The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Raising Inclusively Caring Children with Moral Courage

  A crucial aspect of reconciliation and long-term peace is the way children are socialized. How history is taught, how children in different groups are led to engage with each other, affects attitudes toward the other. Fostering inclusive caring, expanding empathy and a feeling of responsibility to all people, is crucial. So is moral courage, the willingness and capacity to express caring and moral values in action, even in the face of possible or actual opposition and negative reactions.

  There is research and theory about practices for raising caring and helpful children, with more limited research and theory about raising inclusively caring and morally courageous children (Eisenberg, Fabes, and Spinrad, 2006; Oliner and Oliner, 1988; Staub, 2003, 2005b, in press). These practices include love and affection, and positive guidance, with adults verbally promoting, providing models of, and leading children to engage in positive behavior. To make caring inclusive, this has to be toward all people, not only members of one’s own group. For the development of moral courage, it is important also to allow and encourage children to express their views and act on their beliefs (Staub, 2003, 2005b, 2011, in press). But to engage in such practices, there must be transformation in adults. The processes of reconciliation I described, including ways to promote positive orientation toward others and healing, can contribute to this transformation. But substantially more research is needed on how to develop inclusive caring and moral courage.

  CONCLUSION

  Reconciliation between groups requires a variety of psychological changes, which can be maintained and further promoted through the creation of certain kinds of institutions. Just as violence progressively evolves, reconciliation and the building of a peaceful society are also progressive. Following the principles of learning by doing, earlier actions and the changes that result from them can transform people in positive ways. What to do (e.g., humanizing the other group), how to do it (e.g., through significant contact, or what is said about a devalued group in the media or by leaders), and who are the appropriate and necessary actors for particular reconciliation processes and activities all need to be addressed (Staub, 2011). Actions by leaders, followers, bystanders, the media, intellectuals, and parents and teachers who promote devaluation and destructive ideologies are all involved in the development of significant violence between groups; they are also all very much needed for promoting reconciliation and building a peaceful society.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  SOCIAL NETWORKS, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND CONFLICT RESOLUTIONa

  James D. Westaby

  Nicholas Redding

  Research on social networks has seen exponential growth in the social sciences since the turn of the twenty-first century (Knoke and Yang, 2007; Watts, 2004). The network approach also has considerable value for conflict scholars and practitioners because it provides a unique set of metaphors and tools that can help describe social conflicts. In this chapter, we first provide an overview of traditional social network analysis and then review a number of studies using social network concepts to understand conflict and the role of social media in conflict settings. We next demonstrate how new concepts in dynamic network theory may provide a deeper psychologically based explanation of social conflicts (Westaby, 2012), which can also inform conflict resolution strategies. By infusing goals into social networks, dynamic network theorizing provides social scientists and practitioners with new ways to conceptualize conflict.