I wanted to share some thinking I had about a meeting I went to yesterday. It was with a group of about 40 other mediators, and there was a guest speaker who gave a talk on mediation at the World Bank. This bank has branches here in the US & also around the world. One of the things the speaker was highlighting was the differences in the US-based World Bank mediations (and the successes of these mediations) in contrast to those outside the US in selected cultures. Mediation has become more accepted and more successful in their US-based offices. The perception of mediation differs from culture to culture.
The speaker suggested that in some cultures, when there is a conflict, the expectation of the parties is that an authority will “solve the problem.” There isn’t built into the culture a “way of negotiating towards a peaceful resolution.” Other cultures don’t want to look at conflict, or admit to its existence; this is a very challenging culture for the mediator when it is evident that a conflict really is existing, and people really want it to be resolved but can’t quite bring themselves to talk about it.
This talk yesterday got me to thinking about the word “culture” in general, and how this can be applied to family life as well. Each family has a unique culture existing within the context of the larger culture of the society… This culture, let’s say ‘inner culture’, sets for members of the family particular styles of relating to each other, of experiencing differences, and of dealing with conflict. Now, very broadly speaking, in any given family, tradition might assume that an authority ought to “settle the matter” or perhaps in a specific family conflict isn’t well tolerated, or in another there’s an aggressive style where the powerful prevail (“might makes right” so to speak), or a mixed style where individual family members will attempt to gain peace by negotiating with the more aggressive members. Or there may be avoidant styles.
Although the variables within any given family may be quite diverse, family culture may play a large role in how people deal with conflict. So one question might be, how can simply the idea of mediation begin to look at these clusters of customary ways of being in and dealing with conflict, and ways of perceiving conflict? Even before thinking about moving away from conflict, how can we look at the orientations towards conflict?
Nancy S
