This fall one of my academic goals was to immerse myself in the work of John Paul Lederach, one of the giant voices as a scholar and practitioner in the realm of conflict mediation. Lederach is known for advocating the language and approach of Conflict Transformation, which is the topic of this edition of the “Little Book” series. The Little Book of Conflict Transformation is a condensed unpacking of Lederach’s approach and theory of conflict. It’s affordable to in the 5-6$ range.
In short, Lederach is not a fan of the language of conflict management or approaches that are anchored in an expert driven mode. He strongly advocates in approaches to conflict mitigation that build into the process the formation and strengthening of relationships that can lead to changes in character and relationships for sustained peace and partnership.
This book offers 3 lenses – a lens of the immediate situation, a lens that sees the deeper patterns of relationship, and a third lens of a conceptual framework that holds all of the perspectives together and offers insight into how to move forward through conflict in ways that transform all parties and the relationships. He proposes the following definition of conflict which helps illustrate a lot of what the book tries to capture:
Conflict transformation is to envision adn respond to the ebb and flow of social conflict as life-giving opportunities for creating constructive change processes that reduce violence, increase justice in direct interaction and social structures, and resopnd to real-life problems in human relationships. – pg. 14
This definition guides conflict efforts to be targeted to personal, relational, structural, and cultural dimensions. Lederach does well arguing for how conflict must be approached holistically and in the context of systemic dynamics.
I like Lederach’s cocneptual framework, his “Big Picture of Conflict Transformation” (pg. 35) that illustrates the flow of inquiry from the presenting situation in its issue, patterns, and history to an inquiry into the future in terms of solutions, relationships and systems, and through a third inquirty in terms of the development of change processes in the personal, relational, cultural, and structural areas.
He highlights the hybrid approach to planning and approaches of using “process structures” instead of focusing on just process or just structure. He sees these two elements as interdependent in how adaptability and purpose must work together for long term results.
For a short book, it does a great job establishing a theoretical foundation that is holistic and multifaceted enough to handle complexity. It also maps out a leadership development path for individuals involved in this approach to conflict with at least 5 needed conflict capacities to be able to lead through these types of conflict areas. These were great and highly informative to any conflict transformation training and development efforts.
For the area of mediation and conflict intervention in complex or multicultural contexts, I think this would be a great investment because there is a high return of investment in wisdom and impact for the number of pages and cost of the book. I am really glad I read it.
