About the Book
This unique collection of comparable case studies addresses the need to assess modes of conflict resolution in a larger sociocultural context with attention to varying approaches and cultural perspectives. Editors Avruch, Black, and Scimecca, together with other anthropologists and sociologists, propose and test different propositions, while looking toward a general theory of conflict and conflict resolution. Their joint effort should be of real interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, indeed to all those concerned with ethnic studies and ethnoconflict today.
The contributors examine different theoretical concepts and approaches to conflict resolution in five different cultures, American, Arab, Asian, Latin American, and Pacific societies. The interdisciplinary study offers a broad range of vantage points for considering interpersonal, community, institutional, and national problems. The authors analyze concepts of personhood, the role of power and authority, ethical values, and methods for negotiating differences, and conflict resolution as an emerging discipline.
Table of Contents:
Series Foreword
Introduction: Culture and Conflict Resolution by Kevin Avruch
Conflict Resolution in the United States: The Emergence of a Profession? by Joseph A. Scimecca
Harmony Models and the Construction of Law by Laura Nader
Tertius Luctans: Idiocosm, Caricature and Mask by F. G. Bailey
Interpersonal Conflict Management Styles of Jordanian Managers by Kamil Kozan
Conflict Resolution and Moral Community among the Dou Donggo (Indonesia) by Peter Just
Surprised by Common Sense: Local Understandings and the Management of Conflict on Tobi, Republic of Belau by Peter W. Black
Of Nets, Nails, and Problems: A Folk Language of Conflict Resolution in a Central American Setting by John Paul Lederach
Rhetoric, Reality and Resolving Conflicts: Disentangling in a Solomon Islands Society by Geoffrey M. White
Ho'oponopono: Straightening Family Relationships in Hawaii by E. Victoria Shook and Leonard Ke'ala Kwan
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
KEVIN AVRUCH is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. He is the author of American Immigrants in Israel: Social Identities and Change (1981) and has written extensively on conflict resolution.
PETER W. BLACK is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. He has written on conflict resolution, ethnopsychology, and political culture.
JOSEPH A. SCIMECCA is Professor of Sociology at George Mason University. He is the author of Sociology: Analysis and Application and Society and Freedom, among other works.
Review :
?The papers are of a uniformly high quality, and group together well. The volume will help to advance a perspective widely held by legal anthropologists and by scholars in law and society studies. It should alert conflict-resolution practitioners to the importance of studying culture.?-American Anthropologist
?Whether we speak of the "science" or "art" of the "resolution" or "management" of conflict, it is increasingly clear that differences among persons and groups cannot and should not always be left to be acted out by the dissenting parties or subjected to judicial litigation. In fact, the very ideas that individuals are autonomous in crucial ways, and that a judge or jury is important to assure rational decisionmaking, are culturally imbedded attitudes and values rather than objective parameters of universal social relationships. Most of this book contains case studies of how various "non-Western nonindustrial societies resolve or fail to resolve their own internal conflicts" (p.ix). The history of "alternative dispute resolution" and its recent emergence in the US are traced; "harmony" and "confrontational" models of law are contrasted cross-culturally; and case studies cover British academia, Lebanese managers, the Dou Donggo of Indonesia, Tobi, Micronesia, urban Costa Rica, Solomon Islands, and Hawaii. Emphasis on the cultural construction of personhood, the "moral economy" (p.10) of a community, and the views of the participants, in this culturally relative approach are valuable in affording genuine insight into a variety of modes of conflict resolution, many of which appear to be socially and psychologically less stressful and more rewarding than the dominant adversarial model. Community-college level and up.?-Choice
"The papers are of a uniformly high quality, and group together well. The volume will help to advance a perspective widely held by legal anthropologists and by scholars in law and society studies. It should alert conflict-resolution practitioners to the importance of studying culture."-American Anthropologist
"Whether we speak of the "science" or "art" of the "resolution" or "management" of conflict, it is increasingly clear that differences among persons and groups cannot and should not always be left to be acted out by the dissenting parties or subjected to judicial litigation. In fact, the very ideas that individuals are autonomous in crucial ways, and that a judge or jury is important to assure rational decisionmaking, are culturally imbedded attitudes and values rather than objective parameters of universal social relationships. Most of this book contains case studies of how various "non-Western nonindustrial societies resolve or fail to resolve their own internal conflicts" (p.ix). The history of "alternative dispute resolution" and its recent emergence in the US are traced; "harmony" and "confrontational" models of law are contrasted cross-culturally; and case studies cover British academia, Lebanese managers, the Dou Donggo of Indonesia, Tobi, Micronesia, urban Costa Rica, Solomon Islands, and Hawaii. Emphasis on the cultural construction of personhood, the "moral economy" (p.10) of a community, and the views of the participants, in this culturally relative approach are valuable in affording genuine insight into a variety of modes of conflict resolution, many of which appear to be socially and psychologically less stressful and more rewarding than the dominant adversarial model. Community-college level and up."-Choice
