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This volume is dedicated to the field of peace mediation, which has rapidly developed and become profes-sionalised in recent decades, both internationally and in Germany. In bringing together the history and status quo of the field plus the prospects for its future development, the volume has three special features: It combines a critical theoretical and a practical assessment of recent and ongoing political developments. It offers a selection of the ‘Fact Sheets on Peace Mediation', which have been elaborated by the Federal Foreign Office in cooperation with the Initiative Mediation Support Deutschland (IMSD). And it provides concrete ideas on how Germany's peace mediation profile and methodology can be further heightened and translated into effective and responsible political practice. With contributions by Marike Blunck, Sebastian Dworack, Anne Holper, Lars Kirchhoff, David Lanz, Christoph Lüttmann, Simon J.A. Mason, Dirk Splinter, Luxshi Vimalarajah, Julia von Dobeneck, Brigitta von Messling, Carsten Wieland, Almut Wieland-Karimi and Felix Würkert.

Traditional methods for addressing conflict and healing have been largely replaced in elite settings by modern approaches. Rather than old and new complementing one another, bias is present. New is widely perceived as better among elite institutions, even when research indicates otherwise. Within the realm of international development, the need for cost-effective, sustainable, and successful methods of healing must be explored. Natural Healing as Conflict Resolution is an essential reference book that examines and addresses systemic bias towards natural healing methods and explores the mutually beneficial relationships of natural healing through human and non-human life forms in the context of resolving conflict. It illustrates not only the more obvious biological/physiological benefits of complementary approaches, but also the spiritual, emotional, and psychological benefits of integrating natural means of healing to resolve conflict. As such, the book acknowledges the effectiveness and articulates the benefits of traditional indigenous healing methods and how they can be used in complementary, mutually beneficial ways with modern practices. Highlighting emerging topics that include ecopsychology, parapsychology, and holistic medicine, this book is ideal for conflict resolution practitioners, psychologists, trauma counselors, veterans associations, pet therapists, nature organizations, academics, scientists, eco-architects and designers, international development policymakers, peacebuilding institutions, natural and traditional healers, alternative/integrative medicine practitioners, spiritualists, researchers, and students.

This book explores relations between communication and conflict. How one thinks about communication is demonstrated as shaping how one approaches conflict, and vice versa. Individuals engaged in conflict transformation apply the tools and strategies of their field while communicating to widely divergent audiences. Professional communicators not only create an infinite range of documents to help ensure that work is accomplished effectively, efficiently, and safely, but also address conflicts in the workplace and in the public sphere. Thoughtfully exploring connections between communication studies and conflict studies, this collection engages with research and practice on topics including the potential of social media during revolution, the role of gender during mediation, and the importance of critical genre usage during industrial crisis.

This book provides students, activists, community organizers and the general public with a concise and clear guide on how to approach, analyze and address conflict in order to transform relationships and work towards peace with justice. In doing so, it details a systematic process to analyze conflict, and offers an understandable framework in which to situate and choose strategies of building cultures of peace.It acknowledges the academic divide between the disciplines of peace studies and conflict resolution studies, yet is relevant to students of both fields. The volume draws on relevant theory and research from sociology, psychology, critical studies and anthropology, and starts from the assumption that conflict analysis and transformation must include a critical analysis of hegemony and power.

This book explores how the construction and contestation of victims in societies emerging from conflict impact processes of peacebuilding. It locates its inquiry in Northern Ireland where highly politicized, unresolved narratives of violence and a so-called ‘hierarchy of victims'illuminate inherent paradoxes of victimhood in intergroup conflict. The author critiques how mechanisms designed to address the legacy of conflict often reify exclusive ‘victim'and ‘perpetrator'identities and obscure complex harm. Adopting an interdisciplinary lens, the book examines how the image of the ideal victim interacts with intergroup processes in a polarizing and intractable victim-perpetrator paradigm. The analysis of these issues in Northern Ireland suggests that exclusive policies and mechanisms reinforce rather than repair societal divisions, and that inclusive, complex approaches to victimhood are necessary to build sustainable peace. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of peace studies, transitional justice and criminology.

This book uses in-depth interview data with victims of conflict in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka to offer a new, sociological conceptualization of everyday life peacebuilding. It argues that sociological ideas about the nature of everyday life complement and supplement the concept of everyday life peacebuilding recently theorized within International Relations Studies (IRS). It claims that IRS misunderstands the nature of everyday life by seeing it only as a particular space where mundane, routine and ordinary peacebuilding activities are accomplished. Sociology sees everyday life also as a mode of reasoning. By exploring victims'ways of thinking and understanding, this book argues that we can better locate their accomplishment of peacebuilding as an ordinary activity. The book is based on six years of empirical research in three different conflict zones and reports on a wealth of interview data to support its theoretical arguments. This data serves to give voice to victims who are otherwise neglected and marginalized in peace processes.

This book introduces a new and original sociological conceptualization of compromise after conflict and is based on six-years of study amongst victims of conflict in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with case studies from Sierra Leone and Colombia. A sociological approach to compromise is contrasted with approaches in Moral and Political Philosophy and is evaluated for its theoretical utility and empirical robustness with in-depth interview data from victims of conflicts around the globe. The individual chapters are written to illustrate, evaluate and test the conceptualization using the victim data, and an afterword reflects on the new empirical agenda in victim research opened up by a sociological approach to compromise. This volume is part of a larger series of works from a programme advancing a sociological approach to peace processes with a view to seeing how orthodox approaches within International Relations and Political Science are illuminated by the application of the sociological imagination.

This book provides an interdisciplinary discussion of conflict studies, drawing on perspectives from psychology and Buddhist studies. The author combines current research in psychology, conflict and management studies, as well as moral narratives drawn from religious and cultural contexts, to offer useful guidance on dealing with conflict and dichotomies. Drawing on a vast corpus of Buddhist literature, this book examines complex teachings, ideas and doctrines to bring insight to how individuals and societies might lead peaceful and balanced lifestyles. In this ground-breaking study Padmasiri De Silva insists that the social studies need to develop dialectical methods and understanding in addition to the objective and analytical collection of facts. Chapters cover an array of subjects including economics, ecology, human wellbeing, prison reform, dialectical behaviour therapy, multiculturalism, and peace studies.

This book investigates intractable conflicts and their main verbal manifestation - radical disagreement – and explores what can be done when conflict resolution fails.The book identifies agonistic dialogue - dialogue between enemies - as the key to linguistic intractability. It suggests how agonistic dialogue can best be studied, explored, understood and managed even in the most severe political conflicts when negotiation, mediation, problem solving, dialogue for mutual understanding, and discourse ethics are unsuccessful. This approach of viewing radical disagreement as the central topic of analysis and conflict management is a new innovation in this field, and also supplements and enhances existing communicative transformational techniques. It also has wider implications for cognate fields, such as applied ethics, democratic theory, cultural studies and the philosophy of difference.This book will be of great interest to students of conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, ethnic conflict and International Relations in general.Oliver Ramsbotham is Emeritus Professor of Conflict Resolution at the University of Bradford, UK, Chair of the Oxford Research Group, President of the Conflict Research Society and co-author of Conflict Resolution in Contemporary Conflict.

This book examines and interprets a wide range of approaches to the causes of violence and conflict. The causes of violence and conflict are often left untheorized, or they are discussed as an existent problem assumed to be an inevitable part of human interaction. Adopting an accessible approach, this volume presents readers with a clear understanding of the causes of violence and conflict by highlighting their evolutionary roots and illustrating them with in-depth case studies and examples. Tim Jacoby addresses the fragmented nature of the literature on conflict theory by drawing upon a wide range of disciplinary traditions, seeking to reflect the fact that international relations, history, economics, development, politics and sociology all share a long-standing interest in the study of conflict and violence and that common concerns make interdisciplinary stimulating and productive. Understanding Conflict & Violence will be of interest to students and scholars across the disciplines of international relations, history, economics, development, politics and sociology.