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This work should be of interest to people who deal with disputes, of whatever kind. It could also be useful to students and others interested in this rapidly growing field. Topics include strategies for resolving conflict, family mediation, and restorative justice.

This collection of activities, self-assessments, and exercises is especially useful as a resource to introduce the issue of conflict and its resolution as a part of workshops on management, leadership, communication, negotiation and diversity. The book is fully reproducible and flexibly organized in two sections. Part One includes twenty-five interactive group learning activities to explore conflict and provide practice in skills that help to resolve it. Part Two consists of twenty-five individualized exercises and assessments that are ideal for pre-work prior to group training sessions, or th

The importance of the culture concept for the development of theory in conflict resolution is explored, arguing that the view of culture taken in many contemporary treatments of conflict resolution is too "thin": cultural differences have been reduced in effect to matters of differential etiquette. In this vein, several common misconceptions of culture are noted, including: its reification, assumptions of its uniform distribution in social groups, & its reduction to custom. In contrast, a view of culture is developed that stresses the local, indigenous, commonsense understandings of conflict (ethnoconflict theory), alongside techniques or processes of conflict resolution (ethnopraxis). It is argued that at the center of such ethnoconflict theories & ethnopraxes are the local & indigenous ideas about human nature, personhood, & self. The ethnographic case-study method is recommended for investigation of these ideas. Three contexts of culture & conflict resolution, often conflated, are differentiated & explicated: the cross-cultural (understandings of ethnoconflict theories & ethnopraxes made available for comparative purposes); intercultural (conflict & its resolution between individual or groups from different cultural traditions); & transcultural (techniques or processes that appear to transcend cultural differences). AA

This article evaluates the framing concept and its utility for communication research in conflict resolution. The framing concept holds potential heuristic value that has not been realized. The authors take three rehabilitative steps: (a) define frames as communicative, rather than cognitive, constructions, (b) provide a theoretical framework for explicating the communicative framing process and its potential impact in conflict, and (c) explore the effects of particular framing patterns on actual conflict interaction. The framing concept is enhanced through alignment with negotiated order theory, speech act theory, and speech accommodation theory. It is argued that disputants and the professionals who work with them "frame" issues, using language choices to highlight some aspects of an issue, while ignoring others. Linguistic choices function as verbal cues to other participants, who may respond by converging or diverging on frames. As expected, the results of the study found a positive relationship between frame convergence and frequency of agreements. Negotiators and mediators who guided disputant discussion toward frame convergence increased focus, control, positive social attributions, and integrativeness.

From earliest times human societies, like those which proceeded them, have been subject to rule by the relatively strong. In contemporary legal terms there have been "those who have a right to rule, and others who have an obligation to obey." Feudal societies, then industrial societies, had structures that reflected these we-they relationships based on relative power.