As of June 2010, the 3rd edition of the Mediator’s Handbook has sold more than 50,000 copies!!!
Archive for the Writing Process Category
Friends Conflict Resolution Programs was laid down in June 2010, after almost 40 years. It had shed its skin and re-emerged in new colors many times. This Quaker program developed a county-wide mediation program during the experimental years of community mediation. In the following years, they worked with schools, giving adult trainings, (and supported each edition of this Handbook). For the past 15 years, Caroline Packard, the main staff person, provided mediation and facilitation services throughout the region, especially for nonprofit organizations, business partnerships, divorce, and institutional disputes.
This year, each week, Caroline and another longtime FCRP volunteer, Joan Broadfield, have been faithfully working with me to produce the 4th edition, and the resulting manuscript is — ack, a mess!, torn apart, added to, shifted around — and, we hope, altogether richer, more accurate, and more helpful than the original.
In FCRP’s early days, they chose program initiatives that were experiments, on the cutting edge of working with communities in need. Once the experiment was ticking along, the project would be spun off to local community ownership in the spirit of “empowerment” which was the buzz word of that era. The county mediation program FCRP started was spun off in 1982.
And now our top has finally spun itself to a close, but the ripples spread wide and make us happy.
Thanks to all the long-serving FCRP staff, starting with Charlie and Ann who both left us long ago. Betty, Eileen, Sandi, Chel, Keelin, & Caroline, as well as Joan, Ed, and Brenda. Love you all.
Elise Boulding died last week. She was an activist, sociologist, mother, feminist, Norwegian-American, author, Quaker, wife to a famous economist-poet, professor, a founder in the field of Peace & Conflict Studies …and much more.
A brief reminiscence from someone who only knew her in passing: When I was a 20-something intern in mediation, I attended the first National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (1983, I believe). Elise Boulding was the keynote speaker. I got up the nerve to speak with her–and as we sat in the coffee shop, two important things happened. The first was that she agreed to write the forward for my book Peacemaking in your Neighborhood. If it weren’t for her endorsement we probably would have sold 300 copies!
The second was a small thing…. As we were talking, the conference organizers swept by, expecting her to come join them for lunch. She declined, and after they left she said with a twinkle, “you know I always avoid the important people at conferences. I like to talk to the 20 and 30 year-olds who are doing the new and interesting work.” At conferences I have tried to follow her example ever since (one notable set of coffee shop conversations was with the nannies of famous anthropologist mothers, but that’s not a tale for a mediation blog
The final night of the conference, Elise Boulding got up to speak, looked down the stage with its row of men and one woman (the organizer), gazed out into the full hall. She observed that a good majority of the attendees were women. While all week long the speakers been men. Women are given the role of peacemakers in many societies, she said, they are the experts in how to do this work of resolving conflict. The stage should be full of them! The audience burst into wild cheers. And to give all of us in the field credit, many women have come crowding onto the stage since then. Thank you Elise!
The beginning of Elise Boulding’s Forward for Peacemaking in your Neighborhood:
If you have felt discouraged about prospects for world peace lately (and who hasn’t), this is a wonderfully affirming book to read. It talks about where peace begins–in one’s own neighborhood. It recounts how one group launched a peacemaking project in that most unpromising of all settings, the fringes of a city, and saw that project take root there.
Conflict, we know, is everywhere. It is in our own inner being, it is present in our relationships even with those we love most. Wherever human beings are in relationship, in the home, at work, in civic affairs, in political decision-making, and in the macro-institutions of state and world, they to some degree clash with each other. Each I has unique wants, needs, interests, and perceptions, as does each social group, in a conglomerate of uniquenesses which is staggering to the mind if we think of the number of conflictual interactions taking place at any one moment on the planet. Out of this conflict can come human growth and development, or destruction. The quality of any human group, institution, or society depends on how that conflict is handled.
Over blueberry muffins, hot from Caroline’s oven…..
We’re wrestling with what to do if we replace our familiar terms (“exchange” “uninterrupted time” “interests” etc.) with ones we think are more accurate or more useful. Will the new purpose-centered names for the process stages confuse people who learned mediation with the earlier editions? In what ways might it be aggravating for trainers to make the switch? New names are here: Building Blocks.
My preference is to go with the new conception, and have some kind of reference in the text or sidebar that clues in folks who are used to the previous terms. The point of putting out a book (or training people, for that matter), is to help people mediate effectively. If we have better ideas about how to do this than what we previously taught….shouldn’t we present those ideas front and center?
OK, and I admit to an irrational bias: for years I’ve sponsored a contest to get rid of “uninterrupted time” as unspellable, unpronouncable, focused on what we DON’T want (interruptions). I remember when we invented the term “Exchange” and have been bemused to watch it spread through other mediation manuals. In the end, it doesn’t really help — it just says “warning, messy communication ahead”.
Let us know what you think.