A misConception of Conflict?

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT

This reflection asks who established the definitions of conflict, war and peace that the field uses, and on what authority. The author argues that the understanding of such terms is formed by the life experience, education, and social and cultural background of each person, and that concepts developed in one setting cannot be assumed to carry the same meaning where escalated conflict has continued for decades and whole generations have grown up within it. He accordingly declines to offer a definition of conflict and offers an association instead, holding that conflict can be described, observed and compared but not defined. Two propositions follow. First, that conflict has a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension, so that what is visible at the surface rests on hidden dynamics within a person or an authority. Second, that conflict and balance produce one another in a continuing cycle, so that periods of settled interaction supply the conditions for future conflict and the handling of conflict determines when balance returns. From this the author concludes that a conflict does not end but becomes visible and invisible, and that a practitioner may accompany it without ever controlling it.

KEYWORDS

Conflict, definition, terminology, worldview, cultural diversity, critical reflection, vertical and horizontal dynamics, escalation, cycle of action and reaction, accompaniment, personal concept, mediation training

INTRODUCTION

Dear colleagues, it is my utmost wish and interest to share my thoughts regarding the origin, the handling, and the finalization of conflict, generally spoken: its nature. As far as I see, lots of concepts are communicated in literature and training throughout the globe. Many of them confuse me and make me wonder if we are seriously talking about terms that are commonly accepted or underlie widely confirmed definitions. Sure, it might be a major project to create common definitions that match with the understanding of people from all corners of the world, if possible at all. But it still might be worth placing a focus on this context and discovering the immense quantity of interpretations that offers the term Conflict itself, mainly based on our very personal understanding.

MAIN CORPUS

Where our understanding comes from

I believe that the understanding of a term such as Conflict, War, or Peace is based on the formed personality of each individual. The personality itself is formed by the sum of life experiences, the level of education, the social and cultural background, and more. All these fragments and many more form the worldview of the human being and influence the mindset that is kept within and the mindset that is communicated and shared with the public. The worldview may be a perfect starting point in order to analyze and discover the individual diverse background and the different concepts that people may have regarding such topics in question and life itself. Such concepts spread from the core of the personality into all hemispheres of personal involvement.

Who wrote the definitions we use?

Having the diversity of our professional community members in mind and believing in the good work of our activists, I still wonder: who created such definitions that are widely used? Where did authors and trainers have the initial information from? Where did they get the confidence from in order to promote such concepts? What was and is the background of the individual who formalized them? Are we commonly using terms and concepts transferred by others without sufficient skeptical reflection?

These questions may force us to analyze if terms like Peace, Conflict, and War mean the same to all of us. Maybe this is the case in homogeneous cultures, but what if we skip from a Western World to other homogeneous cultural or territorial groups and compare them? What about conceptual differences found in Middle Eastern or African crisis areas? I am thinking of zones where escalated conflict takes place for periods of several decades and where even complete generations are raised within an environment of terror. Are we all meeting each other on the same level of understanding and emotional involvement when we use such terms? What is the real impact of cultural and social diversity? For me, being in touch with students all over the globe, this is very relevant.

Finding a personal concept

In order to find my personal and proper path towards a deeper understanding of the above-mentioned terms, now focusing on Conflict only, I had to create a certain type of distance that enabled me to listen to some sort of inner voice, or that simply helped me to discover my personal conception. A concept that I feel comfortable with demonstrates a perfect, sustainable inner logic that grants transparency and discloses an unchallengeable value.

My personal reflection made me believe that first of all training, articles, and presentations should outline that a temporary and final definition of Conflict and similar terms stays with the individual itself. Terms in certain usage, in training, presentations, and elsewhere, may grant sufficient space to work with the corresponding personal concept of the terminology in question and may enable the audience to link it up with their individual background. As a result, the channel of communication, whether training, book, or presentation, itself has to grant sufficient flexibility in order to acknowledge the competencies and the diversity of the audience. A training that does not share any definition of mediation, but encourages the student to discover the core understanding of mediation individually, may be an example of such a procedure.

What I associate with conflict

Now that we have reflected on cultural and social backgrounds, it might be useful to state and share with you as much personal information as possible in order to enable you to understand my values as much as possible and to lead you as near as possible to my personal point of view. Let us see how far we get without going into details. Due to the number of variables that create and influence the personal understanding of the term Conflict, I will not offer you a definition or anything similar, but more likely share information on what I associate with Conflict. Such an association states that I believe that it is impossible to define Conflict, but more likely to describe it, observe it, and compare it.

This complexity of Conflict is based on its fundamental unique character. In order to analyze Conflict, we need to understand that it is not only composed of visual components that are easy to identify and found within the direct environment, at a surface or horizontal level. Further, we might obtain additional information on a vertical bias, that may lead us to hidden and veiled multi-level dynamics of a human being or state authority. As far as I understand, the phenomenon that we call Conflict describes the interaction between human beings or authorities, is based on multi-level dynamics, and states a wide range of characteristics. These characteristics are the variables that we were talking about. Here, the individual decides from which moment on and why a specific interaction may be called Conflict. In some cases, it might be a harsh way of dialogue, or an aggressive way of interacting.

Balance and conflict give birth to one another

When we think of the interaction between what may be called Conflict Parties from one moment on, we may note that interaction and communication build the basis for a future Conflict. Without any type of relationship and interdependence, it might be difficult to enter Conflict. So, balanced epochs, when smooth interaction takes place, build the basis for future Conflict. Circumstances, characteristics, and variables may change in a tiny or huge mood, and stressed interaction or Conflict is born. Summing this phenomenon up: balanced times give birth to Conflict, and Conflict gives birth to balanced times.

This linkage is very fascinating to me. We can even enlarge the impact of this enmeshment. The handling of epochs of unbalanced interaction or escalation, another term to be discussed and reviewed, has a direct impact on the time when a balanced status may be reobtained. So, the reobtained balance gives birth to future unbalanced times, as disclosed in the upper paragraph. Hereby, a fascinating circle of action and reaction shows up. All our actions have a direct impact on our future and future happenings in general. We may not speak about a settlement or finalization of such an unbalanced circumstance at all. The linkage between the current impact on future happenings may lead us to the conception that Conflict does not end at all. More likely it forms part of a chain of social actions and reactions, containing the ability to become visible and invisible. Thereby, we may say that we can accompany a Conflict situation but we may never dominate nor control it, as too many variables have an impact on its current and future manifestation.

SUMMARY

The reflection performs the operation it recommends. Having argued that definitions carry the biography of whoever wrote them, the author declines to supply one and offers instead an account of what he associates with the term, which is a considerably more demanding position than it first appears, since it obliges him to describe rather than to stipulate. Two propositions emerge from that description and both have consequences for practice. The vertical dimension holds that what is visible between parties rests on dynamics within them that are not visible at all, which limits how much any observer can claim to have understood. The cycle holds that conflict and balance produce one another, that the handling of one determines the timing of the next, and that consequently there is no point at which a conflict is concluded. Together they yield the article’s most consequential claim: that a practitioner accompanies a conflict and never controls it, which is at once a statement of limits and a description of what the work actually consists of.

CONCLUSION

As I previously stated in my reflection on the terminology of Peace, I think our own diversity offers an immense pool of individual concepts, definitions, and teachings. This wonderful fact should never be ignored at all, and it may encourage us to exchange and to discover in depth the other person’s point. Each of us has a story to tell and a moral philosophy to communicate. If we ignore the individual, we lose the corresponding and unique point of view.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The question with which the article opens, who wrote the definitions we use, has an answer and it supports the author’s suspicion rather than dispelling it.

The vocabulary of this field was substantially settled between the 1950s and the 1970s by a small number of scholars working in a small number of institutions in North America and northern Europe, and the concepts they produced carry the concerns of that setting: the analysis of interstate deterrence, the labour dispute, the divorce, the commercial negotiation. That does not make the concepts wrong, and it does mean that a practitioner in a setting the originators never had in view is working with instruments calibrated elsewhere. The comparative literature that followed has documented the consequences, including the finding that the separation of the person from the problem, which functions as a foundational principle in one tradition, is incoherent in settings where a dispute is between families rather than individuals and where the person is precisely what is at issue.

The scepticism the author recommends therefore has a constructive form worth stating. A concept should be examined for the setting it was built for, tested against the setting in which it is to be used, and kept, adapted or discarded on that basis. This is a discipline rather than a rejection of theory, and it distinguishes the position advanced here from the claim that models are unnecessary.

Two observations on the substantive propositions. The vertical dimension corresponds closely to what the field describes as the layers of a conflict, in which stated positions rest on interests and interests rest on needs, and the practical instruments that follow are already developed: the questions that move a conversation downward, the separate session in which what cannot be said before the other party can be said, and the mapping of what each party requires as distinct from what each demands. Naming that correspondence gives the author’s insight a set of tools. And the cycle he describes has a name in the literature, in the finding that a substantial majority of conflicts recur within a decade of a settlement, and that the strongest predictor of recurrence is whether the arrangement addressed what produced the first round or merely ended it. That is the empirical version of the claim that conflict does not end, and it converts a philosophical observation into a design requirement.

Finally, the formulation that a practitioner accompanies rather than controls deserves emphasis as the most useful thing in the piece. It states the limit of the role accurately, it protects against the characteristic error of the confident mediator, and it corresponds to what the parties actually experience. It also carries a caution that the author does not draw. Accompaniment can become a reason to attempt nothing, and a practitioner who holds that no conflict can be controlled may cease to press where pressing is what the situation requires. The distinction that holds both is between the outcome, which is the parties’ and cannot be controlled, and the process, which is the mediator’s and must be.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

FURTHER READING

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167 to 191.

Burton, J. W. (1990). Conflict: Resolution and Prevention. Macmillan, London.

Avruch, K. (1998). Culture and Conflict Resolution. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington D.C.

Lederach, J. P. (1995). Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (3rd edition). Penguin Books, New York.

Wallensteen, P. (2015). Understanding Conflict Resolution (4th edition). Sage, London.

Collier, P., Hoeffler, A., & Söderbom, M. (2008). Post-Conflict Risks. Journal of Peace Research, 45(4), 461 to 478.

Ramsbotham, O., Woodhouse, T., & Miall, H. (2016). Contemporary Conflict Resolution (4th edition). Polity Press, Cambridge.