10. Conclusions

The lenses of conflict transformation raise questions for participants and practitioners that emphasize the potential for constructive change inherent in conflict. These lenses can be applied to many kinds of conflicts; the potential of broader desired change is inherent in any episode of conflict, from personal to structural levels. The challenge before the practitioner is to assess whether the circumstances merit investment in designing a transformational response to a particular situation.

A key advantage within this framework lies in its capacity to consider multiple avenues of response. I have suggested that transformation builds from and integrates the contribution and strengths of conflict resolution approaches. But conflict resolution does not necessarily incorporate the transformative potential of conflict. In other words, you can use a transformational approach and conclude that the most appropriate thing to do is a quick and direct resolution of the problem, period. But conflict resolution narrowly defined does not automatically raise the questions and inquiries necessary to spark the potential for broader change.

Clearly, a transformative approach is more appropriate in some situations than others. There are many conflicts or disputes where a simple resolution approach such as problem-solving or negotiation makes the most sense. Disputes that involve the need for a quick and final solution to a problem, where the disputants have little or no relationship before, during, or after, are clearly situations in which the exploration of relational and structural patterns are of limited value. For example, a one-time business dispute over a payment between two people who hardly know each other and will never have contact again is not a setting for exploring a transformational application. At best, if it were applied, the primary focus might be on the patterns of why these people as individuals have this episode, and whether the episode repeats itself time and again with other people.

On the other hand, where there are significant past relationships and history, where there are likely to be significant future relationships, where the episodes arise in an organizational, community, or broader social context—here the narrowness of resolution approaches may solve problems but miss the greater potential for constructive change. This is especially important in contexts where there are repeated and deep-rooted cycles of conflict episodes that have created destructive and violent patterns. From the perspective of conflict transformation, these are always situations where the potential for change can be raised.

The narrowness of resolution approaches may solve problems

but miss the greater potential for constructive change.

In any situation, however, the decision of whether to pursue all the potential avenues of change must be assessed and weighed. Our family does not engage in a deep transformational exploration every time we have an argument about dirty dishes. But over periods of time there are episodes that do create the circumstances for deeper reflection about our patterns, the structure of our relationship, and our identity as individuals and as a family. The dirty dishes always hold the potential. We don't pursue it on every occasion. But if and when we want to pursue it, the potential can only be opened if we have a framework that encourages the inquiry, provides lenses to see what is happening, and offers tools to help us think about constructive change. That framework is what conflict transformation offers.

Perhaps most importantly, conflict transformation places before us the big questions: Where are we headed? Why do we do this work? What are we hoping to contribute and build? I am convinced that the vast majority of practitioners who have chosen to work in this field are drawn to it because they want to promote social change. I am convinced that most of the communities who have committed to finding constructive ways to address conflict are likewise interested, not just in maintaining the status quo, but in changing lives for the better. They want to change the way human societies respond to conflict. The change these practitioners and communities desire is to move from violent and destructive patterns toward capacities which are creative, responsive, constructive, and nonviolent.

I am one of those practitioners, and perhaps my biases cause me to see what I wish to see. I see that our human community, local and global, is on the edge of historic change where patterns of violence and coercion will be replaced with respect, creative problem-solving, individual and social capacities for dialogue, and nonviolent systems for assuring human security and social change. This will require a complex web of change processes guided by a transformational understanding of life and relationship. This is my challenge and hope for conflict transformation.

May the warmth of complexity shine on your face.

May the winds of good change blow gently at your back.

May your feet find the roads of authenticity.

May the web of change begin!

Endnotes

[1] The New Sciences are the developments in physics, biology, and environmental studies that in the latter half of the 20th century produced quantum and chaos theories, among others.

See Margaret Wheatley’s discussion of this in reference to learning organizations in Leadership and the New Sciences (San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler, Publishers, 1994) p. 16.

[2] Ibidem.

[3] See Hocker and Wilmot’s discussion of content and relationship in Interpersonal Conflict or Edwin Friedman’s discussion of anxiety, emotional process, and symptomatic content in Generation to Generation.

Selected Readings

Bush, Baruch and J. Folger. The Promise of Mediation: Responding to Conflict Through Empowerment and Recognition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994).

Curle, Adam. Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Violence (Oxford: Jon Carpenter Publishing, 1995).

Friedman, Edwin. Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guilford Press, 1985).

Hocker, Joyce and William Wilmot. Interpersonal Conflict (Dubuque: Brown and Benchmark, 2000).

Kriesberg, Louis. Constructive Conflicts: From Escalation to Resolution. Second Edition (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003).

Mayer, Bernard. The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution: A Practitioner's Guide (San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).

Rothman, Jay. Resolving Identity-Based Conflicts in Nations, Organizations and Communities (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997).

Ury, Bill. The Third Side: Why we fight and how we can stop (New York: Penguin, 2000).

Wehr, Paul and Heidi and Guy Burgess. Justice without Violence (Boulder: Lynne Riener, 1994).

Wheatley, Margaret. Leadership and the New Science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1994).

Related Books by John Paul Lederach

Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse University Press, 1995).

Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1997).

The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999).

From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuidling, edited with Cynthia Sampson (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Into the Eye of the Storm: A Handbook of International Peacebuilding (Jossey-Bass,

2002).

About the Author

John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, and a Distinguished Scholar with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. He has worked in the fields of conflict transformation and peace-building for more than 20 years. He works extensively in support of international conciliation efforts in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Central Asia, as well as in North America. He has authored and co-edited 15 books and manuals in English and Spanish.

Dr. Lederach received his Ph.D. in Sociology (with a concentration in the Social Conflict Program) from the University of Colorado.

Lederach and his wife, Wendy, have two children, Angie and Josh.