Contentious Conversations Series, Conversation 3: Conflict Analysis and Resolution: Topic, Discipline, or Field?

Contentious Conversation 3 -- "Conflict Analysis and Resolution:  Topic, Discipline, or Field?"

Date:  **Wednesday, Apr. 6, 2011
Time:  12:15 - 1:15 p.m.
Location:  Truland Building, Room 555

**Please note the change from Thursdays, as previously held, to a Wednesday.  This is meant to coordinate better with ICAR faculty schedules.

Opening speakers:  ICAR Profs. Sara Cobb, Christopher Mitchell, Thomas Flores
Facilitator:  Ted Thompson, ICAR Ph.D. student

Description:   
"How do we define what we do under the heading of “conflict analysis and resolution”? Is CAR a “field” or "discipline" that shares common theoretical or methodological approaches?  Is it a common “topic” to which we bring the insights and approaches of our various disciplines? If we do comprise a “field” or "discipline," where do the boundaries of our intellectual landscape lie, and do – or should – we have a “canon” around which we orient our work and our community?
Speakers will offer brief opening remarks, after which everyone is welcome to participate in the conversation in round-table format. 

Please feel free to bring your lunch.  Coffee and tea will be provided.

Summary of the Discussion:

Opening Remarks

Sara Cobb introduced her approach to conflict analysis and resolution as collecting and making sense of the stories people tell about the conflicts they are in.  For her, there is a seamless relationship between research, inquiry and practice.  She entered the questions of the day via etymologies.  So, ‘canon’ comes from church law and means ‘rule’ or ‘standard of judging’.  For her, in a “world contaminated by reflexivity,” there is no “Archimedean standpoint” from which to perceive the truth.  Rather, there is an “epistemology of invention”; but yet not “relativist”.  The word ‘discipline’ has Latin roots that point to suffering and punishment, as well as discipline as an object of knowledge.  The sense is of a “treatment that corrects or punishes…”  Learning, then, carries the sense of “correction to the right way of knowing”. 

She is not in favor of this view of CAR.  Rather, she sees it as a “collection of conversations” (Dan Rothbart’s phrase).  This still entails knowing the history of conversations, reflection on experience, and paying attention to traditions of practice.  A practical question:  how to teach CONF 900, as a rod of discipline or as scholarship from a putatively non-Archimedean standpoint?  She chose the latter this year:  to treat scholarship as narrative practice, as telling a story with a scaffold and logic to the story, and paying attention to conventions of description and the history of relevant conversations. 

She concluded by expressing her preference for an “undisciplined, rowdy” approach, one that is resistant to traditional scholarship, to practice as attention to descriptions and history of descriptions, and to conflict resolution (CR) in general as paying attention to “descriptions that alter descriptions.”   

Chris Mitchell framed his comments in the following points:

1)    The question asked today is one he has asked in the Parents of the Field project –Is CAR a discipline or field?  Most founders had no intention to start a field, rather, the immediate goal was to understand and prevent conflict in context of Cold War.
2)    The way we divide up the world to study it is quite arbitrary, as are the labels.  Ex. – Regis chair (professorship) in physics at Cambridge Univ. is officially a chair in “natural philosophy”.   Labels and fields come and go. 
3)    There is an enormous amount of snobbery in what one regards as acceptable academic study, worst among the newcomer disciplines.  “Peace Studies” people have more problems than CAR people in determining their (proper subject matter or boundaries?)    
4)    We do not need a unique theory.  We have and need lots of theories. 
5)    We do not have a unique methodology, nor should we.
6)    As to the question of boundaries, Prof. Mitchell is coming to the conclusion that CAR is a field or focus of study. 
7)    But we do have a canon.  We should know the forebears in the field.   

Thomas Flores began by challenging the question he himself wrote:  If the question is being asked as to what CAR constitutes, then we don’t know, he asserted.  It is contested ground.  Problem – for doctoral students, and master’s students as well, the answer results in major implications for studies and lives.  Prof. Flores offered the following definition of ‘discipline or field’:  “a category of specialized knowledge of the physical and or social worlds we inhabit usually embodied in definitions of key concepts, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies.”  “But is that right?” he asked.  From the perspective of social identity theory, it could read, “A group of people who pursue a set of related and interrelated questions, and recognize themselves as a group, both internally and externally.”  That is, a group recognized as group both by those inside and those outside the group. 

He concluded his examination of the question with some observations and further questions, saying “I can’t define a discipline, but I know one when I see one.”  But how much disagreement can there be before a group stops becoming group, he asked, and what about subgroups?  There are huge disagreements within every field.  Borrowing from Art Garfunkle’s summary of his relationship with Paul Simon, Prof. Flores noted that he is coming to see his colleagues as “friends in arguments… disagreements… contestation…”  

He then considered implications for those working in this field.  With questions so broad that no one ‘department’ or ‘school’ of thought is the sole contributor of comments, and with the social world full of so many interrelated questions, he concluded that we are asking a “silly” question.  In his words, “There’s no such thing as a discipline.”  His advice is to focus on questions:  What is a good question?   What is a good answer to that question?   What is a good means of testing whether a specific answer ‘holds water’?  Then it becomes incumbent on scholars in the field to know who has answered the question and how.  “The labels are what get us in trouble.” 

General Conversation

•    Question – We tend to fall back on our backgrounds, but we’re not supposed to admit it.  When we leave ICAR, ‘who are we’?  What have we studied? 

•    Most of the professors at ICAR have a degree/background in a specific departmental discipline.  This is a strength of our field/topic/discipline/focus, thrives as such.  Saying that there is a CAR canon limits what the field can do.  It exists only so far as it has drawn on many fields. 

•    We have reached a turning point, particularly for undergraduates, who can choose CAR as major.  We’re building a whole cohort as such.  So, what is the implication for the future? 

•    Is this a question about competency? 

•    Not competency…identity.  We have to pull from all the strengths, but also find a balance with the canon, the past contributors.  We are moving forward with contributions to other fields.  This may be a problem of academic territoriality.  How do we represent ourselves, how are we heard, how do we relate, how do we have conversations and networks of conversations both within our field and between fields?

•    If we can all go in and engage (a question), why have a field?  Interesting to enter void where I’m looking for authority figure to recognize my discipline.  There isa  complaint from ICAR Ph.D.’s that their interdisciplinary background makes getting a job hard 

•    Conceptual and strategic answers – Conceptually, it’s great to have freedom of interdisciplinary environment; then what constitutes a contribution, by what standard will I be judged?  For grad students:  strategically, I would recommend any graduate student (interested in teaching) know a discipline, in order to expand job opportunities. 

•    I disagree.  Legitimacy comes through the nature of the conversations you have.  Who reads your stuff?  Where do you publish?  Think strategically about where you’re going to publish?  Who would review books, articles?  “Who are your buds?  Your network of people?  Your conversational partners?” 

•    Number of CAR programs huge!  (“104,” another person interjected.)  Big and growing.  Possible to get jobs in multiplying interdisciplinary spaces. 

•    “Peace studies” is a European term, “Conflict Analysis” is a  N. American – largely a matter of labels.  I agree with both prior comments – still true that snobbery affects job prospects in ‘top universities,’ but jobs have developed. 

•    Boundaries can be useful in determining identity.  Not with walls, but by differentiating by core assumptions (as in psychology, anthropology, etc.).  For CAR, these are that conflict is inevitable, addressable, and need not be destructive.  Class outside of ICAR has exposed for me the tenets of CAR’s (worldview), which can be used as organizing principle rather than methodology. Important to have a label for ourselves, lots of ideas for what that might be…

•    Idea of focus is a good one.  Conflict is being studied in a dozen disciplines.  To understand how to get toward peace requires understanding strategic studies.  Requires moving people toward CAR strategy.  50 years ago, there was no focus at all.  More focused now, but still broad!!!  We have not yet ‘brought in’ all the people studying conflict.  There is still very little cross-over knowledge between disciplines, leaving a lot of work to do to integrate.  Ought to be more of a network. 

•    International Relations sees CAR as subset? 

•    There are gaps in our field as well, in terms of what CA is.  Is question (re the core of knowledge) descriptive or prescriptive?  Descriptively – what is the core (beyond surface level)?  Prescriptively, is that the core we want?  Controversial among us at ICAR!  I think of the core as tendencies or directions. 

•    CAR as a ‘con game’. . . in good way:  you talk something into existence, you write something into existence.   There were two journals in 1950s, now 40 relevant journals today.  No masters programs in CAR, no conflict management programs in 1980-81, now 104 or so.  As for a job, it is much better in this field than in some very established disciplines.  It exists now in a way it didn’t.  It’s been narrated, talked into existence.  No anxiety needed about ‘field,’ ‘discipline,’ etc. – if certain other “Schools” (Business, Journalism, etc.) can be taken seriously,  no worries!  Anxiety can be useful as leads to creativity.  Best schools in other fields have disciplinarians.  I notice there has been no discussion of CAR as “profession”.  But “conflict specialist” is a profession in government.  Founder Brian Wedge wanted to form an MS degree, not an MA.  For Burton, it was important to have Conflict Studies because there was no place where conflict was studied generically.   He was reacting to IR assumption that inter-state conflict ‘epistemologically distinct’ from other conflicts.  Burton wanted to “bibliography” it into existence. 

•    Freedom can be defined as ‘nothing left to lose’.  How important is tenure?  Maybe we don’t like tenure anymore?  Strengths of ICAR are its inter-disciplinarity and problem-solving focus…  Questions to ask:  Who are your pals and enemies?  Where are your questions/arguments sharpened?  Look for those relationships.  That’s where we could be better as field.  Environmental metaphor of ‘field’ implies complex ecosystems.  How good are we at recognizing worldviews that form perspectives?  There are ways to do this that we can bring to the work from our interdisciplinary approach, that we also could do better.  Dealing with intersections and complexity is a skill.  And there are jobs available. 

•    Also, ability to talk across hierarchies is important.  One must be able to convince those of the prior generation’s way of thinking that what you’re doing is worthwhile.