A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts

by Harold H. Saunders

Book Overview

Many of the deep-rooted human conflicts that seize our attention today are not ready for formal mediation and negotiation. People do not negotiate about identity, fear, historic grievance, and injustice. Sustained dialogue provides a space where citizens outside government can change their conflictual relationships. Governments can negotiate binding agreements and enforce and implement them, but only citizens can change human relationships. Governments have long had their tools of diplomacy - mediation, negotiation, force, and allocation of resources. Harold H. Saunders' A Public Peace Process provides citizens outside government with their own instrument for transforming conflict. Saunders outlines a systematic approach for citizens to use in reducing racial, ethnic, and other deep-rooted tensions in their countries, communities, and organizations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312293380
• ISBN13: 9780312293383
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Resolution through Dialogue

Harold Saunders, now Director of International Programs at the Kettering Foundation, distills more than 35 years of experience working with conflicts between "bodies politic" across the globe and in the United States. The essence of his work is that groups of citizens can use a structured dialogue to move protracted conflicts, such as those in the Middle East and between the races in this country, toward resolution. He developed his approach through work on the Dartmouth Conference, between Americans and Soviets, and has put it into practice, with salutory results, in Tajikistan; Mobile, Alabama; and elsewhere. The book describes his approach. He draws copiously on his experience and that of others to show how and why his approach can work. This is an essential work for anyone concerned with resolving conflict at home or abroad.