Quick Review: Culture & Conflict Resolution

I recently read Culture & Conflict Resolution by Kevin Avruch.  This book is from the international negotiations realm but has some really good content on how to understand culture, identity, and conflict that extends into a lot of different contexts. It’s a more academic treatment so not everyone is going to be into this, but here’s some highlights.

The first section of the book tackles notions of culture specifically and a variety of different views and definitions. A key focus is illustrating that culture isn’t static or monolithic. He gives six inadequate notions about culture (pg. 14-16):

1. Culture is homogenous
2. Culture is a thing (reification)
3. Culture is uniformly distributed among members of a group
4. An individual possesses but a single culture
5. Culture is a custom
6. Culture is timeless

The rest of the book explores the nature of conflict and how a more integrated and appropriate view of culture impacts conflict resolution efforts with analysis of common theories and approaches. Though quite academic, it touches on how culture needs to be considered and understood in various stages of conflict resolution – from negotiation to mediation and third parties.

Excellent content related to the intersection of culture with conflict resolution studies and theory. Hard to argue with the conclusions of the book – that culture is central to conflict and conflict resolution practice and to ignore it is to risk failure now or later as the culture and identity issues seem to always find a way back to the forefront if they are not addressed adequately.