Conflict is everywhere: our living rooms, our streets, our community organizations, and every corner of the internet. But few of us have the training to successfully intervene or resolve these conflicts. In these pages, experienced peacemaker Gwendolyn Olton shows you how to use your existing skills and intuition to transform a wide variety of conflicts from insurmountable impasses to working relationships where everyone's needs are met. The result is a practical, kind, realistic guidebook for anyone who's found themselves in a conflict (their own or someone else's) and wondered, "How did we get here and what can I do to make it better!?"The book is broken up into three sections: learn the basics of conflicts, help others work out their conflicts, and finally, resolve and heal the conflicts in your own life. Filled with real life examples and thought-provoking scenarios, Olton offers a variety of conflict analysis and conversation tools that you can use to navigate the most challenging interpersonal dynamics, and to better understand yourself and others along the way—all without calling HR or the cops.

28 contributors each offer a chapter giving their experiences and techniques for resolving conflict in communities across the globe.

Problems that "just won't go away" can be settled through methods developed by one of America's leading experts in conflict resolution. In clear language, Weeks shows readers how to turn conflict into lasting partnerships and ensure a fruitful outcome.

Conflict can either destroy or create—depAnding on whether and how it is guided. This is the simple yet profound insight that underlies Jay Rothman's innovative new framework for understanding and transforming identity-based conflict in nations, organizations, and communities. Reading a newspaper, working in an organization, or sitting in on a town meeting can provide vivid examples of identity conflicts in action. Based in the national, organizational, and community groups that provide individuals with meaning, safety, and dignity, identity conflicts are passionate and volatile because they strike at our core: who we really are and what we care about most deeply. Though often impervious to traditional methods of conflict management, identity-based conflict also provides adversaries with dynamic opportunities for finding not only common ground, but higher ground than separate parties could have found on their own. Grounded in his grassroots conflict resolution work in the Middle East — work that earned him the honor of witnessing the historic White House handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO President Yasser Arafat — and brilliantly refined to address a wide range of organizational and community conflicts, Rothman's ARIA model is a versatile and innovative synthesis of the best contemporary ideas in conflict management, resolution, and transformation. Step by step, Resolving Identity-Based Conflict traces the ARIA journey through Antagonism, Resonance, Invention, and Action in a variety of environments. In straightforward, jargon-free language, Rothman conveys solid theoretical insights and practical how-to's that allow researchers and practitioners to: Recognize the crucial differences between identity- and resource-based conflicts Zero in on the needs and motivations shared by even the bitterest of adversaries Create joint agendas for groups in conflict Transform intragroup and intergroup conflicts in organizations of every k

This book helps you provide opportunities for young people to open up and explore their feelings through theatre, offering a safe place for them to air their views with dignity, respect, and freedom.

How do local communities effectively build peace and reconciliation before, during and after open violence? This trailblazing book gives practical examples, from the Global North, the former Soviet bloc and Global South, on communities addressing conflict in divided and contested societies. The book draws on a range of critical perspectives and practitioner analyses. The diverse case studies demonstrate the considerable knowledge, skills, commitment, courage and relationships within local communities that a critical community development approach can support and encourage. Concluding with activists’ perspectives on working with the challenges of violence, the book offers insights for both an understanding of the root causes of conflict and for bottom-up peacebuilding.