Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: Brazilian economist Olympio Barbanti explains how people working on development issues need to do a local conflict-assessment to determine what conflicts are being caused by the development effort and what impacts those and other conflicts are likely to have on the success of those efforts.Olympio Barbanti talks about the shortcomings of using U.S. based conflict resolution models in the developing world. He says the lack of regulatory structure is a severe obstacle to U.S. models of conflict resolution in developing countries.

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

The Developing World and US Conflict Resolution Models
Olympio Barbanti
Faculty in the Department of International Relations at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

For example, in developing countries, social theory is very influenced by some kind of Marxist approach, like in Latin America... together with a Marxist approach pose some limitations to the application to the conflict resolution approach to these same countries. People do not believe that conflicts can be resolved or they are not capable of sorting out their differences in a rational or formal way. In fact, they believe that you need to increase conflicts as a way of promoting a change in society.

People try nonviolence for a week and when it doesn't 'work' they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries. -- Theodore Roszak

Featured Links
Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict

International Crisis Group
"The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 100 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict." (Quote from Website)

Other Resources from
Beyond Intractability

Getting to Peace
William Ury explains how to transform confllict at home, work, and in the world.

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Shirin Ebadi
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 "for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children."

Beyond Intractability Version IV
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Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Information Consortium (Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact