Conference description

Understanding Conflicts—

Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Idea: Conflicts are part of human life—wherever humans interact, as individuals, as groups, as representatives of a culture, their diverse interests and values often cannot be jointly realized. The development of conflicts largely depends on how the conflicting parties view the situation they are in.  Attention to differences in the images of conflicts—the agentive understanding of sources, dynamics, and possible transformations of conflicts—is thus of central significance for conflict management and intervention.

Aim: The purpose of this conference is to explore and engage cultural differences in approaches to conflict as articulated in theories and implemented in social practices. Accounts and models in the interdisciplinary field of “Conflict Analysis and Resolution” (e.g., game-theoretic, algorithmic, communication-theoretic, norm-theoretic approaches) shall be put into wider cross-cultural perspective where other sources of agentive orientation besides empirical science are also taken into account.

Focus: The conference will be focused on the analysis of cultural diversity in conceptions of conflict as documented in theoretical models of empirical research and research in the humanities, reflections on mediation and counselling practices, and, in particular, religious worldviews in theological interpretation.  Different cultures (systems of symbol-mediated interactive practices) not only generate conflicts but also impose on agents different “conflict cultures”— preferences for certain types of conflict dynamics (war, settlements, reconciliation) and predispositions for certain forms of epistemic approach (rational analysis, psychological hermeneutics, deep orientation or ‘spiritual opening’).

Significance: The leading questions raised by the meeting will be of theoretical and practical significance.  Empirical studies of conflicts in psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and political science describe particular (classes of) conflicts for the purposes of explanation and prediction.  To what extent are the theoretical models of conflict analysis in contact with practical conceptions implemented in counselling and mediation?  To what extent do cultural images of conflicts and associated conflict cultures  matter in theoretical description and practical understanding? Does the history of conflicts show that differences in the cultural images of conflicts matter for conflict dynamics?  What kinds of cultural images of conflicts and associated conflict cultures are projected by the five world religions? Can the humanities—in particular philosophy—provide conceptual and methodological orientation for the formation of a new cultural image of conflict or a new associated conflict culture that allows for constructive interactions with diversity?

Expected results: The conference will generate are research contributions that are directly relevant for the transformation of cultural conflicts (not only by third party intervention but also by the conflicting parties themselves) and thus bound to receive particular attention by the larger public.  

The research papers delivered at the conferences will, individually or in combination :

•             inform about the kind and degree of cross-cultural variation in conceptions of conflict along the essential parameters of the cultural images of conflicts in general 
•          increase our understanding of the diversity in epistemic and practical approaches to conflicts (“conflict cultures”)
•           determine the success of current forms of mediation in intercultural conflicts and suggest new strategies and methods
•           clarify the historical role in cultural conflicts of those academic disciplines that most directly provide agentive orientation, such as theology and philosophy, and their future tasks for a joint social aim of transforming cultural conflicts (e.g. development of process-based notions of solidarity and mutual recognition)
•          suggest new educational initiatives for cross-cultural communication and learning.

The conference contributions will be published in at least one (probably two) peer-reviewed anthology and two special issues of peer-reviewed international journals.