be better to ask the people in conflict what they feel needs to happen to make their conflict a positive experience. It may be that the best description of the process of mediation is conflict recognition. Getting the parties to understand the extent of the conflict in terms of how it has made them feel, behave, think and how such expressions have affected the other party or parties in the conflict. I think Mayer's Dimensions of Conflict is acutely perceptive as he identifies, alongside his Wheel of Conflict, the very nature of conflict and to all the issues it extends to and touches. Without recognition by us, the practitioners, and the parties involved of all these issues, we will never be able to resolve the conflict. Identification of the conflict in its truest sense will enable the parties to recognise how to resolve it.

Determining how conflict arises is also crucial to understand proposed interventions. At the centre of Mayer's Wheel of Conflict are needs. His model identifies values, communication, history, structure and emotion as forces of conflict that interact with each other and affect how people experience and develop human needs. These forces must be analysed alongside the three dimension perspective: the cognitive (perception), emotional (feeling) and behaviour (action). However Human theorists such as Burton, Dukes and Kelman needs for identity, security and recognition underlie most deep rooted and protracted conflicts. They argue that human needs are universal and meeting them must be the goal of the conflict resolution process. In fact Burton in his book Conflict: Resolution and Provention((1990) argues that 'provention' of conflict should be the ultimate aim. He argues that human needs must be satisfied and catered for by institutions, if societies are to be stable and free of conflict. He says that history shows us that "alienation, gangs, terrorism, and dissident behaviours generally demonstrate that conflict of the type which is of concern to us is the consequence of frustration of certain ontological human needs." He quotes as examples, "history of slavery, feudalism, imperialism, racism, sexism" all result from the frustration of human development: ""The reality is that the human dimension has to be taken into account if pressing social problems are to be solved.. this must be the goal of resolving and proventing conflict." (pg 21). Provention is thus concerned with social problems generally and altering long term policies of institutions which allow for "altering the environments that lead to conflict and creating environments that mitigate conflict." (p18).

However, Burton does state that for both processes, resolution and provention, they must be deep analysis so that needs are revealed

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