emerging culture mediation presentation for 14th imi annual conference, american university 14-15...

7/29/2019 Emerging Culture Mediation Presentation for 14th IMI Annual Conference, American University 14-15 Mar 2013

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F i e l d M a n u a l f o r M e d i a t i n g T r i b a l C o n f l i c t

2|P a g e P a t r i c k J a m e s C h r i s t i a n

Emerging Culture Conflict Mediation:A Field Manual for

Mediating Tribal Conflict

14THANNUAL CONFERENCE ON INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS,MARCH 14-15,2013AMERICAN UNIVERSITY,WASHINGTON DC

Patrick James Christian, Ph.D Student

Nova Southeastern University, Graduate School of Humanities & Social ScienceDepartment of Conflict Analysis & Resolution

National Intelligence University, Joint Base Bolling-AnacostiaDepartment of African Studies

Abstract: This paper is an exploration of how to engage people and structures in conflict across

sociocentric, segmented boundaries of belonging. As such it is a proposal for a new model of

engaging violent tribal conflict; a practice of field mediation to be used in concert with

phenomenological inquiry as a basis of understanding the issues and parties to the conflict and aided

if possible by participatory action research and decision making. This mediation model adapts the

narrative mediation approach of Winslade & Monk to the types of conflict that these emerging

cultures are now confronting due to the demands of modernity as well as political, social and

environmental change narrative practice work of Michael White used by Winslade & Monk was

essential to the adaptation of the narrative mediation model to emerging culture conflict. As it is

used in advanced domestic societies, narrative mediation fills specific roles within a much largersystem of conflict resolution populated by law enforcement, courts, clinical therapists and the rest of

the social safety net that undergirds the social order. The intractability of ethnic and cultural conflict

demonstrates the ongoing need for new models of post conflict restoration of justice in emerging

culture conflict arenas.


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Emerging Culture Conflict Mediation:A Field Manual for Mediating Tribal Conflict

A new approach to engaging intrastate conflict

Emerging culture mediation is a relatively recent approach to resolving intra-state cultural

conflict in sociocentric societies in regions where governance is problematic, failing or non-existent.For the purposes of this publication, we define emerging cultures as communities bounded by

blood, marriage, and/or ethnic ties that share a common language, group identity and who

commonly express their identity through a shared culture. The emerging part of the name refers to

the communitys requirement to eventually adapt to a shrinking and changing world, often with

insufficient guidance or support from the political state which is in the process of adapting itself to

the demands of modernity. This mediation model adapts the narrative mediation approach of

Winslade & Monk1 to the types of conflict that these emerging cultures are now confronting due to

the demands of modernity as well as political, social and environmental change. Such change creates

barriers to the unobstructed or uncontested continuance of the cultures historical narrative, large

group identity and possibly even their physical survival (Geertz, From the Native's Point of View:On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding, 1975). Often, the conflict disputes that emerging

cultures find themselves embroiled in can appear intractable because the conflict pits a cultures

historical narrative and group identity against non-negotiable forces of external change. These non-

negotiable forces may place two or more cultural groups in opposition, but it is most often external

change that ultimately drives the conflict. Examples of external changes that drive emerging cultures

into conflict include environmental changes such as deforestation or desertification; diminishing

common pool resources such as water, pasture or wildlife; national and regional political and social

evolution; or finally, the loss of group membership due to the lure of modernity and associated ego-

centric models of social being that entice younger generations into urban centers. Such change is

dreaded (Beisser, 2006) and resisted by cultures in conflict because it heralds the possibility of a

break in their historical narrative; the same narrative that encapsulates their psychological identity,

cultural expression, generational memory of their origin and existential purpose of the present.

Even more ominously, such change heralds an inability to transmit their generational memory

across time and space to an uncertain future (Attias-Donfur & Wolff, 2003). Conflict mediation

within and between emerging cultures is necessarily based in narrative mediation. Indigenous means

of resolving disputes has always been an integral means of survival for emerging cultures and serves

as a highly effective problem solving mediation or negotiation model. Existential conflict however,

requires mediation on a level commensurate with the depth of the conflict: existential in nature and

intractable from the existing perspective of the cultures in conflict. As there is no sanctuary in flight

for either side of an existential conflict, only re-storying the conflict narrative offers them an

alternative to fighting. In such encounters, violent as they must be when the psychological and/or

1 The narrative therapy, narrative practice work of Michael White used by Winslade & Monk was essential to theadaptation of the narrative mediation model to emerging culture conflict. As it is used in advanced domestic societies,narrative mediation fills specific roles within a much larger system of conflict resolution populated by law enforcement,courts, clinical therapists and the rest of the social safety net that undergirds the social order. Such systems do not existin most emerging culture conflict arenas.


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physical survival of the group is at stake, the extent of each sides resistance and attack may take on

genocidal dimensions. Narrative mediation offers us relief from the dynamic of power and force

that are used to decide which cultures story lives or dies, and through that story, the mirrored

physical survival or extinction of the human beings who so desperately fight to survive within their

constructed stories. As Winslade and Monk write, narrative mediation goes beyond the examination

of human interests and empowers the participants to re-construct conflict-free narratives that arebased on what is possible rather than what is past (Winslade & Monk, 2000).

Mediating Emerging Culture Conflict: Process & Technique

Emerging culture mediation engages structures of people as much as it engages people in

structures. This is because such cultures, emerging into the complexities of modernity operate as

structures of meaning and action where identity and agency are group centric (sociocentric) rather

than individual centric (egocentric) as found in developed urban societies (Riesman, 1986). Nearly

all nations (developed and developing) possess egocentric urban societies and emerging cultures that

present sociocentric sociological structure and identity. The group identity of the emerging culturedoes not exclude individual identities, but the close nature of their community causes them to see

and understand themselves more as part of a fabric of family and clan than do urbanites operating in

roles of individual agency. Because of this reality, the mediator of emerging cultural conflict must

treat the culture as both collective and individual; understanding that the individuals within the

group determine their positions and beliefs based upon the discourse of the collective. Thus the

conflict party can be seen not as a group of humans led by one leader, but as a collective of families

that create discourse within and amongst the collective and the leader is most often the

spokesperson who best encapsulates and represents the emerging culture to the outside world.

His/her control over the group is less autocratic and more a shared responsibility with each head-of-

family which is perhaps the most essential, if not revered, position within the culture. This meansthat mediation requires a team approach of professionals who can work within the culture amongst

the men, women and adolescents2 who create and sustain the dialogical interior groups and their

conflict sub-stories. With so many interior groups and their sub-stories all feeding into the larger

conflict party story, a great deal of work must be accomplished within each conflict party. This

work involves research to learn and understand the internal structure and plots (Winslade & Monk,

2000) of each cultures conflict story. The internal groups of the conflict party are engaged

simultaneously by the mediation team in differing areas such as economic, family, religion, social

ordering, systems of inter-cultural justice, and identity management and expression. The mediation

engagement sessions operate along prepared strategies that are developed by the mediation team as

they map out the sociological structure. The sessions use single track and multi-track mediation

within each conflict party focusing on male heads of families, women leaders, and adolescents for all

four stages of the model, culminating in a series of whole-of-group sessions where internal dialogue

(following cultural norms) informs, problemetizes, externalizes and restorys the conflict narrative

from viewpoints internal to the conflict party. Meaning-creating internal dialogue within

2 Young people grow up early in emerging cultures. In some, they are riding horses and shooting guns by age 8, andactively defending the tribe by age 12.


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sociocentric cultures already occurs as an intricate basis of the sociological structure of the group,

but its members are called to positions that: they may no longer accept; may no longer meet their

developmental needs; and leads to continuing the cycle of conflict violence.

Stage one discovering the conflict story

Human beings are meaning-making creatures(Winslade & Monk, 2000, p. 164)

The conflict stories of emerging cultures are quite different from those of egocentric western

societies. Besides sociocentric forms of identity-meaning and agency-action, emerging cultures are

characterized by the use of high context communication and meaning-making as well as a locus of

control external to the individual that uses alienation and shame as principal measures of discipline.

These differences (sociocentric, high context, external locus of control, shame based) tend to create

conflict which is totalizing in nature with an immediacy of consequence, complexity of meaning and

sovereign in its ownership of identity-meaning and agency-action. These descriptions are bothinterrelated and causative in effect. Sociocentric sociological systems create high context

communication and meaning because its members are so closely bound in the making of group

meaning; much of what they need to say is implied rather than stated. Because the individual is so

subordinated to the group, individual agency is abnormal and conduct is directed and enforced by

the group rather than individualized internal controls of morality, judgment, reason, ambition, and

the like. This places the locus of control outside the individual, but within the group.3 This also

creates a powerful disciplinary measure; alienation and the attendant shame resulting from exclusion.

Because individual agency is outside the norm, the cast out member either reforms and solicits re-

admittance to the group or is cut off from his past and more importantly, his identity. A final

characteristic of such societies is the sociological sovereignty of their inward focused system ofmeaning-identity making and agency-action. Without going into which comes first, sociological

sovereignty or sociocentric society, such systems present the mediation discipline with unique

challenges based upon cross-cultural understanding and adaptation.

A byproduct of sociological sovereignty is a reliance on indigenous systems of justice;

indigenous that is, to the specific culture rather than the political state that houses the many separate

cultures within. Logically, the presence of multiple, sovereign sociological systems with their

indigenous systems of justice suggests a state with governance that is problematic, failing or non-

existent as described in the introduction. Cultures in conflict tend to understand the conflict from

within the boundaries of their own sovereign systems; like mini-states. Such mini-states construct

their story internally without dependence on the neighboring cultural groups-cum-mini-states or the

internationally recognized political structure of the state. Each culture in conflict constructs, learns,

and transmits their narrative story as an independent entity using symbols of art, architecture,

geography, geology, sociological ordering and discourse verbal and written. Embedded in this

discourse are the elements of conflict in their narrative. Culture members and their leaders

3 In such societies for instance, parents dont teach their children to think for themselves. Rather, the group thinks forthe members in a hierarchical order where age and wisdom carry the greater weight of reason, judgment, etc.


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recognize and express conflict in terms of justice and injustice based upon the norms of their own

story. They do not usually realize however, that their narrative story itself may be part of the conflict,

since their narrative story is the ark (sacred vessel) of their historical memory, present purpose and

future destiny. To acknowledge that their narrative story may harbor elements of conflict implicates

the sanctity of their existential identity. People and cultures can change their narrative story, but

doing so does not come naturally, or without fear, or without anguish because such change involveschanges in identity. Most often, people of emerging cultures will default to their internal structure of

justice rather than willingly unpack their narrative story in a search for violent points of contention

with neighboring cultures. Additionally, many emerging cultures have narrative stories that are

based on oral tradition, augmented by dense layers of symbols, rituals and mythology that make

unpacking and examining that narrative difficult and complex (Geertz, From the Native's Point of

View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding, 1975).

Mediators must learn the narrative stories of each conflict party, how that narrative is

constructed, learned and transmitted and how it affects the other psychologically, emotionally and

spiritually. White (2011) calls this a landscape of meaning where the human participants dwell on,

think about, interpret, reach conclusions about, have emotional responses to, develop attitudes

towards and positions about and react against the plot events (Winslade & Monk, 2000, p. 164)

that make up the conflict narratives. The discovery of the conflict parties narratives (using

reflective ethnography and phenomenological research) is necessarily accomplished in separate

sessions with each conflict community, especially in sociocentric cultures where the group identity

overshadows that of the individual. The mediation team maps out key influencers, leaders and

internal group change agents known as bricoleurs or cultural entrepreneurs who collectively create,

harbor and transmit the communal narrative (Christian, 2011). Mediators listen deeply to this

collective in order to map out each parties chosen traumas, chosen glories (Volkan, 2005), how they

denote their villains & heroes and how each side uses the other in story form to define themselves

and the other into a story of conflict and violence (Stein, 1994). Some of the phenomenological

events affecting the conflict parties that the mediator must research include the psychological effects

of mass violence in the areas of murder, rape, dismemberment, dislocation, kidnapping, and torture

(Adelman, 1997). Other phenomenological events might include the psychological effects of

starvation, thirst, memory loss, and social trauma borne of extended terror, despair and self loathing.

The subject matter of emerging culture conflict is difficult and mediators must be prepared to

deal with their own emotions and psychological state of mind in the presence of the conflict parties

without losing their objectivity. The reality of human suffering has a certain feel, a different smell

that cannot be adequately explained in words or conveyed in pictures. The raw pain physical,

emotional and spiritual of another human being in close proximity calls out for assuagement tothat secret place of compassion hidden in all of us (Grange, Swanson, & Christian, 2009, p. 5).

Participants to emerging culture conflict seek to sway the mediation team with the very presence of

their loss and suffering, jeopardizing the neutrality and impartiality of the mediator. By remaining

focused on learning the conflict story and mapping its effects on both the owning party and the

conflict party, the mediator builds rapport, establishes trust and sets a cooperative and progressive

tone for the entire endeavor. It is fundamentally what each party wants; to be heard, accepted,


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differentiated and ultimately validated. Mediators must plan for sufficient research time because the

narrative stories involve non-overlapping translation, a concept where the differing stories are based

in different realities (Spence, 1982). The mediator must be able to navigate between the alternative

realities of each conflict party in order to promote dialogue and narrative sharing between the

parties. Ultimately, the goal of the mediator in this stage is to sufficiently reduce the non-overlapping

translation of each party so that they communicate from a common reality based on mutual survivalrather than competing visions of unrealized justice.

A central purpose of inducing each side to recount or tell their conflict story (besides releasing

emotion) is to help each party construct a frame around the meaning of the conflict problem. Until

this point in the conflict, each side has been acting in accordance with their narrative story and

reacting to the actions of the other. For each side, the linkages between their own actions and their

own reactions are opaque or even unconsidered. Each side lives its narrative story unencumbered

by true dialogue with the other. For each, dialogue occurs, but only within the frame of reference

that serves to buttress their individual narratives. They are uninterested in dialogue outside that

frame of reference because such conversations involve the possibility of opening up the sanctified,

mythical narrative story that defines and empowers them. Instead, they seek dialogue which adds to

their already chosen traumas and glories and reinforces negative stereotypes of the hated other

(Stein, 1994). The frame that the mediator constructs through questions and meta-messages is one

of inclusion and of the reality of conflict ripeness. The mediator constructs inclusion when he/she

facilitates the mutual re-telling of each others conflict stories that until now, they have been careful

to avoid. The mediator unveils for the parties the reality of conflict ripeness when they demonstrate

to themselves and each other the willingness to listen to those stories as told by each other to each

other; not the mediator. Conflict ripeness is a special psychological and emotional place in the

minds and hearts of combatants who have suffered to a point of psychological, emotional and/or

spiritual exhaustion and are in the process of turning away from revenge for the dead towards justice

for the living of both sides. Conflict ripeness cannot be forced, coerced or managed, only unveiled

and remembered by the mediator to reframe the participants realities to mutual inclusion. The

constructed frame then, is of the realities imposed by living and dying in the shared physical spaces

where the conflict parties reside.

The influence of the mediator in emerging culture conflict can be deeper than normally

encountered in domestic justice paradigms in advanced societies, but the consequences of missteps

can be fatal. The parties to the conflict often have often long since crossed the psychological,

emotional and spiritual boundary of taking human life. The life of the mediator carries great weight

as a visitor, a peacemaker, a neutral advocate for peace; but remnants of rage, shame, victimization

and alienation can spark deadly reactions before, during or after mediation sessions (Christian,2011). The tools of the trade for this type of mediation are wisdom, patience, tact, empathy, and the

ability to ask questions and recount the participants own stories and experiences. The mediator uses

his/her questions and restatements in a manner that illuminates their own stories as narratives


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intertwined with that of the other in what Desmond Tutu (1999) calls Ubuntu. 4 Using questions

designed to help the conflict parties reflect on the constructed frame of their conflict, the mediator

helps them remember their arrival at the decision to accept the mediators presence as a possible

pathway to conflict resolution. A good lead-off question might be: what is the most important thing that

you would like to make clear to us about your communitys relationship with the other? Using questions

designed to deconstruct the positions and stances they have been using to satisfy their underlyinghuman needs, the mediator works to bring these needs into the open in their own right. The parties

stances and positions are often a significant obstacle to resolving conflict, and the mediator works to

help the parties examine and compare the destructive effect of their positions and stances against the

very needs they purport to satisfy. Very often, after achieving some level of rapport with the

conflict party, the mediator begins with the simplest but most heartfelt of questions; tell me what it is

that you have lost that was the most precious?5 Just a simple question such as this can bring the hardened

opponents to emotional release and open the flood gates to relating their narrative in all its

incoherence and exhilaration of glory and bitterness of trauma. The underlying humanity of the

conflict parties drives them to seek those most basic of human needs such as love, identity,

expression, ownership, and ultimately, memory both recorded and transmitted. The underlying

wisdom and objectivity of the mediator allows him/her to refrain from judging how these needs are

satisfied, but uses questions and observations to help the conflict party recognize the dissonance

between their needs and their positions or stances as written into the historical story. Often, it is as

simple as askinghow will you farm without water? Where will your children go during the next attack? Have you

thought of asking your conflict partner to discuss how to use collective action to obtain assistance from the government?

How do you and your community feel about race, slavery or religion?

When individuals begin to perceive that interest satisfying positions are in actuality

counterproductive, they become open to alternatives, especially when they believe that the mediator

is heartfelt concerned with their satisfaction. Often, cultures lay claim to ideas, values or objects as

integral elements of their identity so deeply that they cannot bear to share them lest they lose claim

to that identity. This phenomenon is expressed as an entitlement, and involves feelings of

ownership of race, religion, social hierarchy, land, economic superiority, ruling destiny, or even

language. Humans entitle themselves to objects or ideas not out of arrogance but out of

psychological need for ownership of identity. The mediator works to assist the conflict parties with

letting go of the burden of owning that which is inherently un-ownable and laying claim to what

they already own but do not recognize or remember. Reflective questions about the negative aspects

of entitlement can help them to refocus on the positive ascribed and constructed aspects of their

group identity and generational memory that are threatened by the continuing violent conflict. The

formulation of these questions and how the mediator restates parts of the conflict parties stories isas much art as science. The science is the particular psychological, sociological, and emotional

processes that the mediator is attempting to open up to new possibilities, while the art is the method

4A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he orshe has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others arehumiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed(Tutu, 1999).5 Invariably, the answer to this question in emerging culture conflict that has turned violent will be the loss of family.Most poignantly, it will be the loss of their children.


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of reaching the parties through questions and dialogue. This is because the parties dont live in a

world of facts and the mediation process doesnt occur in a court-room. For the participants, the

living, dying, loving, and remembering happens to them in their mind and in their heart (Runyan,

1988). The history they hold onto is more a metaphysical mythology than a set of historical events,

but their mythological genesis connects them to their past as certainly as it does to their future

(Jenkins, 1991). The mediator works to understand this phenomenological perspective and operatewithin it as if it were reality, because it most assuredly is for the conflict parties.

Buried within this phenomenological perspective are discourses of love, loss, alienation, and

inclusion within the family, clan, tribe, and society. These discourses describe through story how to

love, who is alienated and why, who is included or excluded and why. As the mediator listens to

these discourses, he/she can identify story lines that are responsible for conflict between the parties.

Examples of some of the conflict laden story lines found along the northern and eastern cultural

fault line between Arab and African societies include those of language, religion, slaves and racism.

Such stories use one cultures historical interpretation of the past to bind the others rights,

responsibilities and obligations in the present. Such powerful storying creates a reality of power and

entitlement for one party or the other that restricts sociological adaptation required to meet the

challenges of changing enviro-socio-politico conditions, leading to violent conflict. The telling of

the parties stories is designed to bring out this conflict laden discourse into the light of mediation

for negotiation between the parties. As the stories emerge, the discourse story lines call the participants

into response(Winslade & Monk, 2000) as victims or villains who seek inclusion or suffer alienation.

As the participants move into the role-play positions that the story or discourse calls them into, they

endlessly replay the conflict dialogue that has fed the violence thus far. This is the essence of

deconstructing the conflict that the mediator works towards using questions designed to make

visible the relative positions that each version of the conflict story offers (2000, p. 74).

Stage two externalizing the story and mapping its effects

Meaning does not pre-exist the interpretation of experience(White, 2008, p. 3)

Success at disarming and deconstructing the conflict stories begins at the point where the parties

accept the existence of their own stories (as separate from each other) and that the stories are in

conflict. Such awareness gained in mediation is a change from their existing conflict paradigms of

victims and villains battling over right and wrong. As the parties begin to see and accept the

presence of a conflict story, they can begin to externalize their emotions of hate, revenge, shame,

victimization, alienation, and rage away from one another and onto the conflict story. This begins

the process of externalizing the conflict outside of the moral motives of each participant as they aredescribed by the other (White, 2008). In other words, if the story calls person A to assume a certain

position detrimental to person B, then it is the fault of the story rather than mal intent towards

person B that drives the actions of person A. This is how the discourse in stories can tear through

blood and marriage in cultural conflict. At the seams of every cultural group in conflict with another,

intermarriages between groups create spaces where the inhabitants are pulled by both cultures.

When the conflict participants come to understand that their stories are calling them into positions


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and stances rather than their own motives and intents, the specter of betrayal fades and the mediator

can use alternative position calls that serve to move the conflict parties away from seeing each other

as enemy towards seeing the stories themselves as the problem. While this doesnt solve the

problem, externalizing the story out from moral intent serves to create psychological space in the

minds of the conflict parties for the continuing presence of each other. The creation of this

psychological space for the existence of the other is a necessary precondition for forgiveness andrestorative justice (Lama & Chan, 2004) (Tutu, 1999) (Enright & North, 1998). Pushing the problem

out from moral intent to one of external being separate from the humans embroiled therein is what

Winslade & Monk (2000) refer to as opening space (p. 158) in the psychological and emotional

willingness of the parties to consider alternatives to the conflict story.

Once the conflict stories are out in the open and the participants are beginning to see their

stories as separate from the people who play out those stories, the mediator calls the participants to

a new position; one of an observer looking inward to their own story in order to map out the effects

of the conflict on themselves, their fellow group members and the other conflict party. Rather than

focus primarily on mapping the effects of one partys story on the other, the mediator can begin

with mapping the effects of each parties story on themselves as group stories are rarely without

internal conflict. This process can remove the patina of sanctification on their stories and pave the

way for cross mapping the effects of each others stories on their conflict opponents. Mapping out

internal story conflict consists of searching for those elements of threatening change that cannot

easily be dissociated onto a neighboring culture or tribe such as modernity, environmental changes,

or the lure of urbanization on the younger members. Such threatening changes cannot be

dissociated onto the neighboring culture because the threat is common to both groups; a common

enemy that they fight each other in order to avoid. Such opening up and mapping out of the

internal story conflict ignites the process of alternative storying to begin that can separate out

negotiable elements of the story from non-negotiable elements. A non-negotiable element of the

story for instance is that children and grandchildren remember their grandfathers (transgenerational

memory), but a negotiable element of the story is that the fact that those grandfathers were warriors

and therefore their grandchildren should be warriors as well, even in a time of peace. In place of

warrior, use dweller of desert, mountain, Bedouin, farmer, pastoralist or ethnic type, and you see that

what is truly important is the memory of existence more than the memory of what that existence

did. Separating these elements is not easy and constitutes a form of identity management (Volkan,

2001). In place of each negotiated element of identity, a replacement of equal or greater weight

must be found in the original story so as not to threaten the delicate nerve of existential historical

memory. In a form of position calling (Winslade & Monk, 2000, p. 74), the mediator uses questions

and restatements to maintain the focus of each party on their own storys elements of dissonance.Elements of dissonance in a conflict story might involve the narratives structuring of sanctioned

economic activity of a type that environmental or political changes no longer allow (e.g. farming in

areas of encroaching desertification or growing cocoa or poppy crops that are now prohibited by the

1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic

Substances). Similarly, the mediator uses questions to call into position elements of the group

historical narrative that are adaptable to the circumstances that the culture finds itself in. Mediator


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questions that serve as position calls for identity management can be as simple as what ways of living

(or farming, working, learning) would do most to keep the memory of your grandfathers and their grandfathers alive in

the memory of your children? What do you see in your children that most reminds you of your father and grandfather?

How can you and your children grow or develop these elements of remembrance so as to strengthen their historical

memory? How can we do this without losing one more son or daughter to this violent conflict?

The type of conflict that the mediator encounters in emerging cultures is unlike that found indomestic situations in advanced societies. Instead of days and weeks of domestic conflict, emerging

culture conflict has often lasted decades and generations. Instead of individuals and families

involved in domestic conflict, emerging culture conflict involves families, clans, tribes, and tribal

collectives. Where domestic conflict involves injury, death or possible incarceration of individual

offenders acting in roles of individual agency, emerging conflict involves wholesale killings of entire

villages in genocidal rage driven by religious ritual of self-purification in terms of a reified image of

the self divorced from the Other (Adelman, 1997, p. 14). But there are no prisons or psychiatric

holding facilities for entire cultures at murderous war with each other. There are only the mediators,

armed with fragile tactics and strategies little tested in the ungoverned reaches of deserts, jungles and

mountains where such conflict rages. These points are salient when the mediator is attempting help

the parties map the effects of the conflict. The breadth, length and depth of such conflicts are little

more than imagined nightmares for mediators prior to their phenomenological immersion in the

lives of the conflict parties. As the mediator explores the breadth of the conflict with each

participant group, the questions he/she poses may seem alarming compared to the lightness of the

questions in domestic conflicts. Instead of asking participants about the effect of the conflict on

their bank balances or future employment prospects, the mediator may well ask them about the

possibilities for their own individual survival, or the survival of their children and grandchildren. The

mediator helps the participants to calmly evaluate the many aspects of communal and family life that

have negatively been affected by the conflict or that the conflict threatens to terminate altogether.

The mediator may find that he/she has to first help the participants remember what life was like

before the conflict began in order to help them compare that past remembrance with the present

reality. For conflicts that are generational, the mediator may have to help the participants create an

idyllic image of a conflict-free existence in their minds and ask them to compare it with their present

reality. Creating this image might consist of questions designed to elicit as many story elements that

gave or still give positive expression to family dialogue, child rearing, successful labor, communal

celebrations, filial pride in the development and growth of children, warmth at the memories of

sacred or spiritual events involving the families and related clans. Continued re-telling of such

positive experiences can create a temporary atmosphere of euphoria, devoid of violence that can be

given a name and memorized as an objective place for the party to desire and move towards. Thisgets to be especially difficult when the conflict participants were born and raised in the midst of the

conflict and are now responsible for its continuance or resolution. For humans who have never

known sociological life outside of organized violence or the menacing threat thereof, helping them

re-imagine life as they have never known it can be the ultimate challenge for the mediator. At such

times, the mediator returns to the basic theoretical premise of disarming the conflict; how can

he/she bring out the cost of the conflict in the mind of the participants and help them imagine life


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without that conflict. In the end, cultural groups, like individuals, must choose life over death and

seek peaceful existence over violent conflict. It is not something that the mediator can do for them.

Stage three evaluating the stories and identifying possibilities for restoryinga story that has no existence outside the present conversation(Winslade & Monk, 2000, p. 165)

The externalization of the conflict away from humans and onto the narrative story allows the

participants to talk about the conflict from a position of psychological safety. Removed from the

immediacy of the conflict storys position calls, the participants can remain outside the pull of

victimization, humiliation, and tragic loss with all the attendant rage and pain associated with those

positions. Even as the participants are outside of their conflict story, the position is temporary, in

that the story cannot simply be thrown out or discarded. This is because the conflict story is

embedded within the groups historical narrative. The story documents their existential origin,

carries their generational memory, and transmits their ascribed and constructed identity. Their storyis their only known pathway as a group for a future destiny. And moment by moment, the story calls

them back into position, into action, into conflict. While the participants cannot discard their story,

they can alter it with the mediators assistance. Through questions and restatements, the mediator

can help the participants identify the living tissue of their story from that which is laden with

conflict. In individual, single conflict group or multi-party group sessions, the mediator uses

questions such as: what parts of group social life, economic life, family life, or religious life create the most happiness

for your family? What parts of your group life seem to involve violence and conflict? If you had to rank order these

elements of group life from most to least important, how would you rank them?

The mediators questions seek to help the conflict parties evaluate an intensely personal story

that is essential to their being. Yet this same story has placed them in violent conflict as they struggleto maintain the narrative through its compelling call to position, where they are psychologically and

emotionally induced to defend a story that is killing them. The mediators use questions and

restatements to help the parties grapple with answering questions such as; is the story changeable? Can

we change the story without losing our identity and memory of our fathers? Will the other party allow us to change the

story? How do we know what parts of our story to change and what parts of our story that we must keep in order to

survive as a culture?All of these questions are major topics that the mediator helps the parties ask and

answer through guiding them in self review, searching for live story tissue and separating it from

conflict story tissue which the parties can cut away, changing their story. In one conflict mediation

between two tribes, a particular practice between the tribes involved a rough and violent practice

called the Ghazw, which originated with the original Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.Ghazw is Arabic for raiding party, and the practice evolved in a time and place where tribes lived on

the edge of starvation and thirst for most of their life cycles (Bamyeh, 1999). The Ghazw served as

a mechanism for food and resource redistribution to ensure the survival of the largest number of

tribal members across all of the associated clans and tribal collectives. Secondary purposes were to

train young men and boys in the art of horsemanship and the use of weaponry needed to defend

against actual enemies rather than fellow tribes and clans. In the time of its primary usefulness as a


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survival mechanism, the practice developed rules of lan and chivalry where little to no blood was

meant to be lost, and never were women and children to be harmed in any way (Armstrong, 2006).

Over centuries, this survival practice evolved into a sport between tribes and finally its use created

violent conflict between groups who insisted on maintaining the cultural practice as an integral

element in their identity (position call of historical identity) and other groups attempting to abandon

a practice they saw as interfering with evolving sociological order and justice (position call ofmodernity). During mediation, the questioning sought to help the parties evaluate the practice, map

its effects, compare and contrast the benefits in light of the costs and seek compatible changes to

the practice that would preserve history and memory while alleviating the negative effects of the

practice. Over time, the disputants agreed to suspend the practice, but also agreed to work together

to develop a representative version of the practice that could serve as a tribal sport. While the

conflict stories between the parties was much more complex than just one bloody practice held over

from centuries past, their ability to evaluate and problemetize the issue, adapt their respective

narratives to restory a past practice into a safer sport representative of past memory, showed them

the potential for future efforts.

In single party and joint sessions, the mediator explores the conflict with the participants and in

the process, develops a phenomenological familiarity with the story and the participants as they

accept the intimacy of an outsiders presence so deep within their knowledge of being; their psycho-

emotional connectivity that houses their glories, traumas, and collective consciousness. This

placement of the mediator allows him/her to discuss the conflict story with a sort of easy familiarity

in order to build a shared, cross cultural understanding of the ebb and flow of the conflict. In this

manner, the mediator can ask the questions that deconstruct false assumptions, mistaken meanings

or failed memory between the cultural memory banks of the group social elite. This is important to

accomplish prior to conflict story evaluation as the inner group needs to clarify their common story

so that when it begins to change, it changes in the same direction at the same time in a collective

manner. Without descending into intimacy within the groups conflict story, any questions the

mediator asks relative to the most painful aspects of the conflict story may be resented. For

example, try asking a casual acquaintance at work the following question; hey, I heard that your wife just

delivered a stillborn baby; tough luck, but hang in there. I would guess that such solicitousness would not be

taken well without first establishing the necessary depth of emotional and psychological connection.

Daring to explore the depth of anothers pain is not for the faint of heart. The ride down can be

rocky as words have the power to wound as well as heal. To inquire is to request access to a place

loss and suffering protected by defensive boundaries against casual memory. The word compassion

is derived from com (to share) and passion (pain) or to share the pain of another. Words and

expressions that casually invoke memory without descent into sharing leaves the relationshipbetween mediator and participant wounded and bleeding. Such words become charity from unequal

positions of respect, dignity, and right of survival. The dialogue demeans to one of participant

subservience rather than mediator sharing. The mediator then forfeits his right to inquire, to share

in that secret place of pain - the conflict story. Events, information, and actions that have the

deepest emotional and psychological (even spiritual) impact on people are not casually shared,


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discussed or evaluated without demeaning them. The descent into sharing must be authorized,

guided, and based on equality at an intrinsic level of suffering.

As the mediator works with the conflict parties to evaluate the story, he continues to use time

orientation and framing to focus the parties on the needs of the families in the present and

requirements for balance of past with promise of the future. The timelessness of the desert marks

its inhabitants in thought and action. Nothing moves fast in the desert; neither farmer nor herder.But this same timelessness establishes a cycle of life and survival that is both simple as it is pitiless.

Without food, people and animals will die. In such situations, the loss of crops or herds condemns

those who fail to accept their fate and die or join the stream of refugees in the squalor and fetid of

massive refugee camps with dignity, honor and self esteem are quickly stripped away. What few

time markers exist in the desert do so with the seasonal rains which determine if a family survives or

perishes. Time orientation and survival questions that allow the mediator to focus the parties on the

conflict issues and help connect the dots for restorying include: will your farms provide all of the food and

trade needed to meet the communities annual demands? Are there efficiencies that can be gained from forming

collective action cooperatives with other farmers and traders, even those from the other conflict party? Have you laid out

forecasts for farm labor and compared the growing rates of birth for your future planning purposes? If you will have

more or less community members than needed, have you thought about cross community dialogue with other

communities to meet those needs or employ excess community members? Only because the mediator has already

demonstrated to the conflict parties his/her understanding of the underlying life and death

significance of these seemingly unobtrusive questions will his/her inquiries be listened to and

answered from the depth of the conflict story. The parties must believe that you are forming your

questions from a position within the story, accounting for the cost they have already borne.

As part of these lines of questioning and dialogue, the mediator takes on the delicate task of re-

remembering to parties the cost of the conflict. As part of mediation in tribal conflict, we focus on

two areas: what has already been lost and what remains to be lost. One example of this occurred in

a conflict village where we asked both conflict parties to meet at our mediator team house after they

had refused to meet in each others physical spaces. The individual gain that we were trying to

accomplish with that particular session was two-fold; first, we wanted to open psychological space

amongst the parties for the presence of each other. Secondly, we wanted to place a physical object in

between the two parties that represented both their losses past and their losses in the future6. We

accomplished the former by asking each conflict party to begin the session with a public reading of

the list of their dead and injured from the last attacks on each of their villages. The result was

sobering. A hushed silence fell over the villagers in the room and instead of angry denunciations,

there began to appear mutual respect for the grief and suffering of both sides. While their faces and

body language continued to radiate hushed rage and suffering borne of incalculable loss, the villagersquieted and accepted the presence of each other in a common physical space; they had made

psychological room for the temporary existence of the other as a prelude to dialogue. It seemed as if

the public suffering of their enemies in front of them had a profound effect on their ability to

exclude their existence. Despite ones grief and suffering the anguish of another, calls out for

recognition - even the anguish of ones enemy. Once psychological and emotional space was

6 The idea came from the Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Story.


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created for the presence of the two conflict parties, we used the precious time left to try to show a

glimpse of Dickensons Christmas future by engaging both sides in questions and dialogue of the

safety and security of their remaining families from hunger, drought, and the ever present violence

of the militias of both sides. We pushed for their evaluation of the safety of the crops, herds, houses,

and equipment that meant the difference between family survival, death or exile to refugee camps

across the border.All cultural identity groups have archetypes and prototypes that give definition and insight into

the elements and structure of the large group identity. Where archetypes are imaginative illusions of

one or more versions of the group identity writ large, prototypes are the best representation of that

illusion in human form; past or present. Archetypes and prototypes serve the purpose of creating

standards of group identity and cultural expression in form, historical example, and theoretical

definition. Lets call this creation of standards a cultural construct that becomes shorthand for the

members adherence to their identity structure. It is inherited, yes. It is constructed by each

generation, yes. It is both real and mythical at the same time, yes. Where members of a cultural

identity group get into trouble is translating their inherited part (meaning), constructing their present

part (action) and doing both so as to avoid costly violence and track toward group physical,

psychological, sociological, and emotional health. Within these four aspects are the difference

between groups that thrive into advanced civilizations and those that, like the Teuso or Ik tribe of

northeastern Uganda, perch near the edge of extinction, unable to successfully adapt7. Inhibiting the

successful adaptation of cultures to the demands of modernity, environmental, social and political

changes is often their inability to adapt their group identity and cultural expression without outright

refutation of their own archetypes and prototypes. The mediators phenomenological and reflective

ethnographic research allows him/her to use acculturated questions to dissemble cultural constructs

that block successful adaptation by the conflict party.

The process of dissembling cultural constructs involves a three part process; showing the group

how they define themselves negatively; letting the group demonstrate to themselves how the can

define themselves positively; and finally, letting each group create a new cultural identity based on

non-violence that includes the presence of the other conflict party. These exercises work best

starting with the younger generations of each conflict party, as they are least wedded to the existing

cultural constructs. The first step in the process is to show each party to the conflict how they use

each other in a negative frame to define their own group. This is an interactive process that requires

each side to play a role vis--vis the other. In the role-play events, each side creates their narrative of

who they are, not based upon what they are (positive identity models), but by what they are not

(negative stereotypes of other groups).As an example, I can easily see that I am African because I am not a

dirty unwashed Arab Bedouin herder. Conversely, I can easily see that I am Arab because I am a free man, able totravel where I want, when I please and am not tied to toiling in the soil as their slave ancestors did.While the use of

others to create definition within ones own group is a naturally occurring tendency, it is not a

7 Colin Turnbulls ethnographic profile of the Ik or Teuso tribe was published in 1972 and titled the Mountain People.His study of the tribe was popular but controversial, with anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Claude Steinersupporting his conclusions but linguist Bernd Heine refuting some of the methodologies and conclusions in a studyconducted a decade later. Regardless, all would undoubtedly conclude that the Ik/Teuso tribe has not been one of themore successful adapters to the realities of enviro-socio-politico changes.


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requirement for cultural identity construction and management. During group sessions, the results

of this role-play are picked apart and denounced by members of both conflict parties. The second

half of the role-play exercise involves members of each group re-writing that narrative based only on

positive ascribed and constructed elements. As part of this narrative re-mediation process, the

mediator works with each side to highlight and recognize those good and desirable traits that clearly

demarcate them from others giving them positive connection and placement within the society atlarge. The finished role-play product can become an objective starting point that the mediator can

refer to as a starting point for restorying the group narrative. The fact that the younger generations

of each conflict party created the product is an important point for maintaining group ownership of

all changes. Such restorying works to transition away from past methods of identity definition and

management that involve the demonizing of other groups as a way of demarcating the boundaries of

ones own group. During group sessions with the leaders, mediator questions work to jointly search

the common discourses for elements of each cultures positive attributes that do not entail the

demonization or destruction of the other. Once we have buy in from both sides (equally) of the

desire to support the preservation of the others existence, we begin searching for solutions to each

sides problems in a win-win methodology, to include the development and use of collective action

by 2 or more discrete groups to gain and share political and economic power. This last part can only

be accomplished when both sides have moved from their current position to a position of Ubuntu,

which means that both parties have accepted that their survival, social well being and future are

inextricably bound up in each other, and one cannot survive alone.

Stage four reimagining identity-meaning and restorying the conflict narrative

any renegotiation of the stories of peoples lives is also a renegotiation of identity(White, Maps of Narrative

Practice, 2007, p. 82)

Evaluating the conflict story is a step towards restorying, so the evaluative emphasis is balanced

between elements that cause loss, pain and suffering (the negatives) and elements that create joy,

pride, positive memory and identity in non violent cultural expression. In mediation, questions and

restatements help the parties adapt past the negatives while maintaining attention on safeguarding

and increasing the positive elements of their stories. How the parties view and understand the

causative factors of the negatives is central to their willingness to adapt past them. For example,

much of the conflict involving emerging cultures is rooted in failure to adapt to the demands of

change. Cultural elites and leaders of sociocentric communities fail to grasp the depth and breadth

of change that has long since occurred in the world around them. Possible mediation lines of effort

might involve problemetizing modernity as the problem rather other cultural group that have

adapted faster or with more agility. If the conflict party accepts modernity as the problem rather

than mal intent of other groups, then a number of positive pathways open themselves for use by the

mediator. Questions and dialogue can demonstrate that the evolutionary waves of modernity affect

entire regions and that all cultures struggle to adapt. Open ended questions with the parties about

the effect that modernity has on communications, travel and transportation for instance can focus


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on the problemetized issue that modernity restricts cultural groups ability to maintain solidarity of

inner group cohesion when such choices are presented all around them. Mediator questions then ask

the parties to consider and discuss options for how they might preserve cultural heritage, linguistic

nuances and generational memory in the face of such changes. Ultimately, the questioning leads to

methods of attraction versus methods of restriction in maintaining the sociocentric collective. Upon

this platform of viewpoint change, the mediator introduces the possibilities of collective action.Once each side begins to open pathways forward to preserve themselves, they inadvertently place

themselves on parallel courses rather than at right angles in collision. This relational change in

position opens the door for the mediator to ask how they can mutually support each others

existential preservation with questions such as can either of you imagine possibilities where you can use

collective action to preserve your individual abilities to preserve your language, culture and narrative history? Is modern

change unavoidable? What parts are unavoidable, what parts are desirable if any? What parts are the most

destructive? What actions can you take individually and collectively to adapt to those changes that are inevitable while

preserving generational memory of your fathers?

Such conversations not only open the door to restorying, but serve to destabilize totalizing

descriptions of conflict. For instance, if the conflict parties are groping towards agreement on the

problemetized effects of modernity, this opens the door for the mediator to question underlying

assumptions regarding motives of the parties. Such questions as now that you have agreed on elements of

modernity that must be dealt with mutually, can you accept that the other side really desires to preserve tradition,

narrative identity and generational memory of their fathers? Can each of you accept that the challenges of change are

based on realities outside of either of your control? From destabilizing the parties totalizing thoughts and

descriptions of the conflict, the mediator can use questions to help each other build pre-stories of

respect and collaboration with questions such as based upon your discussions of the coming changes, what

ways can your two cultures work together to form a stronger coalition with which to negotiate the effects of the coming

change with the outside world? Such dialogue allows the mediator to maintain the focus of discussion on

what is best for group or society rather than individual needs and interests. For example the

mediator might use questions that move the conflict focus from present interests to future needs of

transmitting generational memory: if you agree that some change to your stories is required for survival, what

elements of your stories do you think your fathers would most want preserved? Such questions and dialogue

promote a preferred storyline that is based on non-negotiable needs of memory group identity,

calling forth new positions for both parties based on new realities rather than old stances and

politics. When the mediators questions bring the conflict parties past these stances and call them to

new positions that are instantly recognizable as meeting the deepest of psychological and emotional

needs, positive emotion and trust in the process begins to swell. The truthfulness of a mediators

questions when they touch upon basic underlying unmet needs transmits through the noise of theconflict conversation and registers on the participants. Such questions validate the psychological and

emotional pain and dread that have been building during the life of the conflict; honesty begets

honesty and the willingness of the mediator and one conflict party to speak from the heart melts the

hate and bitterness that have fueled the conflict. To the skeptic who questions this process by

asking how the parties will recognize the truthfulness of questions or the honesty of an answer, the

Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi responds succinctly:


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Since Wisdom is the true believers stray camel, he knows it with certainty, from whomsoever he may have

heard of it. And when he finds himself face to face with it, how should there be doubt? How can he mistake?

If you tell a thirsty man Here is a cup of water: drink! Will he reply This is a mere assertion: let me

alone, O liar, go away? Or suppose a mother cries to her babe, Come, I am mother: hark my child!

Will it say? Prove this to me, so that I may take comfort in milk? When in the heart of a people there is

spiritual perception, the face and voice of the prophet are as an evidentiary miracle. Because never in the world

will the souls ear have heard a cry of the same kind as his; that wondrous voice heard by the soul in exile

the voice of GOD calling, I am near. - The Mathnawi (Rumi, 2006, pp. 132-133)

From the common need to survive and safeguard their existential memory and origination comes

the genesis of emerging culture cooperation that is needed to begin the process of creating

alternative non-problem-bound narratives in co-authorship with the other party. Most often,

cultures in conflict want peace, but they just dont know how to write that story or even where to

begin. For this, the mediator can help and all it takes is belief that the answer is there waiting to be

found.

Stories rarely enter into conflict as a sudden event. Rather, the strands of the conflict story line

can be traced back generation by generation where each family and clan, in its time, decided meaning

to events or circumstances that they found themselves in. Often, the first generation to face an event

(such as a new tribe moving to a place near them) lays the imprint of meaning that the following

generations adapt, especially if nothing occurs to counter that imprint. Over time (using that

example of a new tribe) each generation uses that imprint as evaluative criteria to decide how they

should feel about an event or a neighboring social group. If the original imprint tended toward

negativity, then subsequent interaction will have a default meaning of negativity unless something

unique and positive occurs in the interaction between the new group and the old. If the initial

imprint is towards seeing the new group negatively, then the new group will likely respond in an

induced expectation manner of self-fulfilling prophecy (SPF) where individuals or groups behave as

they are expected to. This ensures that an initial negative imprint to an event has a high likelihood

of surviving through generational memory and embedding itself into meaning and identity of

subsequent generations. This is where the mediator can use questions to challenge not the

existence of the events or groups, but rather the initial and or subsequent meanings created by

generational leaders. When past events have been imprinted in negative meaning for historically

accurate reasons, mediators can work with the conflict parties to encourage the use of apology and

forgiveness as powerful tools for changing past meaning that is deeply imprinted in group identity.

Famous apologies by the German government to the Jews, Australian Government to the

Aborigines, and American government to the Japanese are examples of one society validating past

events to another and using apology and forgiveness as catharsis. Sometimes the key to changingthe conflict story is as simple as revisiting and re-remembering the relationship between the conflict

parties at a distant point in their common past. The traumatized society seeks validation; the other

seeks justice; both are in search of relief from the endless conflict they have been engaged in.

While the conflict parties cant just invent a new story out of nothing, they can bend the current

story with imaginative re-imprinting of current events as both chosen traumas and chosen glories.

For most events that affect a cultural groups lifecycle, they choose imprint them with meaning as a


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success (glory), failure (trauma) or they can choose not to imprint and the event is recorded but not

used to signify any important identity element at all. A plague for instance, that killed more people

than all of the afflicted societys previous wars might receive no imprinting at all, while a war that

killed a small fraction of the plague might be chosen to represent a key trauma or a key glory

depending upon how it was initially imprinted by the social leaders at the time of the event. Upon

these past events (chosen traumas and glories), the mediator can help the groups imagine newpossibilities of imprinting current events that plausibly affect the group(s). Such re-imprinting can

serve to deconflict the two parties or even create collective action using meta-contrast against a

larger, but far more distant (and less physically destructive) enemy. But the parties cant simply add

new elements to their story and meaning that never existed. The restorying must either bend what is

already there or change past meaning to accommodate present day realities. Cultures can accept that

their forefathers misread meaning that has lead to conflict today. They cannot accept that their story

in the past was a fabrication as that undermines the basis of their belief system which in turn

undergirds present reality; how they understand and interface with the world around them. All

things can change, but the change needs to be built on small changes interspersed with re-

understanding elements of their historical narrative such as the meaning imprinted on chosen

traumas and chosen glories.

The Joint Mediation Session Theater &Stagecraft

Most conflicts conform to the structure of the original Passion Play, recounting the death and resurrection of Jesus.

There is a wrongful act alleged, a suffering endured, and the denouement in justice being served----either by righteous

revenge or an act of God(Benjamin, 2002)

Ive used the above quote for several specific reasons. First, the conflict that emerging cultures

are engaged in is both physical and metaphysical with implications for failure that transcendsmortality. Secondly, like the passion play, emerging cultural conflict is laden with metamessages that

presage the coming spectacle. The immediate image of the passion play is the bloody cross; the

immediate image of every emerging culture conflict is also laden with symbols and metamessages

that inform participants and viewers what to think long before they even hear the story line. The

symbols and metamessages call them into position long before they arrive at the theater. Finally, the

quote reminds us how intricately bound up in each other the conflict parties must be. Not just in the

later stages of violence between the two, but first through mutual discourse of betrayal, alienation,

rejection, and scorn:

Warcan only be produced when discourse was possible: discourse subtends war itself. Moreover violence

does not aim at simply disposing of the other as one disposes of a thing, but, already at the limit of murder, itproceeds from unlimited negation. It can aim only at a presence itself infinite despite its insertion in the field of

my powers. Violence can aim only at the face(Levinas, 1969, p. 225).

The type of violence that characterizes emerging culture conflict aims at the face of the other. It

destroys the outward manifestation of each others cultural expression of interior identity. It murders

the public face of the enemy. The rage that creates and sustains this murderous intent can only arise

from shared discourses or else betrayal, alienation, rejection and scorn would not be possible. This


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is why the discourse that underlies the story that in turn undergirds the historical narrative that

carries the psychological identity of the group must be grappled with the way that desperate writers

anguish over the plots and verbiage of a play. The passion play of suffering and redemption, justice

and revenge must not only be re-imagined and rewritten, but the changed discourse must then be re-

enacted to achieve redemption and justice and alleviate the cycle of revenge. It is in this

reenactment that mediation becomes theater, albeit with the specter of violence and loss replacingtomatoes and catcalls from a disbelieving audience. The new restoryed discourses were written in

each camp; sometimes alone and at others, in mutual writing forums where select groups from both

conflict parties joined together to imagine new dialogue and test out new meaning to old events of

past pain and suffering.

Theater

These new restoryed discourses are as yet untested prior to the denouement of the joint

mediation sessions. The new material must be played out on the theatrical stage of the mediation

process where protagonist and antagonist face off and re-read their old discourse that was rewritten

in single sessions and sub-joint sessions by members of each conflict party. The audience to thetheater consists of heads of families - victims as they are to suffering and loss - and elders terrified

that the new material will write out the memory of their long dead loved ones or maybe even

themselves once they die in their turn. They are not mere spectators; they are the judges of process

and product even as the drama unfolds. They provide input through emotive rejection or support

that their spokesmen are attuned to from a lifetime of high context communication. A selective

word or exclamation at specific point in the dialogue can reflect volumes of feedback to the

respective conflict party spokesperson, so intricately connected are these sociocentric leaders in

thought and emotion. The mediator cannot forget that while the audience will follow protocol and

allow their spokesman to verbalize positions and stories, the real conflict party is not one person

seated in the front of the room, but the collective linked by invisible strands of loyalty, fealty andcommon survival. Sprinkled at the margins of the mediation hall might be some of the militia leaders

from both sides, looking to pick up some of the conflict laden discourse to use as political ideology

for the troops waiting for them in the wadies, mountains or jungles. The mediators task now is to

infuse enthusiasm into the acting, maintain the delicate balance of remembrance between past

suffering and future promise of salvation. This requires a balance of release and containment.

Without release of pain and emotion, psychological space for forgiveness of themselves and each

other is not created. Without some containment of that same pain and emotion, chaos erupts into a

primal scream of anguish and revenge.

The outcomes of the theater do not have to be logical or intellectually sensible, they have to be

emotionally and psychologically fulfilling with clear senses of believability equal to the existing

narrative story that remains after the restorying. The audience participates vicariously through their

respective spokesmen elders, reliving and releasing emotion as their speaker tastes the new and

untested discourse and watches the faces of the other for reaction; acceptance or rejection on a

visceral emotional level of belief. The emotion of the unfolding drama, once started, is no longer

solely in the control of the mediator, the parties or even the audience. The emotion of drama

becomes a phenomenon with a life of its own as it is fed by and reflected back to the collective


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people assembled in mediation. The stagecraft that houses the phenomenon of emotive drama

allows the audience to participate viscerally through their spokesmen, where voices, inflections and

whispers are sufficiently audible so that all parts of the collective can play their roles without fear of

losing one important morsel of information. The mediator sets the conditions for stagecraft by

endless rehearsals during all stages of the mediation process, using intra-conflict party mediation and

lower levels of cross party dialogue as stepping stones to the eventual dnouement; the final jointmediation session where lasting agreement becomes reality and the fighting abates or at least

diminishes.

Stagecraft

Prior to the conflict party leaders meeting in an open session, everything must be thought of

from the security of weapons and fighters in zones of violent conflict to the mental and emotional

states of the participants to the drama and the physical structure that the drama occurs in. Emerging

culture mediation is normally conducted while the violence is occurring; during the moments and

hours spent in dialogue with the conflict parties, or as multiple, larger events that occur before,

during or after individual mediation sessions. There is often no police force or army present toprovide security for the mediation team outside of whatever internal security they brought in. At

times, one or both parties will detail some of their own trusted defenders (like militia) to provide

personal security for the mediation team. Even when international organizations such as the OAS,

AU, UN, EU or AL area present, they may not be sufficiently armed or authorized to fully secure

the mediation teams8. Generally, the conflict parties will agree with the mediator demands that all

weapons remain outside the mediation hall except those whose responsibility it is to secure the

mediators themselves or other international dignitaries who are in attendance at the invitation of the

parties. After securing the site, the mediator concentrates on placement and seating of the parties,

looking to establish a balance of physical separation versus intimacy of space. One tactic for instance

is to start off with the parties separated by several feet, and then as they warm to the discussion andgenerate/receive sufficient feelings of respect and dignity, the mediator then invites them to move

closer to himself to facilitate dialogue. If the parties decline, they send one message to the mediator;

if they accept, they send another. Either way, the mediator gains valuable information on the

progress of the dialogues movement toward or away from intimacy between the conflict parties.

Closely related to this is the mediators decision on how to locate or place the audience. Different

cultures, different emotional climates and different physical spaces require analysis and decision, but

generally, audiences that are intimately part of the leader/spokespersons decision cycle should be as

close as the leader asks. When in doubt, consult, consult, and consult with the conflict parties

leaders. Doing so builds and preserves relationships that the mediator will need during the process.

It is important to note that any final joint mediation session may never occur in an individual

mediators cycle of involvement, but all the work is meant to lead to such an event. In some cases,

the finale is nearly ceremonial as inked agreements and hundreds of sub mediation events (single

party and joint) have already brought the conflict to quiet transformation from armed combat to one

8 Organization of American States (OAS), African Union (AU/UA), United Nations (UN), European Union (EU), ArabLeague (AL)


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of political accommodation. But the body politic always seeks visible, emotional conclusion as part

of the meaning making process. As the stages of the mediation cycle progress from discovering-

telling the conflict story to externalizing the story to evaluating the story to the process of restorying,

the joint mediation sessions increase in number and duration. The number and duration is balanced

equally between the conflict parties so both communities understand that the gestation of their

individual conflict story transformation is occurring in both camps. During this time, the processesare both quite fragile and require only a single mishap to extinguish the growing desire for conflict

abatement and willingness to open their story to change. The mediation teams ability to listen deeply

and learn the phenomenological perspective of the communities they are working with is their only

source of power in the relationship. A final note of awareness relates to the mediators own

cognizance of the effects of their culture on impartiality and neutrality. Choosing sides is an action,

but the process that leads up to that choice involves the making of meaning. The parties to the

conflict make meaning of everything around them; this is normal. It is also normal for members of

the mediation team to make meaning intellectually or emotionally, which can lead to subtle and

unintended choice of sides as an action. The only defense to this is to stay engaged in the research of

both parties. As a field mediator, if I find myself in dangerous meaning making territory with respect

to one side, I move to the other side and immerse myself in the phenomenology of their

experiences. Thus far, this has always served to counterbalance any such tendency. Because most

mediators operate from an egocentric psychological identity model, they must be cognizant of the

dangers inherent of inflicting their implicit beliefs on sociocentric communities. Egocentric

communities favor individual actions; decisive decisions, bold action, and individuals acting for the

benefit of the group from an exterior position. Sociocentric communities operate on shared identity

where the individual is seen (and sees themselves) only within the context of their home group.

Thus, pulling a sociocentric leader too far from his/her community threatens the sanctity of the

group identity and thus, the survival of the individual leader identity that is an integral part of his

home group.


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BibliographyAdelman, H. (1997). Membership and Dismemberment; the body politic and genocide in Rwanda (2ndDraft). Centre for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies, University of Southern California(pp. 1-28). Toronto Canada:York University.

Armstrong, K. (2006).Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. New York: Harper Collins.

Attias-Donfur, C., & Wolff, F.-C.

emerging culture mediation presentation for 14th imi annual conference, american university 14-15...

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