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Dialogue as a Process for Transforming Relationships

Author: Harold H. Saunders
Date: 2009
Size: 14 pages

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Summary

Dialogue is the essence of relationship; its goal is to create new human and political capacities for problem-solving. This chapter in the SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution focuses on the definition and practice of dialogue. How does one craft a space for dialogue to unfold? Can it shift attitudes from power politics to relationship building? Sustained dialogue affords new opportunities in conflict resolution, but its achievements are limited in a short-term time frame.

Rather than a discussion, where participants aim to ‘break up’ thoughts and ideas, dialogue is a probing, absorbing and engaging mode of interaction. Where political, social and economic exchanges are habitually confrontational and divisive, moving to a dialogue culture makes a valuable contribution to democratic practice and the peaceful resolution of difference.

This way of talking is a skill is in its own right. However, the ‘process’ of dialogue – where this approach to communication is practiced in a rigorous and carefully designed manner and sustained over a period of time – forms a specific instrument for conflict resolution, emphasising relating rather than problem-solving. ‘Relationships’ are conceptualised as holding five key elements (identity, interests, power, perceptions/misperceptions, and patterns of interaction) and form an analytical and operational tool in sustained dialogue.

Dialogue differs from other communication processes within conflict resolution in the following ways:

Negotiation requires parties who are ready to reach agreement. Dialogue can help parties not yet ready to negotiate, but who want to change a conflictual, dysfunctional or destructive relationship.
Dialogue can change relationships in ways that create new grounds for mutual respect and collaboration, rather than negotiating over territory, goods or rights.
Dialogue seeks to allow the emergence of new content, common to both parties, rather than allow one party to prevail over another.
Using dialogue organisers, designers and facilitators, a space is created that allows diverse elements of the conflict to be presented over time, and explored in a safe environment, which if otherwise examined might lead to open violence.

Sustained dialogue can become a systematic instrument for transformation. Depending on the nature of the conflict, some dialogue processes will be short term and quickly effective, others will be a lengthy challenge of beginning to transform deeply-rooted conflictual relationships. When dramatic system change is not evident, does this point to dialogue’s limitations, or reveal a need for more realistic definition of objectives?

Practitioners of dialogue have broadened the definition of conflict and its actors, incorporating people at all levels of society who perceive themselves as oppressed or victimised.
When dialogue is directed primarily by participants (not external facilitators) it is more fully owned; these parties must learn to engage themselves in the interest of peace.
Legitimising dialogue as a conflict resolution instrument requires a cultural shift from the reliance on power (at state and government level) to a relational paradigm.
A multi-level peace process framework – recognising the continuous interaction between government, business, civil society and grass roots – may be used to assess the effectiveness of dialogue in transforming relationship.
Criteria for framework assessment include: whether participants have transformed their own relationships, built on that experience, influenced peacemaking, and contributed to preparing those outside the dialogue for possible compromises.
Sustained dialogue is an open-ended political process, and the progression of achievements can be judged only as it unfolds.

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Source: Saunders, H. H., 2009, 'Dialogue as a Process for Transforming Relationships', in The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution, eds., J. Bercovitch, V. Kremenyuk, and I. W. Zartman, SAGE, London, pp. 376-390
Organisation: Sage Publications Ltd, http://www.sagepub.co.uk