Abstract
Conflict resolution appears to offer a refreshing new politics. In a world fraught with conflict, competition, and violence, the field orients itself toward cooperation and consensus. Contrary to influential approaches in politics, international studies, and the social sciences more broadly, conflict resolution denies the claim that human social relations are characterized by conflict or competition. Rather, it asserts that people can and do cooperate to address difficulties among themselves. Certainly, cooperation does not characterize all human interaction, but collaboration is more pervasive in human history and cultures than is commonly thought.1 While conflict resolution does not claim that we can inhabit a world without competition and conflict, it nevertheless works toward a future in which conflicts are managed productively rather than destructively, and through cooperation where possible.
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Notes
See Douglas P. Fry, The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions About War and Violence, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Michelle LeBaron, Bridging Cultural Conflicts: A New Approach for a Changing World, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003, p. 11.
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Jayne Seminare Docherty, Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring Their Gods to the Negotiation Table, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2001;
R. E. Young, Intercultural Communication: Pragmatics, Genealogy, Deconstruction, Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 1996, p. 148.
See J. M. Arthur, Aboriginal English: A Cultural Study, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 119–20;
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Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 5.
Nicholas Thomas, Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture, London: Thames and Hudson, 1999, p. 10.
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© 2008 Morgan Brigg
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Brigg, M. (2008). Introduction. In: The New Politics of Conflict Resolution. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583375_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583375_1
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