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International Online Training Program On Intractable Conflict |
Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, USA |
The Conflict Research Consortium is a multidisciplinary program of research, teaching, and application, focused on finding more constructive ways of addressing difficult, long-term, and intractable conflicts, and getting that information to the people involved in these conflicts so that they can approach them in a more constructive way. A joint university-community program, the Consortium unites researchers, educators, and practitioners from many fields for the purposes of theory-building, testing, disseminating, and applying new conflict management techniques. These efforts are designed to lead to an improved understanding of conflict dynamics, along with better methods for confronting and managing intractable conflicts and reaching good decisions. Unlike our colleagues who focus on comprehensive resolution, we take an incremental approach-- analyzing problems that make these conflicts unnecessarily destructive, and then identifying effective incremental treatments.
Much of our effort over the past few years has been spent developing, testing, and revising our theory of intractable conflicts, based on extensive collection of qualitative data--stories from scholars, practitioners, and disputants--who have told us (either directly or through their writing) about their conflicts and their conflict management efforts. We have analyzed and organized these stories to create a theoretical list of typical conflict problems and treatments. This information (with accompanying explanations) will soon be available over the web, allowing users to identify specific problems that are occurring in their own conflicts, read about related theory, and search for possible remedies. The system is designed to act as a computerized consulting service which will provide customized executive summaries (and back-up information) addressing specific user interests.
In addition to helping neutral intervenors develop their professional skills, the Consortium is also working to help adversaries develop a more sophisticated understanding of conflict processes, and helping disputants develop what we call "do-it-yourself" skills for the many situations in which professional assistance is not available. We have developed and maintain an extensive web site of general conflict information (over 1000 pages long-before the first phase of the international online training program is added), and have been active in a variety of other teaching, training, and intervention efforts, all focused on the intractable conflict theme.
The Consortium's inquiry into intractable conflict continues to be a long term-effort which has evolved greatly over the last several years. Key to the success of our efforts have been a continuing series of projects and activities in three broad areas.
The Consortium's knowledge base concept is a bit unusual. The traditional research model suggests that researchers need only understand a field's knowledge base sufficiently to identify an area of the frontier in which they would like to work. At this point researchers tend to become specialists, developing projects which push back that frontier by making incremental additions to a field's overall base of knowledge. This approach has produced a world dominated by specialists. While specialization is responsible for the rapid advances in many fields, it is not a particularly good model for solving complex, real-world problems. For that, we believe generalists are needed--researchers and programs devoted to bringing a field's entire, multi-disciplinary body of knowledge to bear on specific situations. The Consortium is trying to be such an organization.
To do this, we have pursued a series of projects designed to collect and organize as much of the cumulative expertise of the conflict-resolution field as possible. We have also sought to include applicable knowledge from related disciplines (e.g. law, political science, military science). The Consortium's recent knowledge-base projects have included the following:
Theory Development/Knowledge Organization Projects
We have been developing and continuously revising our theory of intractable or
"resolution-resistant" conflicts for many years. While the basic approach is now
a couple of years old, we continue to add pieces and revise the way in which we think the
pieces best fit together. The goal of this theory-building effort is three-fold. One goal
is to develop, for ourselves and other scholars, a better understanding about the nature
of intractable conflicts-especially, what makes some conflicts intractable, while others
are not. The second goal is to develop a better understanding for theoreticians,
practitioners, and parties, of how intractable conflicts can be handled more
constructively. The third goal is to use our theoretical framework to organize the
multidisciplinary knowledge base that we have accumulated in a way that can be more easily
navigated and understood. We have so much information on so many diverse topics, that
having some sort of organization scheme is essential. By utilizing a scheme that makes
sense theoretically, the information builds upon itself, creating a knowledge base that is
more than a simple sum of the parts. Specific projects include the following.
Dissemination, Training and Education Projects
The
philosophy behind the Consortium program and its theory-building and knowledge
organization efforts is described above.
We have produced a
revised version of our theoretical and organizational framework for the USIP project. This
framework has a more international focus and is presented in a simpler way which is more
accessible to people with limited English skills.
We prepared a paper for the United States
Institute of Peace's Virtual Diplomacy Conference outlining ways in which we believe that
telecommunications technologies could advance the peacemaking process.
Our Mediation
Quarterly article compares Bush and Folger's transformative mediation and
constructive confrontation. We have also done considerable research on transformative
approaches to both tractable and intractable conflicts as part of our collaboration with
Bush and Folger's Training Design Consultation Project.
The Consortium's graduate seminar which is
taught jointly by Paul Wehr and Guy and Heidi Burgess continues to provide a lively
setting in which new ideas are presented and debated.
Working with Otomar
Bartos, Paul Wehr is now in the process of writing a book highlighting the ways in which
classical sociological theory contributes to a practical understanding of conflict.
In keeping
with the 1997 NCPCR Conference theme, we held a session in which participants shared their
personal stories of how they have dealt with conflicts that have defied their best
attempts at resolution.
Paul Wehr and Jim Downton have
recently published a study of long-term peace activists and the processes which sustain
their intense personal commitment.
The Consortium is also
working to make the incremental components of the field's knowledge base accessible from a
variety of popular theoretical perspectives (in addition to the Consortium's constructive
confrontation framework). For example, we expect the USIP project to present information
from the perspectives of human needs theory, dispute systems design, conflict
transformation, etc.
Knowledge-Base Papers The four academic papers which the Consortium wrote
on the theory of information management in the peace and conflict field continue to
provide guidance for our work.
We continue to draw
upon a number of key ideas which emerged from our early Justice Without Violence
project-a project which explored nonviolent ways to pursue justice around the world.
Dissemination of theoretical and practical knowledge about more constructive approaches
to conflict is one of our primary goals. While a great deal of our recent efforts have
involved dissemination over the world-wide web, we also rely on a variety of more
traditional methods: books, articles, presentations, classes, in-person training programs,
and consultations with scholars, conflict practitioners, and conflict parties both from
the U.S. and from other countries. We also teach a graduate seminar at the university
which explores our latest thinking on intractable conflicts, and occasionally assume
intervention roles in area conflicts. All of this keeps us firmly grounded in the
real-world problems and treatments and helps us resist the "ivory-tower
syndrome." Aspects of our dissemination program include the following.
Published
in 1997 by ABC-CLIO, this widely accessible, general reference document provides
libraries, conflict professionals, and others with an easy-to-use reference covering basic
concepts, techniques, organizations, people, and events. The knowledge we gained in the
process of writing this book has contributed substantially to our ability to complete many
of our other knowledge-base projects.
During the last year,
we have partially merged the intractable conflict book project and the USIP international
distance learning project, putting most of our effort into the USIP, web-based
dissemination of our general approach and supporting details. Nevertheless, we recognize
the importance of supplementing the website with conventional print publications. As soon
as the first phase of the USIP project is complete, we will be working to publish our
theory of intractable conflict and constructive confrontation in book form as quickly as
possible. We now envision two volumes. The first would be a simple, printed version of a
selected subset of the USIP materials. (All the materials would be far too long.) A higher
priority, however, will be a more general Getting to Yes type book that will
explain our approach and why we believe that it offers a much more
constructive ways of addressing intractable conflicts.
he United States Institute
of Peace online (and correspondence) training program will provide easy-to-use,
inexpensive international access to the conflict knowledge base. It will also provide a
model for future Consortium projects.
Copyright ©1998 Conflict Research Consortium -- Contact: crc@colorado.edu