Abstract
Responsiveness is a compelling orientation for conflict resolution. Responding to the concerns and life circumstances of people in conflict suffuses founding approaches and guides many conflict resolution processes. It also features in the recent call by Ramsbotham and colleagues for a cosmopolitan conflict resolution in which each of us bears “responsibility for the lives and life-hopes of others being damaged through conflict.”1 Such calls to responsiveness form a powerful and commonsensical rationale for conflict resolution practice. Problems arise, though, when this influential call is connected with similarly powerful—and dominant—ideas and institutions which suggest self-sufficiency in knowing, governing, and being. Consider, briefly, John Burton’s pioneering human needs approach.2 It seems clear that humans have needs—for security, shelter and respect, for instance. But it is also the case that variation in the concrete ways in which needs are articulated and addressed or otherwise met in conflict resolution processes are probably more significant than abstract notions of need. This brings into focus culture and difference rather than the universal. From the perspective of human difference, the suggestion that conflict emerges because human needs are not met belies a more radical denial that comes with designating a person as having universal needs. Such a designation does not allow recognition of a person as some-one—as a unique person with particular needs.
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Notes
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© 2008 Morgan Brigg
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Brigg, M. (2008). Responding Anew. In: The New Politics of Conflict Resolution. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583375_6
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