Cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural conflict resolution are skills that take time, wisdom, and experience to develop. Yet, in this teach-it-to-me-quick world where black-and-white views are attractive, many simplistic approaches abound. Perhaps this article explains a piece of why many efforts by conflict "facilitators" to promote peace are useless, if not downright arrogant and thus destructive.
From "It's time to bury Peace Studies" (spiked):
[One] troubling aspect of [Johan] Galtung’s approach is his belief that outsiders always have a better understanding of conflicts than those who are born into them, live in them, and may be killed by them. In his own words: ‘Each time you listen to a new conflict party, the conflict changes colours and you see it from a new angle, and a new angle, and once again a new angle. And since they often don’t talk with each other, the mediator gets a much better overview than they have themselves.’
Yup. And then, once you feel that you understand the conflict better than parties involved in it do, you simply gather them all in one room and say: ‘Hey everyone, how about a federation!’
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Perhaps historians will one day discuss why so many young and talented Europeans walked away from the burning issues and great challenges in their own countries to go out and solve problems in more exotic locales. Perhaps they will conclude that they did it not only because it seemed more fun and adventurous, but also because people like Galtung told them they could, and gave them cool triangular models and group-dialogue techniques to use as tools in ‘the field’. ...
Those of us who live in conflict-ridden societies would benefit the most from an end to this era of Galtungian conflict resolution. We rarely gained anything from those distant university courses in conflict resolution and peace building. ...
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