Social Liberation and Conflict Resolution:
Moving Neutrality from the Center, to the Middle
Isbel Ingham
But if by some miracle, and all our struggle,
the Earth is spared, only justice to every living thing (and everything alive) will save humankind. Alice Walker
It is an unfortunate fact that much of the existing conflict resolution literature treats conflict as if it were a problem plaguing human beings that could be eliminated if adequate models of mediation/resolution were developed. A good deal of theorizing is done on the causes of conflict, with the idea that if we can discover what it is caused by, it can be prevented or solved. This is consonant with a particularly Western way of thinking that all problems can be, and in fact must be solved, and thereby eliminated.
This article will argue it is more useful, and realistic, to acknowledge that dynamic conflict is both necessary and inevitable—especially for conflict resolvers who consider themselves social liberationists. It will also attempt to place conflict resolution, and mediation, more deeply and, inescapably, in the bosom of social justice work, and attempt to impress upon the reader that, until the systems that beget and perpetuate inequities change, conflict will persist, and in fact should persist. Further, it will argue that to do this work, the commonly accepted position of the mediator must be moved from its present position, of neutrality, to a place of engagement…a place more conducive to both interconnectedness and hence the liberation of all human beings.
Georg Simmel (1955) considered conflict among human beings a form of sociation—that is, a reliably human event that both socializes us and teaches how to socialize more effectively. He believed it is dissociating factors, such as greed or competition, that cause conflict, which in turn bring parties together to achieve some kind of unity again. Conflict, then, indicates where friction exists, which gives us an opportunity to explore whatever is causing the friction and, with appropriate resources, to move into and through it, and into a new space or way of being. Mediation is one of the resources that attempt to facilitate our move through and past friction into a new relationship with whomever or whatever we are in conflict with.
This article focuses on the particular kind of friction caused by social inequities--often called systems of oppression. These inequities/oppressions create conflict/friction for the people intertwined with them. Although the West imagines itself as populated by individuals who are, for the most part, insulated from the realities of one another’s lives, the fact is that human beings are, by nature, gregarious—meaning we are group animals—and therefore thoroughly linked in some way to the oppressive systems at work, wherever we are, or have been located.
The roots of individualism, the conception that “the social world begins and ends with individuals (Johnson, 2001),” go very deep in the United States, and are entwined inextricably with mediator neutrality, so they must be explored a bit here. The story goes something like this: When a child is born, she is, from her perspective, part of her mother—no boundaries exist between her self and others. As this child matures, she gradually learns to “distinguish between self and other, between image and percept, between subject and object (Keller, 1983, p. 192).”
Up to here, the story makes some sense; however, theories of child development have gotten into trouble when they have declared that the ultimate act of maturation is autonomy, or independence: “Graphically, the ‘individual’ might be pictured as a closed circle: its smooth contours ensure its clear division from its location, as well as assuring its internal coherence and consistency (Kirby, 1996, pg. 45).” This [hypothesized] closed circle enables human beings to be in some ways separate from the influences of others, in that we become separate, inviolate really, from the world around us. Out of this is born, theoretically, the ability to be objective—cut off from the world, as it were--which allows for neutrality. If it is possible, even desirable, for us to withdraw into ourselves so that we have no connection to another, conceivably we can be neutral to, and with, the problems of others.
However feminists, and others, have long argued that this is not, in actual fact, how human beings mature and develop (Gilligan, Miller, Keller, Sherman, etc.), nor should it be considered desirable or advantageous. Lorraine Code proposes that “…the ideals of the autonomous reasoner—the dislocated, disinterested observer—and the epistemologies they inform are the artifacts of a small, privileged group of educated…white men (Code, 1993)”. Again, however, and as anthropologists have long informed us, human beings are, by nature, gregarious—we realize and in fact know ourselves only in relationship to/with other human beings. This is, Elise Boulding says, “What keeps…conflict from degenerating into the war of each against all is the equally ubiquitous need of humans for one another, for the social bonding and nurturance without which no society could function (89).
Moreover, we are, throughout our lifetimes, thoroughly embedded in our various and specific locations and the communities of people within which we travel and make some kind of place for ourselves. These locations and communities not only imbue us with their own particular ambience[s], they also influence, understandably, the ways in which we view the world. They also form, and inform, our biases, (Hartsock, 1983) which renders neutrality an impossible ideal. From birth we are thoroughly pervaded all we are surrounded by, sometimes consciously, but largely unconsciously. This is our job, as it were—to soak in our surroundings, to absorb, like little sponges, the ways and means of where and with whom we live. How could we possibly enclose ourselves so thoroughly that we would become suddenly unaffected by all of this, or even detached? And to where do we move, when we detach or disaffect ourselves?
However, intrinsic to the Western model of conflict resolution is the neutral mediator. In fact, there is perhaps no concept so pervasively accepted as fundamental to conflict resolution practices in the United States as neutrality. By and large, it is taken for granted that neutrality is not only desirable, but also attainable. In Christopher Moore’s book, Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict, he says, “impartiality and neutrality are critical to the process of mediation (1986),” a point of view that is echoed over and over in the literature (Field, 2000). Mediators are expected to assert their impartiality at the beginning of a mediation to reassure participants they will be treated fairly, and that no one’s biases will cloud the procedure. The Mediator’s Handbook says, “[b]e understanding but impartial (Beer & Stief, 1997).” It is, as Wallace Warfield says, as though “the mediator were [to be] some clear vessel, hovering deus ex machina, waiting to be called upon to lay an impartial hand on the fevered brow of the disputants (1993)”.
The unabridged version of The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines neutrality as: “The state or condition of being on neither side or inclined neither way; absence of decided views, feeling, or expression; indifference (The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1979).” However, given our gregariousness, and our embeddedness, it is difficult to even surmise how it might be possible to not reside on a side, or to have no inclinations? The very act of not having a particular inclination inclines us in some other direction. As we will see a little later in the paper, this can give us a very real vantage point from which to mediate, however in the discussion of mediation it is problematic, to say the very least.
Many have argued the notion that there exists an objective viewpoint is, at the very best, a careless fiction, which Donna Haraway names “the god trick (1988).” However, at its worst it is dangerous, in that it sets us to believe in something that is simply not possible, which leaves us unbalanced, ungrounded, and wrong: “…knowledge, stripped of its ideological and historical content, is, as Haraway suggests, ‘unlocatable and so irresponsible’ (Hartsock, 1983)(157).” It also renders us unable to notice the vantage point from which we view the world—and can make us oblivious to social injustice.
Those who defend neutrality sometimes grant the validity of the above critique, but continue to defend it because of disputants’ need to be confident that the conflict resolver will not act against their best interests. Certainly it is true that disputants should trust that the conflict resolver is generally on their side and resolutions will be in the best interests of all parties to the conflict. However, if neutrality is an illusion that exists simply to grant this, albeit false, reassurance, a new position must be delineated wherein a mediator may realistically re[side], and still act on behalf of the parties he or she is mediating.
This is especially true for mediators who believe their practices embody the values of social liberation. For if we are, through our work as conflict resolvers, attempting to do the transformational work necessary to change the world, we have to be as cognizant as possible of the myriad ways the people with whom we work are connected to the world, each other, and us—including the oppressive structures. This will allow us to do work that acknowledges everyone’s full humanity and interconnectedness, and form the basis of the ethical platform from which we can practice non-neutral, but principled, conflict resolution. This view declares neutrality both impossible and unnecessary, and, in that valorizes individuality and objectivity over community and subjectivity, dissonant with the goals of social justice.
I am aware that this amounts to a radical [re]vision of the mediator’s role in mediation, and of Western models of mediation. However, I believe it is crucial that we expand our vision of what it is we are doing in and with our practices. This will only be possible, however, if we move away from the rigidly bordered concepts of individualism and neutrality, both of which have sought to contain or bind up our subjectivity, and move towards a middle position that acknowledges our inextricable interconnectedness.
As Gloria Anzaldúa says, borders are constructed to demarcate and distinguish the places that are safe and unsafe “to distinguish us from them (1987; pg. 3). In the case of mediation, they attempt to separate the mediator from the mediated and objectivity/neutrality from subjectivity/bias. I propose, instead, the [re]discovery of a middle ground, a borderland existing between, and also lapping over into, the roles of mediator and mediated. This space both permits and requires a new viewpoint “that permits its practitioner to act from within and from outside ideology,” a position that “can itself be considered a specific mode of consciousness (Sandoval, 2000, p. 155),” a consciousness I believe points us in the direction of social liberation.
This new space requires a consciousness that can, in Chela Sandoval’s words, “act upon social reality while at the same time transforming the practitioner’s relation to it (2000, p. 155) .” In this way I propose eliminating the categories of neutral/biased, objective/subjective, and suggest, in its place, full engagement, “in which there is no separation between the subject and the object of the action, which are instead conflated (Sandoval, 2000, 156).” I am well aware of the difficulty of this project; neutrality is so pervasively accepted in mainstream circles it can seem almost anathema to the practice of mediation to consider its elimination.
However an insistence on neutrality, to be used in the service of fairness, forgets, denies, discounts, ignores, at times even disparages our embeddedness, interconnectedness, and our inherent human nature as gregarious beings. The fact that we are gregarious means we do best when we are involved with other people and their subjectivities, expanding and informing our awareness of their lives as far as possible. This is what we do with the people we love—our families, our partners, the people we include in our closest communities—and when we do it well, we notice the difference it makes in us, and in our lives. My experience as a mediator tells me that the same is true when I understand, deeply, the people or groups for whom I am mediating.
This involvement can, and should, be extended to the world, in particular, to the dissolution of systems of oppression. To quote Zinn and Dill, there are “patterns of hierarchy, domination, and oppression based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation…built into the structure of our society. Inequality, in other words, is structural or socially patterned (1994, pg. 84).” We are, without our consent, thoroughly embedded in structures that privilege some while oppressing others—a reality that has nothing to do with free will, but rather our overriding culture and, again, our gregariousness. “We are always participating in something larger than ourselves—what sociologists call social systems—and systems are more than collections of [individuals] (Zinn & Dill, 1994, pg. 85).”
To acknowledge our connection to particular oppressions can mean, if done thoughtfully, taking our share of the responsibility for their ultimate dismantling. The need for social liberation is perhaps the strongest challenge to notions of neutrality in conflict resolution practice. Because of the pervasiveness of oppression, in and outside of ourselves, conflict resolution practitioners have the responsibility to address these patterns of oppression as part of their conflict resolution work. If CR practitioners choose not to integrate social liberation work into their practices, there is a great danger--as well as a strong likelihood--that our/their practices will reinforce those patterns of oppression.