Mediating Conflicts between Groups with Different Worldviews: Approaches and Methods
A Learning Process
for Practitioners and Researchers
This action-research project brings together peace practitioners and researchers to learn about methods for mediating conflicts between groups with different worldviews.
Paper Drafting & Workshop
Since 2020, case givers working on fifteen ongoing conflicts have presented papers on conflicts between groups with different worldviews and discussed different dialogue and mediation interventions in these conflicts. The presentations first took place online. In September 2021, the case givers and organizers met for face-to-face workshop Switzerland.
Current activities
Currently, we are pooling the key learnings (both on a conceptual and practical level) in an Action Guide, which will be published in the CSS Mediation Resources series. In addition to this Action Guide, case studies will be published in different formats. We will add links on the website as they are published.
Problem Statement
Violent conflicts increasingly occur between groups adhering to different visions of the state and society (Svensson & Nilsson 2018). When groups with different worldviews claim the same space, this can lead to tensions and give rise to violence – ranging from offensive language to physical attacks and open warfare. Depending on the conflict, worldview differences can be more or less pronounced and create challenges on different levels:
Worldviews can shape the issues of a conflict. Conflict can arise from competing visions of a just political system, as in the ongoing negotiations over the constitution of Afghanistan; from mutually exclusive claims to sacred spaces; or from diverging moral conceptions of human bodies and lives (e.g. regarding the legal status of abortion). In these types of conflict, ways of seeing the world define what the actors fight for and how they engage with one another.
In cases where actors struggle over material and seemingly factual issues, such as the sharing of resources, power, or technological control, worldview differences can taint relations and render communication difficult. Chinese and US officials discussing matters such as the data gathering conducted by different technology companies, for instance, may not be able to find peaceful solutions for coordinating their actions because they do not understand how the other side sees the world, their own role, and the future.
Groups with different worldviews often have difficulty agreeing on a process to resolve a conflict, because they may have fundamentally different assumptions about what an adequate conflict resolution mechanism looks like. Challenges arise when the worldview of the third party is different from the conflict parties’ – or when it aligns with one side rather than the other. The degree to which third parties are aware of their own worldview and those of the parties can be crucial for designing of a successful mediation process.
In conflicts between groups with different worldviews, gestures, clothing, sounds, objects or images can become symbols for something larger. Habitual and often sensual “things” are elevated to symbolic importance – either by the group to which they belong or by their opponents using these symbols to criticize, mock or delegitimize them. Think of contested statues of gods or historical figures, the Muslim headscarf, or meat slaughtered in ritually prescribed ways. When something becomes a sign in a context of conflict, it is pregnant with meanings and potentially enforces social divisions. Such signs can signal resistance when conflict actors perceive the worldview of their opponents as imposed on them and threatening their own way of life.
Against this background, the participants explore challenges arising from worldview differences and jointly develop appropriate methods for addressing them.
Working Definition
For this learning process, we define worldviews as shared & embodied understandings of reality orienting social life. This definition allows us to:
1. Acknowledge the validity of different views. Every perspective derives from history, foundational texts, principles and ideas about a good life that make them valid in the eyes of their adherents. This broad definition allows us to speak about religious currents (within e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism) and non-religious currents (within e.g. nationalism, anti-racism, environmentalism, feminism, spirituality, liberalism, or communism) without a priori privileging any of them over another.
2. Avoid reducing people to their worldview. Just because someone has a specific worldview, we cannot predict how this person will act in a given situation. It is critical that mediators and peace practitioners recognize that people are able to re-position themselves (Winslade 2006) vis-à-vis the worldviews that orient their life and adapt their actions.
3. Acknowledge both the stability and flexibility of worldviews. When two groups with different worldviews negotiate, making concessions in the name of one’s worldview is often impossible. Consequently, it is crucial to recognize both the stability and flexibility of worldviews when supporting parties to explore their options in negotiations. Worldviews can adapt to changing historical circumstances while preserving a certain continuity granted. This may require re-interpreting founding texts or basic principles.
4. Acknowledge the dynamic of “worldmaking.” Worldviews are not things. They arise from direct or mediated conversations and interactions between people. Rather than assuming the existence of fixed worldviews, we should attend to “worldmaking” or the various activities that sustain certain “common sense versions of the world” (Docherty 2001, 52).
Cases
Sharia-Worldviews in Constitution-Building and Transitional Governance: Lessons from Tunisia & Afghanistan
Siraj Khan & Ilaria Vianello (Max Planck Foundation for International Peace & the Rule of Law)
Sacred Lands Conflicts: The Case of Mauna Kea and the Thirty-Meter Telescope
Susan Podziba (MIT)
Temple Mount & Haram al-Sharif Dispute: Engaging Religiously Conservative Clerics and their Sacred Values & Worldviews
Carlo Aldrovandi (Trinity, Dublin)
Worldview Divisions in a Polarized Society: Seeking Common Ground in the Abortion Conflict in the United States
Mary Jacksteit (Essential Partners)
US-China Security Dialogues on the South China Sea Disputes: Advancing Communication at a Bilateral Crisis Point
Zheng Wang (Seton Hall University)
Art Interventions to Address Conflicts Emerging from Different Worldviews on Gender and Soviet Heritage in the South Caucasus
Dagmar Reichert (Zurich University of the Arts)
Peacebuilding in Myanmar: Searching for Positive Worldviews from Within
Tats Arai (Kent State University)
Insiders and Outsiders in Guatemala: The Weaknesses of Both Indigenous and State Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Carlos Ochoa (University of San Carlos, Guatemala)
Which View Shapes the Process? How Worldview Differences between the UN and Local Mediation Practitioners Create Obstacles to Peace-Making in Yemen
Farea Muslimi (Sana‘a Center for Strategic Studies)
Accompanying the Armed Groups of the Azawad in the Mali Peace Negotiations: The Need for Intra-Normative Dialogue
Ferdaous Bouhlel (EMAM, Université de Tours)
Suspicious of the Worldview of the Others: Addressing Religion in the Relation between Kurds & Arabs in Syria
Rajaa Altalli (Centre for Civil Society & Democracy, CCSD)
The Civil Society Support Room: A Mechanism to Coordinate Different Worldviews in the Syrian Peace Process?
Myriam Ahmed (Swisspeace)
Mediation Space as a Method for Transforming Conflicts between Groups with Different Worldviews: Addressing Sectarian Tensions in Iraq
Jean-Nicolas Bitter (Swiss FDFA)
Safe Mediation Space in Morocco: Bringing Together Secularist and Islamist Men and Women to Address Conflicts around Women’s Issues
Anaël Jambers (University of Zurich) & Alistair Davison (Cordoba Peace Institute, Geneva)