Constructive Conflicts: From Escalation to Resolution

by Bruce Dayton, Louis Kriesberg, Bruce W. Dayton

Book Overview

This comprehensive and highly regarded book provides a framework for analyzing diverse social conflicts. The fourth edition of Constructive Conflicts maintains the book's synthesis of theories about conflict, with key updates throughout. These include a more reader-friendly first chapter, new examples such as the Arab Spring, expanded discussions of recovery from violence and oppression, of reconciliation, and of moral concerns, and new discussions of social media and other ways conflicts are waged. Constructive Conflicts draws from relevant academic disciplines and empirical analyses of diverse conflicts to discuss the emergence, escalation, de-escalation, transformation, and settlement of conflicts. Throughout, the authors examine the strategies that partisans and intermediaries can use to minimize the destructiveness of conflicts and foster constructive ways to wage and resolve them.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1442206845
• ISBN13: 9781442206847
• Release Date: January 2012
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 431 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Refreshingly Different

In the ever-expanding field of conflict resolution literature, Louis Kriesberg's work is most prominent. Instead of conceiving of conflict as an abnormal state that needs be abolished, he instead considers that it is a normative state of affairs between parties. The key is not to 'resolve' or precipitate an end to conflicts, but is rather to transform the conflict from a destructive (negative-sum or zero-sum) to a constructive (positive-sum) framework. Toward this end, he offers an impressive catalogue of methods that might be considered for application, and examines a myriad of factors that play a role in constructing the framework of conflict.His is a particularly broad-minded approach, as Kriesberg even refuses to dismiss all armed, violent conflicts as implicitly destructive, rather arguing that there may be tangible positives that arise (though these are, for Kriesberg, primarily oriented toward inducing both parties to recognise the need to broker a settlement). Through this book, Kriesberg looks to alter the manner in which the scholarly and diplomatic worlds consider conflict and its resolution (transformation). This is nothing short of a seminal work.