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The Conflict Research Consortium is a multidisciplinary program of research, teaching, and application, focused on finding more constructive ways of addressing difficult, long-term, and intractable conflicts, and getting that information to the people involved in these conflicts so that they can approach them in a more constructive way. A joint university-community program, the Consortium unites researchers, educators, and practitioners from many fields for the purposes of theory-building, testing, disseminating, and applying new conflict management techniques. These efforts are designed to lead to an improved understanding of conflict dynamics, along with better methods for confronting and managing intractable conflicts and reaching good decisions. Unlike our colleagues who focus on comprehensive resolution, we take an incremental approach-- analyzing problems that make these conflicts unnecessarily destructive, and then identifying effective incremental treatments.
Much of our effort over the past few years has been spent developing, testing, and revising our theory of intractable conflicts, based on extensive collection of qualitative data--stories from scholars, practitioners, and disputants--who have told us (either directly or through their writing) about their conflicts and their conflict management efforts. We have analyzed and organized these stories to create a theoretical list of typical conflict problems and treatments. This information (with accompanying explanations) will soon be available over the web, allowing users to identify specific problems that are occurring in their own conflicts, read about related theory, and search for possible remedies. The system is designed to act as a computerized consulting service which will provide customized executive summaries (and back-up information) addressing specific user interests.
In addition to helping neutral intervenors develop their professional skills, the Consortium is also working to help adversaries develop a more sophisticated understanding of conflict processes, and helping disputants develop what we call "do-it-yourself" skills for the many situations in which professional assistance is not available. We have developed and maintain an extensive web site of general conflict information (over 1000 pages long-before the first phase of the international online training program is added), and have been active in a variety of other teaching, training, and intervention efforts, all focused on the intractable conflict theme.
The Consortium's inquiry into intractable conflict continues to be a long term-effort which has evolved greatly over the last several years. Key to the success of our efforts have been a continuing series of projects and activities in three broad areas.
Knowledge Base Projects through which we continuously collect information on intractable conflict problems and more constructive strategies for dealing with these problems.
Theory Building / Knowledge Organization Projects which involve the development of new ways of thinking about intractable conflicts and organizing the information on specific problems and treatments. (Here theoretical work has provided a basis for organizing information from our knowledge base projects in ways which facilitate effective knowledge utilization and dissemination. Although earlier organization schemes have been linear and thus suited for traditional article and book formats, over the last several years we have also been developing hypertext systems which can be customized to the needs of individual users.)
Dissemination, Training, and Education Projects which distribute to adversaries, intermediaries, students, and the general public the results of the Consortium's work. Included here are presentations, courses, book and article publication, web-based dissemination efforts and consulting.