Conflict Resolution Beyond the International Relations Paradigm

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Abbreviations

Introduction

Questions I am aiming to address

The organization of the text

Part I

Chapter 1

Binary frames in conflict resolution

Realist theories of international relations

Liberal theories of international relations

In the shadow of Track 1: interactive problem solving

Alternative to binary frames in conflict resolution

Multitrack models of conflict resolution

Network theory

The third side

Constructivist trends in conflict analysis

Reflective and elicitive practice

Theories of ethnicity and nationalism

Critical theory

Structuration theory: segue into participatory research design

Chapter 2

Participatory action research

Case selection

Auto-ethnography

First-person action research and collective auto-ethnography

Second-person action research

Ethical considerations and limitations

Chapter 3

My background, the resulting perspective and subjectivity, and their role in this research

Part II

Chapter 4

The program design and implementation

Program design vs. program reality

Intermission

Back to dialogue

Methodological agony

Reframing

Getting real

Closure

Implications of the Syrian dialogue for this research: toward inclusive frames that do not privilege the violent extremes

Chapter 5

The Nagorno-Karabakh Analytic Initiative

The first meeting

The first full symposium

The second full symposium

Working group

Implications of the Nagorno-Karabakh Analytic Initiative for recognizing power dynamics and resulting exclusion, and marginalization

Part II postscript

Part III

Chapter 6

In the shadow of the international relations discourse

Practical implications of naming initiatives “Track 2”: impact on selection

Practical implications of naming initiatives “Track 2”: impact on dialogue

Leaving the shadow: addressing patterns of marginalization influenced by the international relations discourse

Conceptual alternatives

Evolving Designs: rethinking the language of mediation

Evolving Designs: rethinking dialogue and PSW

Evolving Designs in practice: transforming the Analytic Initiative

Chapter 6 postscript: gender and other binaries that affect conflict resolution practice

Chapter conclusions

Chapter 7

Formation of a single dominant faction within initiatives

Cultural intelligibility to the organizers

Reliance on a dominant discourse external to the initiative

Competition for domination and shifting marginalization

Recognizing and addressing domination and resulting marginalization

Chapter conclusions

Chapter 8

Competition among organizations

Walking the talk: the case for the organizations preaching cooperation to lead by example

Power struggles within teams

Addressing marginalization within teams

Chapter conclusions

Chapter 9

Reflection: the learning and the key findings

Action: Evolving Designs in Imagine Center’s recent initiatives

Questions for further research

Postscript

Bibliography

Copyright

Abstract

The field of conflict resolution holds the promise of freeing approaches and policies concerning politics of identity from the fatalistic grip of realism. While the conceptual literature on conflicts has moved in this alternative direction, conflict resolution practice continues to rely on realist frames and acts as an unwanted auxiliary to official processes. Perpetuation of conflict discourses, marginalization, and exclusion of affected populations are widespread, caused by the overreliance of conflict resolution practice on the binary frames of classic international relations paradigms and also by the competitive and hierarchical relationships within the field itself.

This book learns from the reflection and action cycles customary for participatory action research (PAR) and collective auto-ethnography to expose patterns of exclusion and marginalization as well as the paradoxical reproduction of conflict-promoting frames in current conflict resolution practices applied to the Nagorno-Karabakh and Syrian cases. It builds on the work of postmodernist scholars, reflective practice, and discourse analysis to explore alternative and inclusive strategies and to propose the flexible methodology of Evolving Designs that carries a transformative potential for conflict resolution.

Acknowledgments

It is hard to find words to describe the depth of gratitude I feel to my family, friends, colleagues, and mentors for years of unwavering support that allowed me to complete this book that developed out of my dissertation.

First and foremost, I am grateful to my mentor, colleague, and dissertation committee chair Dr. Susan Allen for her advice, challenge, ongoing communication, feedback, and suggestions on numerous drafts of each chapter. I am particularly grateful to Susan for encouraging me to develop my own voice in the field and to stay true to my constructivist belief system, for her support to my choice of a not-very-traditional to conflict resolution action research methodology that proved to be invaluable and innovative both for the findings in this book and the practices that it touched.

I am thankful to my dissertation committee member Dr. Susan Hirsch for her amazing deconstructive and reconstructive touch that helped me to rethink the entire organization and structure of this book. I am grateful to Susan for her support in helping me develop the ethnographic angle of my research. And I am grateful to her for my times as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) undergraduate program, where thanks to Susan’s collegial approach, I felt a valued and integral part of the team working on innovation of curricula and teaching methods.

I am fascinated and feel extremely lucky to have worked with my dissertation committee member Dr. Jessica Srikantia, who effortlessly combined in her approach utmost care, emotional and intellectual support for my work, with an equally blunt challenge to the patriarchy, racism, classism, and many other “isms” subconsciously held by me and present in my writing. A great many of Jessica’s comments made me pause my work, re-engage in reading, reflection, and self-questioning, very often leading to cardinal changes in my approaches to this book, practice, and life in general.

I am grateful to the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution of George Mason University (GMU) for serving as my academic home during my PhD studies, and for the Dissertation Completion Grant that allowed me to concentrate on writing in the most intense stage of the research.

I am forever indebted to my close friend and colleague from the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation (Imagine Center), linguist, Maria Karapetyan, who fully deserves to be named the chief editor of this book. From the very first line of the proposal to the very last line of this book, Maria has been the person with whom I discussed every section of every draft of this book; she was the first reader, the main critic, and the adviser. No time did Maria show that this work has been a burden for her, though it took weeks if not months of her time. I cannot imagine finishing the book without Maria’s friendship and support.

I am very lucky to be surrounded in my work by a great team of friends and colleagues who are always supportive, always challenging, extremely smart and courageous, devoted to each other and the vision of peace. In addition to Maria Karapetyan, our team of current and former colleagues who supported me in writing this book includes Sona Dilanyan, Veronika Aghajanyan, Sergey Rumyansev, Pinar Sayan, Christopher Littlefield, Arzu Geybullayeva, Hamida Giyasbaily, Sevil Huseynova, and Zamira Abbasova. I want to thank them for their dedication, support, and the time spent reflecting, hearing, questioning, and advising. Most importantly, I am appreciative for their openness in allowing us to experiment in our practice with the insights gained through the action research process of my research. Without such support from the team, it would have been impossible to complete the “action” part of the reflection and action cycles of the research that resulted in this book. A particularly strong “thank you” goes to Sona Dilanyan on whose judgment and advice I relied when working through particularly sensitive passages.

I am grateful to my fellow students, Jacquelyn Greiff and Matthew Graville, in the Reflective Practice class at S-CAR, GMU, for all the time they devoted to reflection sessions that would support the research that resulted in this book. During the year-long period of our joint work on some of the Imagine Center’s projects, Jacquelyn’s perspicacity through all our reflective conversations in her office and on our flights to and from the project locations shaped many of the core ideas of this book.

I thank all the colleagues working in the Nagorno-Karabakh and Syrian conflict contexts who participated in this research and particularly its reflection and action part, yet who I cannot name in the interest of preserving their anonymity. The insights, findings, and innovations suggested here belong to them as much as they belong to me.

And I am most appreciative of the opportunity to express how incredibly lucky I am to have near me Zara Papyan—my best friend, my life partner, and my spouse—and my two boys Mark and Mikael, who tolerated me despite my continuous evening disappearances in the bedroom with books, papers, and laptops. I am deeply touched by the care, not least in form of an ongoing supply of tea and fruit, that kept me going through hours of writing, and for all the love expressed through undeserved hugs and cheers as I would emerge from my cave. I love you!

Foreword

Philip Gamaghelyan is not only the author of this book, but also an expert conflict resolution practitioner. The book you hold now represents a synthesis of expert insights from his years of practical engagement in conflict processes, presented with careful reflection. By pairing his own experience of over a decade of facilitation with reflective practice with colleagues and in-depth study of other conflict transformation literature, Philip offers us important insights that will inspire needed developments in the field of conflict resolution.

This book challenges us to create truly inclusive conflict transformation processes. So much of conflict is about exclusion. In deeply divided conflicts, the “other” is dehumanized, and their stories and perspectives dismissed. When we start to engage in these conflicts, getting to know them and their conversations, we begin to speak the conflict’s language. That language risks perpetuating the conflict. The book challenges us to ask how dialogues on conflict issues can avoid perpetuating these exclusionary dynamics?

I have faced the struggle with exclusionary dynamics in my own work. When Philip came to the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, he worked with me on a dialogue series called Point of View. The first of these dialogues had taken place at George Mason University’s conflict resolution retreat center, Point of View, just after the August 2008 war over South Ossetia. People from Tbilisi and Tskhinval(i) came together there and considered ways to address the ongoing humanitarian needs after the war. They needed each other to address issues such as missing persons (where information from the other side of the ceasefire line was helpful), prisoners held across the ceasefire line, etc. By the time Philip joined us in 2010, the dialogues had developed into a phase of increasing understanding across the dividing line. Philip was quick to point out to me that we had framed the dialogues as Georgian-South Ossetian dialogues. But, we also had people of mixed heritage participating in the dialogues. What of the participants who were part-Georgian and part-South Ossetian? Did the dialogues make them choose a side? Yes, they traveled to the dialogues from one side of the ceasefire line, but were they being constrained by the framing of the discussion as a two-sided conversation? Could they not also have unique perspectives, drawn from conversations with relatives across the dividing line? In fact, everyone on the dialogues each brought their own unique perspectives. With Philip’s encouragement, we incorporated more thematic discussions that did not need to be framed as two-sided. As we turned to look at what would make prisoner release possible, we became a group of individuals, each with his/her own connections to the prisoner release efforts, each with his/her own expertise, and we worked on solving a shared problem. Yes, some of the group could meet only with the leadership in South Ossetia, and, yes, some of the group could meet only with the leadership in Georgia, but these were not the only defining aspects of the expertise participants brought. Some were legal experts, some were media experts, some worked with displaced people who had vocal opinions on the prisoner release issues, and some visited prisoners to monitor human rights. Drawing on these various kinds of expertise was important to allow the dialogue group to lay the groundwork that made the eventual prisoner release possible. By seeing the complexity of each participant’s identity, we drew on the many strengths in the group.

All this points out that the suggestions offered by this book are timely and pragmatic. The book touches the core of the field of conflict analysis and resolution, asking us to improve our theory and our practices, and, ultimately, the structure of our field. Starting with how we conceive of conflict transformation dialogues, and how we invite individuals to join these dialogues, moving on to how a conflict mapping organically represents the people gathered in the room, based on their own ways of categorizing themselves, and then considering how to prevent dominant factions from commandeering conversations. Our field must build more inclusive structures, overcome the competition for funding that in practice makes a mockery of our theory of collaboration, and build teams that engage all members’ voices with respect. Philip’s many years of conflict resolution work allow him to speak with authority about approaches that have worked in practice.

The Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology that informs this work was also essential to its success. Philip writes not only from his own experience, but also from that of the colleagues that joined him as co-researchers, reflecting together on their experiments with more inclusive conflict resolution practices. By engaging colleagues as co-researchers, Philip assured he was not only examining others’ assumptions, but also putting his own assumptions up for examination. Philip’s own auto-ethnography is a core part of the book, allowing him to tell his own stories of his forays into conflict transformation. In addition, a major strength here is the collective auto-ethnography he captures based on group reflection of their shared work. I hope Philip’s work will be read not only for the important theoretical and practical insights offered here, but also as an example of methodological innovation that offers our field new possibilities in research. I see many more possibilities for the expansion of Participatory Action Research (PAR) in conflict resolution research.

In conclusion, I urge colleagues and students of conflict resolution to read this book attentively. Philip offers us guidance as we develop practices that more closely align with our constructivist and inclusive theories. And, he offers guidance on how to do conflict-appropriate research with PAR. There is, of course, still more to do in this direction. Philip is already working on more in-depth consideration of gender inclusivity in conflict transformation processes. And, I encourage readers to find additional ways to build on this revolutionary work.

Susan Allen, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Peacemaking Practice

Associate Professor, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution

George Mason University

Abbreviations