Figure 1: The Big Picture of Conflict Transformation

 

 

A key paradox of the presenting issues is the connection between the present and the past. The patterns of “how things have been” provide the context from which the immediate issues of dispute rise to the surface. The presenting issues create opportunity to remember and recognize, but presenting issues do not in themselves have the power to positively change what has already transpired. The potential for constructive change lies in our ability to recognize, understand, and redress what has happened. Positive change requires a willingness to create new ways of interacting, to build relationships and structures that look toward the future.

 

To return to our definition, the immediacy of the presenting issues, and the energy released as people contend over these issues, defines the “episodic” expression of the conflict. Moving through the presenting issues toward the spheres of relational and historical patterns takes us to the epicenter of conflict, which is always capable of regenerating new episodes, either on similar or on different issues. Transformation seeks to see and understand both: the episode and the epicenter. This takes us to another level of inquiry—Inquiry Three—but first we need to examine another set of embedded spheres, the horizon of the future.

 

Inquiry 2:

The horizon of the future

 

The second point of inquiry helps us think about the horizon of the future. The image of a horizon may be an appropriate way to imagine the future. A horizon can be seen but not touched. It can provide orientation, but it requires constant journeying each day. The future is something we can visualize but do not control.

 

In our big picture the future is represented as a set of spheres and is meant to suggest an open and dynamically evolving future. Embedded in this space of engagement and exploration are smaller spheres— immediate solutions, relationships, structures—that involve possible avenues for dealing with the immediate presenting issues, as well as processes that address relational and structural patterns. The inquiry into the horizon of the future brings forward questions like these: What do we hope to build? What would we ideally like to see in place? How can we address all levels—immediate solutions as well as underlying patterns of relationships and structures?

 

If these two sets of spheres or levels of inquiry (the presenting situation and the horizon of the future) were the only components of the big picture, we might have a model of linear change: a movement from the present situation to the desired future. However, it is important to visualize the overall picture as an interconnected circle. We can see this in the energies depicted by the arrows. The presenting situation spheres create a push to do something about these issues. They are a kind of social energy creating an impulse toward change, depicted as the arrow moving forward. On the other side, the horizon of the future harnesses an impulse that points toward possibilities of what could be constructed and built. The horizon represents a social energy that informs and creates orientation. Here the arrow points both back toward the immediate situation and forward to the range of change processes that may emerge. The combination of arrows provides an overall circle. In other words, our big picture is both a circular and a linear process, or what we earlier referred to as a process-structure.

 

Inquiry 3:

The development of change processes

 

This brings us to the third major inquiry, the design and support of change processes. Again, we can visualize these in the form of a sphere with embedded components. This overall sphere requires that we think about response to conflict as the development of processes of change that attend to the web of interconnected needs, relationships, and patterns on all four levels: personal, relational, cultural, and structural.

 

Note that we describe “processes” in the plural. Processes of change require us to hold together at the same time multiple interdependent initiatives that are different but not incompatible. Transformation requires us to reflect on multiple levels and types of change processes, rather than addressing ourselves only to a single operational solution. The change processes address both the episodic content and the patterns and context or epicenter. We must conceptualize multiple change processes that address solutions for immediate problems and at the same time processes that create a platform for longer-term change of relational and structural patterns.

 

This approach goes beyond negotiating solutions and builds

Toward something new.

 

In the broadest terms, then, the transformation framework comprises three inquiries: the presenting situation, the horizon of preferred future, and the development of change processes linking the two. The movement from the present toward the desired future is not a straight line. Rather, it represents a dynamic set of initiatives that set in motion change processes and promote long-term change strategies, while providing responses to specific, immediate needs. Conflict transformation faces these challenges: What kind of changes and solutions are needed? At what levels? Around which issues? Embedded in which relationships?

 

Such a framework emphasizes the challenge of how to end something not desired and how to build something that is desired. Remember, this approach connects resolution practices that have often looked for ways to end a particular “iteration” or repetition of conflict with a transformation orientation that works at building ongoing change at relational and structural levels. On the one hand, this framework deals with presenting problems and the content of the conflict, seeking to find mutually acceptable solutions to both. These are often processes that reduce violence and the continued escalation of conflict. On the other hand, this approach goes beyond negotiating solutions and builds toward something new. This requires the negotiation of change processes rising from a broader understanding of relational patterns and historical context.

 

Transformation negotiates both solutions and social change initiatives. It requires a capacity to see through and beyond the presenting issues to the deeper patterns, while seeking creative responses that address real-life issues in real time. However, to more fully comprehend this approach we need to understand more completely how platforms for constructive change are conceptualized and developed as process-structures.