Integrating Ideas of Culture, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism into Conflict Resolution and ADR Practice

Drawing on recent, critical work dealing with culture theory, ethnicity, and multiculturalism, this essay seeks to address the nexus between conflict resolution theory and practice, and aims primarily to contribute to the work of practitioners functioning as third parties and intervenors in intercultural and interethnic conflicts and disputes. Two conceptions of culture are proposed and analyzed, a technical, “experience-distant” sense of the term, crucial for conflict analysis (and for education and training), and an affectively-laden, often politicized, “experience-near” sense of the term, at the root of so much intergroup conflict and, thus, implicated in effective and ethical intercultural practice.