Thinking Together: From Lines of Division to Common Ground
A closed workshop which aims to develop responses to the dynamics of social division & political affect.
What is violent social behaviour - and how can mediators and academics understand it in the particular context of conflict resolution?
There is an emergent field of conflict resolution initiatives in Britain, aiming to respond to, avert or manage tensions and antipathies evident at community level. Though currently fragile and underfunded, these approaches may become more widely used as pressures and fissures develop in the (dis)United Kingdom around (often racialised) social, political, and cultural issues. Examples of current practice include ‘social cohesion’ projects and dialogue / conversation initiatives in towns, cities and neighbourhoods; responses to ‘extremism’ (a most contestable concept), and to sectarian divisions in Scotland; to disputed issues around environmental policy; lack of trust and connection between members of communities and public sector bodies (local councils, police); and contention around protests and demonstrations (policing, responses to legal restrictions, characterisations of protesters and demonstrators by politicians, opinion-influencers, counter-demonstrators).
Conflict is often implicated in the breakdown of social bonds between persons with the (re-)forming of more primitive ones in a retreat to division away from any possible common ground. We can think of violent behaviour as either the last stage in a process before a breakdown of thinking or as an attack on thinking that marks the first stage in the onset of social disorder … Is thinking still going on in the run-up, during, and/or after violent episodes and if so, how can it be detected, accessed, retrieved, and facilitated in conflict resolution practice?
The riots and disorder in many towns and cities in July and August 2024 exemplify the recurrent yet unpredictable nature of violent social behaviour. Conflict resolution, though too often called on in a context of crisis intervention, may increasingly be called on pre-emptively. As a practice, it deploys considerable negotiating skills. However, these practical interventions, and the contexts that demand them, are often only tenuously connected to theoretical understanding - while theory itself is often detached from the actuality of practice. Academic psychology and social science have traditionally set themselves, institutionally, at a distance from real experience of disturbed thinking…
