The Little Book of Conflict Transformation - John Paul Lederach

1. Conflict Transformation?
2. Lenses of CT
3. Defining CT
4. Conflict & Change
5. Connecting Resolution & Transformation
6. Creating a Map of Conflict
7. Process-Structures as Platforms for Change
8. Developing Our Capacities
9. Applying the Framework
10. Conclusions

1. Conflict Transformation?

Resolution: quick solutions, danger of co-optation/ no room for advocacy, 

Anabaptist/ Mennonite religious-ethical framework

Peace is embedded in justice

Build right relationships & social structures through a radical respect for human rights & life 

Conflict is normal in human relationships, and conflict is a motor of change.

Transformation: constructive change efforts that include & go beyond the resolution of specific problems. Goal: healthy relationships & communities.

Purpose: engage creative tension between themes of resolution & transformation in order to sharpen understanding, not to discredit the work of those who prefer other terms. 

2. Lenses of CT: Immediate, Pattern, Framework

Topography: a relief map of the peaks & valleys. 

> Peaks: significant challenges, often with emphasis on the recent/ current one.

> Valley: failures, inability to negotiate adequate solutions

We tend to:

• focus on immediate problem, give energy to reduce anxiety & physiological pain, without seeing the bigger map.
• view conflicts as series of challenges & failures, without a real sense of underlying causes & forces.

Conflict transformation is a way of looking as well as seeing.

3 lenses:

1. Immediate situation
2. Patterns of relationship & context in which conflict finds expression
3. Conceptual frameworks to connect presenting problems with deeper relational problems. Frameworks address:
1. Content
2. Context
3. Structure of relationships

3. Defining CT

Conflict transformation is to envision & respond to the ebb & flow of social conflict

as life-giving opportunities for creating constructive change processes

that reduce violence & increase justice in direct interactions & social structures,

and respond to real-life problems in human relationships.

Head: attitudes, perceptions, orientations

• "envision" : see conflict as natural phenomenon, creates potential for constructive growth
• "respond: be willing to respond in ways that maximize this potential
• "ebb & flow": not focus on single wave rising & crashing, but the ebbs & flows of energies, times, whole seasons, in the great sea of relationnships

Heart: intuition, spirit

• "human relationships": visible & invisible, immediate & long-term
• "life-giving opportunities": conflict creates life, pulsating heart creates rhythmic blood flow

Hands:

• "constructive": creative, conflict is a gift
• "change processes": What are the processes that the conflict itself has generated? (e.g. we avoid talking about certain topics, we don't name our yearnings & impacts, etc.?). How can these processes be altered, or other processes initiated, that will move the conflict in a constructive direction?

Legs & Feet:

• "reduce violence": increases understanding, equality, respect
• "increase justice": equitable, people must have access and voice in decisions that affect their lives.
• "process-structure": phenomenon that is simultaneously dynamic, adaptive, and changing, and yet has a form, purpose, and direction that gives it shape.
• "direct interaction & social structures": dialogue is one among the essential mechanisms (exchange ideas, find common definitions, seek ways forward toward solutions)

4. Conflict & Change: Personal, Relational, Structural, Cultural

1. What changes are occurring as a result of conflict? E.g. what are its patterns & effects? 

2. What kind of changes to we seek? Our values & intentions.

Personal: 

• Descriptive (analytical framework): Conflicts affect our physiology, self-esteem, emotional capacity to perceive accurately, spiritual integrity
• Prescriptive (intervening strategy): intervene deliberately to minimize destructive effects of social conflict, maximize potential for growth (physical, emotional, spiritual)

Relational: 

• Descriptive: Relational affectivity, power, interdependence. How expressive, communicative, interactive patterns of conflict are affected. (Patterns of how we perceive ourselves/others, what we desire/ pursue/avoid, how we structure our relationships interpersonally, inter-group and intra-group. How close/ distant do we wish to be? How will we use/build/share power? ).
• Prescriptive: intervene intentionally to minimize poor communication, maximize mutual understanding

Structural: 

• Descriptive: Analyze conditions that give rise to conflict, analyze how conflict affects change in social structures & patterns of decision-making (eg. people build & organize social, economic, political, institutional relationships to meet needs, provide access to resources, make decisions, etc.)
• Prescriptive: intervene deliberately to gain insight to underlying causes & conditions which create/ foster violent expressions of conflict. Promote nonviolent means (eg. advocacy). Develop structures that meet basic human needs (substantive justice) while maximizing involvement of people in decisions that affect them (procedural justice).

Cultural: 

• Descriptive: Understand how conflict affects cultural patterns (eg. identity), how accumulated & shared patterns affect how people understand/ respond to conflict
• Prescriptive: Help those in conflict understand the patterns. Identify, promote, build on resources & mechanisms WITHIN that culture for constructively responding to/ handling conflict.

Change must be viewed descriptively and prescriptively.

5. Connecting Resolution & Transformation

Resolution: How do we end something that is not desired? - content + de-escalate

• Episode: visible, within distinct timeframe

Transformation: How do we end something that is not desired and build something that we do desire? - context + de- and escalate in pursuit of constructive change

• Epicenter: web of relational patterns, history of lived episodes, from which new episodes & issues emerge

6. Creating a Map of Conflict

Inquiry 1: Presenting Situation

Issue

Patterns

History

Inquiry 2: Horizon of the Future - can be seen but not touched, social energy that informs & creates orientation

Solutions

Relationships

Structures: What do we hope to build? What would we ideally like to see in place?

Inquiry 3: Development of Change Processes

Personal

Relational

Structural

Cultural

What kind of changes & solutions are needed? At what levels? Around which issues? Embedded within which relationships?

7. Process-Structures as Platforms for Change

How to develop & sustain a platform/ strategic plan that can (a) adapt, (b) generate ongoing desired change, (c) respond creatively to immediate needs?

Process-structure (Meg Wheatley): things that maintain form over time yet have no rigidity of structure. Phenomena which are both circular & linear, has adaptability & purpose.

Circle: No one point in time determines the broader pattern. Change encompasses different patterns & directions as part of the whole.

Linear: Social forces move in broad directions usually invisible to the naked eyes, rarely obvious in short time frames. A linear approach pushes us to express & test of theories of change, that too often lie unexplored beneath layers of rhetoric & knee-jerk responses. 

"Hey, good intentions are not enough. How exactly is this action creating change? What is changing and in what direction is it going?"

Figure 4: Transformational Platform

Platform (~scaffold-trampoline, giving us a base to stand on & jump from):

• Understanding of various levels of conflict
• Processes to address immediate problems
• Vision for the future
• Plan for change process which will move in that direction

8. Developing Our Capacities

Practice 1: See presenting issues as a window

• See without being captivated/ overwhelmed/ driven by present demands
• Avoid urgency/ anxiety

We look through issue (=window glass) to bring into focus the scene that lies beyond the immediate situation.

Practice 2: Integrate multiple time frames

• Visualize time as connected to specific needs at different levels
• Departments re-conceived to reflect new mission = multiyear
• Who will work Saturdays while discussion are ongoing? = immediate

Practice 3: Pose the energies of conflict as dilemmas

• Should we send in food and indirectly contribute to the war, as armed groups take it?
• --> How can we build capacities for peace AND AT THE SAME TIME create responsive mechanisms for delivering humanitarian aid?
• Identify key energies. Hold them us together as interdependent goals.
• How can we address "A" and at the same time build "B"?

Practice 4: Make complexity a friend, not a foe.

The capacity to live with apparent contradictions & paradoxes lies at the heart of transformation.

The only way to truly get rid of an enemy is to make him your friend. - Abraham Lincoln

• Trust the capacity of systems to generate options/ avenues for change/ moving forward
• Pursue those that apparently hold the greatest promise
• Must not lock rigidly onto one avenue
• Like a kid in a candy store, complexity opens up for us a wide range of potentials. We're not limited by having too few options, but by our own inability to experience this wide range of choices.  

Practice 5: Hear & engage voices of identity

• Narratives of how people see themselves, who they are, where they have come from, what they fear they will become or lose
• Create spaces & processes that encourage people to address & articulate a positive sense of identity in relationship to others, but not in reaction to them?
• Be attentive to language, metaphors & expresses that signal the distresses of identity.
• 5 years ago, not one employee here would even think of such a thing. I wouldn't have.
• The folks who were here first no longer have a voice here.
• Not just spaces for inter-identity exchange. Often the most crucial parts of the processes are safe spaces for internal, self, or intra-group spaces.
• Pushing for inter-identity exchange without a framework of preparation & adequate support can be counterproductive/ destructive.
• Honesty: cannot be forced, happens when people feel safe, can see their own responsibility in the conflict
• Iterative learning: several rounds. 
• Appropriate exchange: Try never to ignore/ talk away someone's perception. Try to understand where it is rooted. 
• Need not fall prey to process-overload. Dialogue-as-talk is not the only path.
• Dialogue through music, arts, rituals. Dialogue-as-sport, fun & laughter. Dialogue-as-shared-work to preserve buildings/ cultivate garden.
• Never propose/ tinker with structural arrangements as tactic to avoid deeper perception

If we had no other color in the world than the color blue, then blue would be colorless. To distinguish blue we need a matrix of colors.

9. Applying the Framework

Episodic:

> Recent time frame: rising tension past months

> Content: specific actions: speeding tickets, stopping certain kinds of people

> Relational: how individuals are treated

• Can we do something about rising number of unwarranted tickets?
• Improve how police treat citizens?
• Agree on what citizens' traffic responsibilities are?
• Understand mandate for safety that the police are helping to uphold?

Epicenter:

> Long term: repeated patterns, various issues

> Relational: individuals & police interact over time

> Structural: how community views the roles of policing, how police & officials view their responsibility

> Identity: how each group view the town, expectation

• Discuss & develop bill of rights & responsibilities of and for police & citizens, that prevent abuse, promote safety?
• Create long-term vision of what the town needs?
• Establish mechanism for citizens raising concerns?
• Provide regular, routine way of having constructive interaction between police & citizens?

Processes:

• Facilitated community forum: air grievances, clarity immediate needs & solutions
• Facilitated community forum: talk about expectations for community policing
• Initiative to develop regular exchange & feedback between P & C
• Initiative to develop long-range strategic plan: mission statement & guiding values for policing, involving C, P, Officials
• Plan to initiate citizen-police advisory panel that creates specific ways C & P can consult & exchange their concerns, hopes, fears
• Community events, processes, common initiatives

10. Conclusions

Why do we do this work? What are we hoping to build?

May the warmth of complexity shine on your face.

May the winds of good change blow gently at your back.

May your feet find the roads of authenticity.

May the web of change begin!

- Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies - Notre Dame