GSLL 1521 - Community-Driven Dispute Resolution

Over the last three decades, community dispute resolution has become a world-wide export, embraced by many organizations throughout the world. This practice includes community mediation, facilitation, collaborative problem solving, conflict resolution, conflict transformation and even conflict transcendence. Looking more closely at these processes and practices, we will explore their social and cultural significance and applicability in various communities.

In this course we will examine the nature of community-driven dispute resolution, while exploring the power dynamics of disputes and their contexts and how we seek to find our own center in relation to such disputes. The course will be largely issue-focused, rather than skill-based, with an eye toward working with indigenous communities and in other sensitive cultural contexts.

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Examine the nature of community dispute resolution processes and practice
• Reflect upon our cultural assumptions about dispute resolution
• Explore the dynamics and contexts of power in disputes
• Find our own center in relation to disputing processes