Conflict resolution research | EPFL Graph Search

Conflict resolution is any reduction in the severity of a conflict. It may involve conflict management, in which the parties continue the conflict but adopt less extreme tactics; settlement, in which they reach agreement on enough issues that the conflict stops; or removal of the underlying causes of the conflict. The latter is sometimes called "resolution", in a narrower sense of the term that will not be used in this article. Settlements sometimes end a conflict for good, but when there are deeper issues – such as value clashes among people who must work together, distressed relationships, or mistreated members of one's ethnic group across a border – settlements are often temporary. Unproductive conflict; this can be done by analyzing the three stages executed during this type of communication: the early stage, the middle stage, and the later stage. An argument's potential is determined within the first 3 minutes of exchange, setting the tone for the early stage. It is in this stage where cross-complaining becomes present – countering one's complaint with another complaint – a negative environment is immediately set and hostility is likely to be mirrored. Exiting the early stage and entering the middle stage, we can see the kitchen-sinking concept come into, "Once a negative climate has been set, it is stoked by other unconstructive communication. People often engage in kitchen-sinking, in which everything except the kitchen sink is thrown into the argument" (Wood 234). Constant interruptions, underdeveloped thoughts and the continuation of cross-complaining is apparent, leaving no time, breath or desire to form resolutions. Eventually, the conflict floats into the later stage. By this stage participants are exhausted from arguing and individual prosperity is emphasized over mutual solution; counterproposals are exchanged. Similar to the unproductive conflict communication cycle, the constructive conflict communication cycle can be divided into the same 3 parts – early stage, middle stage and later stage.

The Birth of the Workshop: Techno-Morals, Peace Experts and the Care of the Self in the Middle East

Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

In the article I examine through ethnography and contextual analysis one of the flagship techniques of peace expertise in the Middle East and elsewhere, the so-called conflict resolution workshop. For the transnational and hyper-mobile clan of peacemakers and peace experts, the workshop constitutes maybe the absolute travel device: it can be transported and deployed everywhere without the need for translation into local vernaculars; it can exemplify the moral ambition for peace in the world backed with technical arrangements of space, time and learning mostly imported from other disciplinary settings; it can address sustained needs for knowledge and hopes for personal betterment by introducing a unique style of pedagogy based on both academic credentials and moral superiority. I present ethnographic evidence that shows how assemblages of peacemaking, most of them centred around the technique of the conflict resolution workshop, had at least three, often unintended, effects in Lebanon and beyond: First, a massive trend towards what one might call the workshopping of peace, namely the idea that major issues of broad concern regarding past and future violence can be effectively addressed within secluded spaces of conflict resolution workshops. Second, the widespread acceptance and consequent proliferation of a particular version of what Michel Foucault has called ‘the care of the self’ (Foucault 1986) primarily premised on a new configuration of peacemaking that understood the individual as the primary target of expert intervention in a distinct moral and technical sense. Third, the (re-)production of a professionalized field of peace experts, whose degree of legitimacy and conditions of institutional existence crucially depended on the constant need to reiterate and reify the binary between an intrinsically ignorant and potentially uncivil society (that needs to be trained) and themselves (who need to train it).

2014

The Birth of the Workshop: Techno-Morals, Peace Experts and the Care of the Self in the Middle East

Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

2014