Conflicts over farming practices in Canada: the role of interactive conflict resolution approaches

An increasing number of articles in professional and scientific journals, as well as in the public press, give evidence to a rising number of conflicts that exist in rural communities. These conflicts arise from changes in farming practices, the increasing number of large-scale production units, resource use, and demographics. Fair, effective and efficient approaches to resolve these conflicts are of increasing interest and importance. An interactive conflict resolution (ICR) approach that focuses on communication and positive social interactions may be a preferred approach for resolving conflicts. The role of ICR approaches in addressing conflicts arising from farming and agri-business practices is presented and discussed in this paper. The paper posits that ICR approaches are efficient from an economic as well as a social perspective and that they provide the greatest potential to realize socially optimal outcomes from a both a theoretical and practical perspective.     

Mediation and Minority Members of Academe

Focus groups are used to gather information from minorities in a university setting. Minority members of three campus groups (students, staff, and faculty) identified issues that could lead to relational conflicts. Alternative methods of dispute resolution are discussed in terms of their suitability and viability for use by minorities in academe. Mediation is presented as the preferred process for conflict resolution on an increasing number of college and university campuses. Mediation as a form of sociological practice in academia is a wide-open field of opportunity.     

Triangulation and Parent–Adolescent Relationships: Implications for Adolescent Dating Competence and Abuse

This study focuses on family predictors of conflict behavior in adolescent dating relationships, drawing on family systems and socialization perspectives. Mother–adolescent, father–adolescent, and triadic relationships each was examined as predictors of adolescent dating outcomes that hold importance for developmental and prevention science (positive conflict resolution, verbal abuse, and physical abuse). We conducted a longitudinal analysis using a 6‐month longitudinal design with 236 ethnically diverse high school students. Findings indicate that triangulation into parental conflicts was related to increases in positive conflict resolution and with increases in verbally abusive behavior with dating partners over time. Parent–adolescent closeness and conflict each was related to positive conflict resolution and verbal abuse, but these associations were only found for boys.     

Walgreens: A Case Study in Health Care Issues and Conflict Resolution

The major problems for Walgreens in the health care reform debate and its primary stakeholders are identified, as well as the possible strategies to resolve the conflicts between Walgreens and its stakeholders. The overt positions, underlying interests, and best alternatives for resolution between Walgreens and its stakeholders are evaluated. Additionally, a conflict resolution model for public relations is developed as a guideline in suggesting strategies for solution. The three major issues for Walgreens were (a) cost of drugs, (b) freedom to choose the drug provider, and (c) mail-order drugs. Walgreens should collaborate with its stakeholders on the cost of drugs issue, accommodate on the freedom of choice issue, and seek compromise on the mail-order drug issue.     

Stakeholder theories of the non-profit sector: One cut at the economic literature

This article examines and organises the economic literature dealing with non-profit institutions using the concept of ‘stakeholders’. In general, the literature identifies conflicts between various groups of stakeholders and then proceeds in two very different directions. The first is supportive of the non-profit sector, suggesting that non-profit organisations resolve those conflicts more effectively than other types of institutions. This provides a positive theory of the non-profit sector, explaining that non-profit institutions evolve when they are more effective in providing a particular good or service than other possible institutional arrangements. The second direction is more critical of the non-profit sector, suggesting that those conflicts will persist in non-profit institutions and will require some kind of resolution, including perhaps government intervention. Of course, a stakeholder approach to non-profit theory focuses on conflict and ignores some other views of the sector.     

Polycontextual Construction Zones: Mapping the Expansion of Schooled Space and Identity

By analyzing the activity of students building a cabin in a school setting, this article examines how conflicts among schooling and extraschooling activity systems can create an expansive space of identity development and learning. Drawing together activity system theories and theories of social space, the article illustrates how polycontextual conflicts and expansions are spatially contingent and productive of space. Symbolic and material dimensions of social space provide a sharpened lens through which to conceptualize intersystemic conflict and development. As the traffic of conflict and negotiation between modal schooling activity and cabin building is heightened around productions of social space, potential expansion of the systems and persons across them is related to the resolution of spatial dilemmas.     

What Do We Do When We Discuss? A Micro‐genetic Analysis of Couples’ Conflict

This article focuses on dialogic discursive dynamics present in couples’ conversations about unresolved conflicts. The phenomenon of conflict is addressed as a semiotically mediated process of co‐construction of the self and the relationship. The purpose of this article is to report on patterns of meaning construction in couples’ conflict, with the identification of strategies that promote or hinder resolution. A qualitative exploratory approach was used to focus on the interactional process at the micro‐processing level. Eight married couples participated in the study. The procedure considered asking the couple to discuss unresolved conflict. Recorded data of couples’ dialogues were transcribed to text and assessed through semiotic analysis using a microgenetic protocol (Molina, Del Río, & Tapia, 2015). The results document the use of strategies for conflict regulation such as psychological distancing, opposition, and generalisation on the border between protecting the bond and regulating tension. The dynamics of non‐resolution manifested in polarisation and rigid patterns with increased tension. The ‘in‐motion’ nature of dialogue about conflict is pushed by the semiotic tension that induces variations in subjective positions manifested in speech and actions.     

Role-Related Conflicts,Strains and Stresses of Older-Adult College Students

Abstract

The negative effects of role conflict, role strain and stress among non-traditional-aged college students are widely assumed but little studied. This paper examines how role conflict and role strain in older-adult students affect stress and, in turn, how strain, conflict and stress affect academically important outcomes such as depression, perceived value of college, grades, subsequent course load and retention. Data come from 355 students age 25 or older at a large, comprehensive, open-admissions, urban university. Regression analyses, controlling for demographics and self-efficacy, show that while older-adult students report wide-ranging role strain and conflict, only a few of these strains and conflicts promote stress. In particular, financial strains, work conflicts and university-caused strains are the main stressors. While stress does not affect any of the academic outcomes, role conflicts and role strains do have an effect. In addition, universities and colleges can do little to improve the retention rate of older-adult students.     

Conflict and Conflict Resolution in a Cooperative: The Case of the Nir Taxi Station

What conflict resolution mechanisms dodemocratic worker cooperatives generate and to whatextent could these mechanisms be called democratic? Thiscase study tries to address these questions by examining both conflict and conflict resolution in ademocratic organization, a 66-year-old taxi cooperative.The conflicts presented stem from three main sources:ethnic origin, local division of labor, and“class” affiliation. These conflicts are resolvedthrough different processes, ranging from a joke-tellingritual to a formal tribunal composed of elected judges.Discussion centers on unique aspects of conflict resolution in a democratic worker cooperativeand their implications for studies of conflictresolution in nondemocratic firms.     

Anticipated Work‐Family Conflict: Effects of Gender,Self‐Efficacy,and Family Background

Anticipated levels of 2 types of work‐family conflict (WFC) were studied among 358 students from 2 universities. The study examined the contribution of gender, parental models of child care and housework, and self‐efficacy to the variance in anticipated WFC. Findings demonstrated that the bidirectionality of the relations between work and family life also exists in anticipated conflicts. A number of gender‐related differences emerged: Women anticipated higher levels of work interfering with family and family interfering with work and demonstrated lower efficacy in managing these conflicts than did men. Exposure to an egalitarian child care model correlated with lower anticipated levels of work interfering with family. Self‐efficacy correlated negatively with both types of conflict. Implications for further research and career programs are discussed.     

The Nagorno Karabakh Conflict through the Prism of the Image of the Enemy

The post-Soviet space is fraught with multiple problems, risks and threats caused by unresolved conflicts. The vast majority of these conflicts possess a strong ethno-political component that complicates all the conflict resolution attempts: neglect of the role of ethnicity in interstate and intrastate conflicts can lead to overt conflict on the one hand and a deadlocked situation in respect to all mediation on the other hand. This article focuses upon the role and impact of ethnicity factor and the ways in which it is exploited and manipulated. The Nagorno Karabakh conflict serves as the major empirical case.     

PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION IN COMMON COUPLE DANCES

This paper integrates the object relations concept of projective identification and the systemic concept of marital dances to develop a more powerful model for working with more difficult and distressed couples. This integrated model explains how some couples use the defenses of splitting and projective identification to externalize and transpose internal conflicts into interpersonal conflicts in five common marital dances. The author suggests how object relations techniques can be used to interrupt the projective identifications, help clients to reown their disowned and projected affects and resolve the conflict on the intrapsychic level so that the marital dance is no longer necessary to resolve the intrapsychic issues.     

The nature of racial conflict in South Africa∗

This paper examines the bases of racial conflict in its various dimensions. Historical material from American experience is employed in an effort to reach a conceptual framework that accommodates more variables than economic ones. The distinction between class and ethnicity is discussed and an attempt is made to resolve some of the difficulties in relating the one to the other, without losing the explanatory power of either. Certain implications for conflict resolution in South Africa are drawn.     

A Marital Conflict Resolution Model: Redefining Conflict to Achieve Intimacy*

The approach to conflict resolution used in this model is to redefine conflict as alternative choices. Six assumptions about conflict are reviewed, suggesting it is the way conflicts are processed, not the conflict per se, which affects the relationship. The model is built on skills: Listening, speaking, deciphering basic needs, unlocking alternative choices, and introspection about the process. Some perspectives and principles provide a conceptual framework for use of the seven sequential procedures. Effectively processed conflicts result in greater personal and relationship understanding and potential for growth.     

Negotiating Symbolic Boundaries in Conflict Resolution: Religion and Ethnicity in Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict

This article is an inquiry into understanding why supranational religious identity often fails to act as a conflict resolution tool in religiously homogenous ethnic conflicts. Narrowing its focus down to the role of religious elites as potential peacemakers in such conflict zones, it proposes the divergence in their conceptualizations of religious and ethnic identities as an explanatory factor. Building on 62 in-depth interviews conducted in Turkey with Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Turkish religious elites, it identifies a three-fold typology of religious and ethnic identities, as conceptualized by these elites: 1) religio-ethnic; 2) ethno-religious; 3) religious. After exemplifying each category with interview data it demonstrates the role these distinctions play in preventing the successful implementation of “Muslim fraternity” as a solution to the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. With these findings, the article contributes to both the literature on religion in conflict resolution and that on identity formation and boundary making. While it invites the former to turn its gaze from macro-level structural factors to meso- and micro-level cultural factors in analyzing religious elite involvement in conflict resolution, it invites the latter to stop employing “ethnicity” as an all-encompassing term (that covers a vast array of identity markers including religion) and focus, instead, on the gradations between religion and ethnicity as sources of identity.     

An Examination of Conflict in Emerging Adulthood Between College Students and Their Parents

Abstract

Two hundred seventy-three college students between the ages of 18 and 22 years, and in the midst of what some researchers would refer to as Emerging Adulthood, reported the most common topics of conflict that they experience with their mothers and fathers and provided their perceptions of these conflicts. Female and male emerging adults reported similar topics of conflict with their mothers and fathers. The sex of the emerging adults and that of their parents who were involved in the conflict appeared to play an important role in the complex dynamic related to their perceptions of their parents following the conflict, especially for positive perceptions of fathers and perceptions of fathers' emotional availability and acceptance. The results of this study further the understanding of conflicts that occur between emerging adults and their parents.     

Raising Societal Support for Development Cooperation: The Role of Students’ Exchange Programs

This article analyzes the development education and exchange activities of the Dutch development organization Edukans with its longstanding experience in the “Going Global” program among secondary schools in The Netherlands. Based on a survey with 186 direct participants in the foreign exchange program and 608 schoolmates at 126 secondary schools, a detailed analysis is made of differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior with respect to international cooperation, and tolerance regarding ethnic minorities. To guarantee unbiased impact assessment, the same data is collected among 276 students of a comparison group. Propensity score-matching techniques are used for data analysis, controlling for intrinsic differences among the three groups. Results show that international exchange programs have a significant positive impact on all four dimensions of societal support of the direct participants compared to their schoolmates. Only knowledge and attitudes changes are registered in the scores of the schoolmates compared to the comparison group. These outcomes remain robust when corrected for individual and school characteristics, parental background, and political preferences, and when unobserved heterogeneity is included.     

The Effect of Cooperative Concept Mapping on Misconceptions,Knowledge Achievement,and Transfer of Learning in Peace Education

Abstract

This study tested the effect of cooperative concept mapping on knowledge achievement and transfer in peace education on 159 social studies students using a quasi-experimental research design. Four intact classes—two each in rural and urban areas—were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions, and two instruments—Peace Education Achievement Test and Peace Education Transferability Test—were used for data collection. Findings showed that cooperative concept mapping unveiled students’ misconceptions in peace education and their perceptions about violent behaviors, raised students’ consciousness about asymmetric structures undermining peace, empowered them with ability to establish connections between intrinsic and extrinsic causes of conflict, and encouraged practical suggestions on how to resolve conflict and promote peace through enactment of peace virtues. Bivariate associations showed that students’ achievement in one context correlated with their transfer of learning in another context, with stronger correlation exhibited among experimental students. We attributed the stronger correlation recorded among experimental students to the “concepts connection” and visual effect occasioned by concept maps and overt effort of experimental teachers to create cooperative, experiential, and learner-centered lessons. Also, our assumption that female students will do better than male students in peace education was met. Implications of findings for curriculum review, instructional delivery and teacher education were discussed.     

Dissecting moral judgements: Using moral foundation theory to advance the contingency continuum

Incorporating Moral Foundation Theory, this study introduces an enhanced Contingency Continuum to advance the Contingency Theory of Strategic Conflict Management by dissecting the origins of conflict formation. The enhanced Contingency Continuum treats conflict as a function of moral judgment based on which people judge right and wrong. This study explores how an event’s moral implication could be deconstructed into the enhanced Contingency Continuum and contribute to the formation of a conflict through a case study of Harvey Weinstein’s scandal. Our analysis and findings of the case were then validity-tested in an extensive verification interview with a practitioner/educator who has been in the PR field for more than 40 years. Three attributions of how the enhanced Contingency Continuum could advance the Contingency Theory are identified and summarized as a three-step-cyclic model, Moral Attitude Dynamic Model (MADM) to fully exploit the potential of the enhanced Contingency Continuum on managing not only moral conflicts but also conflicts that lack resolution such as long-standing social controversial issues.     

“Talking It Out”: A Computer-Based Mediation Process for Adolescents

SUMMARY

This article describes the development of a multimedia mediation program (“Talking It Out”) that helps young adolescents resolve conflict peacefully. The development and content are described, together with pilot test data from 16 pairs of disputing students. These case studies provide evidence of the popularity and effectiveness of computer-based mediation.