Newsletter #12

MBI Newsletter

Newsletter # 12 --  April 12, 2018

About Moving Beyond Intractability Newsletters

Every week or so, we will compile recent blog and seminar posts into a Newsletter that is posted on MBI and sent out by email to subscribers. You can subscribe on the Newsletter Sign Up Page and find all past newsletters on the Newsletter Archive Page. Ways to overcome potential email delivery problems are shown at the bottom of this newsletter.

April 12 Update: 

We are finally getting back in "the swing of things" after moving web hosting services. The result is a backlog of posts in this newsletter, for which we apologize.  Starting with the next one, however, we will strive to have only one weeks' worth of posts in the newsletter, which will make the size more manageable.  If you find any of these posts of interest, we hope you will consider engaging in the attached discussions.  We really want to make this a two-way conversation!

Things YOU Can Do To Help Blog

Conflict Frontiers Seminar

Unit 2: Pushing the Frontier: the Limits of Business-as-Usual Approaches

Unit 3: Introduction to Complexity and "Systems Thinking" -- Theoretical Antecedents

Conflict Fundamentals Seminar

Unit 2: Core Concepts

  • Lederach's "Meeting Place" -- None of these are simple and it is very hard to have all four together. But doing so, says Lederach "is the meeting place of reconciliation." -- March 17, 2018
  • Stable Peace -- The region of stable peace, Boulding observed, included North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia. Is this region growing or shrinking? -- March 18, 2018
  • Principles of Justice and Fairness -- An examination of the many different meanings of justice: distributive, procedural, retributive, and restorative among others. -- March 20, 2018

Unit 3: Conflict Parties

  • First Parties, Third Parties, and Thirdsiders -- An essay examining the different roles conflict parties play, showing how even disputants can also be dispute resolovers. -- March 21, 2018
  • Ury's "Third Side"' -- Ury describes 10 third side roles that both conflict insiders and outsiders can play to help make conflicts more constructive. -- March 22, 2018
  • Leaders and Leadership -- An examination of the different meanings of the word "leader," what makes leaders good or bad, and the dynamics between a group and their leader. -- April 4, 2018
  • Lederach's Pyramid -- A well-known diagram from Building Peace,this essay explains the roles of top-level, mid-level, and grassroots leadership. -- April 5, 2018
  • Within-Party Differences -- A look at "persuadables," "reluctant persuadables," "traders" and "hardliners." Each needs to be treated differently. -- April 6, 2018
  • Extremists and Spoilers -- Written before the "countering violent extremism" paradigm was developed, this essay lays out early fundamental thinking on the problem. -- April 7, 2018

Unit 4: Core Factors

  • Core and Overlays Part 1 -- An examination of the Burgess's theory of core and overlaying factors which contribute to conflict intractability. -- April 9, 2018
  • Core and Overlays Part 2 -- Following on from an examination of core factors, this article examines the Burgess's notion of "complicating factors" that also contribute to intractability. -- April 9, 2018
  • High-Stakes Distributional Issues -- A further discussion of one of the Burgess's core factors driving intractability. -- April 10, 2018
  • Inequality -- Inequality was a key driver of intractability when this article was written--it is even more so now. -- April 12, 2018
  • Moral or Value Conflicts -- Value conflicts cannot be dealt with as if they were interest-based conflicts, although that's how mediators are often taught to handle them. -- April 13, 2018

Beyond Intractability in Context Blog


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