Conflict Fundamentals Seminar/Blog
As conflicts have been heating up and becoming both more destructive and intratable, many of my friends who are not in the conflict resolution field have been asking me "what can I do?" or "What can be done to defuse the deeping level of distrust, hostility, and even hate that we see growing daily in the United States and elsewhere around the world?" We created this seminar -- along with the "What Everyone Can Do" Blog -- to try to help answer that question. This seminar goes into more detail than the Blog, presenting the core knowledge from the conflict resolution and peacebuilding fields, that is, to a large extent, considered a "starting point" for our more advanced Conflict Frontiers Seminar. It is also useful on its own to better understand and defuse many day-to-day as well as complex intractable conflicts.
After introductory material, this seminar examines core concepts in the field, the different parties that often get involved, and the things that tend to make conflicts either resolvable or intractable.
We then go on to make a distinction between the "core factors" that typically underly difficult and intractable conflicts and what we call "overlay factors" -- things that are not central drivers, yet tend to develop and make situations worse.
Typical core factors in intractable conflicts are high-stakes distributional issues, moreal issues, identity issues, and status and power issues. Overlay factors include the way conflicts are seen (i.e., how they are framed), other psychological factors that distort the way we view conflicts and how we decide to deal with them, fact-finding problems, procedural problems, and escalation.
The seminar then goes into a long list of ways these core and overlay problems can be addressed in order to resolve conflicts, or when that is not possible, to transform them so they are more constructive and less destructive.
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Process Frames
Your process frame is a blinder that lets you see a solution...or forces it away.
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Humiliation
Evelin Lindner calls humiliation the "atom bomb of emotions" because it does such profound damage to relationships.
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Oppression and Conflict: Introduction
This intro to a 6-essay series focuses on the causes and impacts of oppression and how it can be overcome.
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Power
If power were one-dimensional, we could agree who has more and who has less. But we are often surprised at how power struggles come out.
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Social Status
Social status is intrinsically linked with ideas of power, humiliation, dignity and hierarchy--all of which drive conflict.
See an organized syllabus of the entire seminar with a list and short descriptions of all posts.
There are four ways to participate in the Fundamentals Seminar:
- Visiting: You can simply drop into the seminar, reading and watching as your interest and time allows.
- Following: You can sign up to follow the core seminars or all the seminars and blogs on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or through the MBI Newsletter.
- Join the Discussions: If you get an MBI user name and password you can join the Conflict Frontiers Discussions
- Contribute: We hope users will contribute information about their activities and/or donate money to help move this project forward. We cannot complete this project without financial help!
