Sites of conflict are central to the civic tradition in rhetorical studies, and those of us who are versed in that tradition have much to offer, and to learn, from those engaged in mediating conflicts in community centers, large organizations, and other
Mediating Differences 231
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Mediating Differences 231
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? Mediating Differences
Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
Like many developing cities, Tucson, Arizona, has experienced growing pains. Unfortunately, increased growth has brought increased conflict and compli- cations in a region already struggling to cope with its contentious geographic positioning. Located just fifty miles north of the southern border with Mex- ico, Tucson experiences its share of border town issues, while struggling to adapt its own cultural identity. An increasingly large amount of the conflict revolves around the swelling populations confined within the physical bor- ders of the city, so much conflict that the Northwest Police District--one of five in the city--struggles to handle even simple neighborhood disputes. According to Sergeant Ron Thompson, the district receives a call reporting a dispute between neighbors almost every other day. Not only were these calls burdening the district's resources, but after a fatal dispute in June 2006, all calls were approached with the utmost caution and treated as potentially dan- gerous. On June 22 Wayne Poppin was shot to death in front of his central Tucson apartment by a neighbor who was upset with the amount of noise Poppin was making in the mornings while loading his truck for work. Com- munity members remembered Poppin as an energetic man and good neigh- bor who was sincerely interested in his community. According to Poppin's widow, "All those people had to do was go and ask him to be quiet and he would have. "1 This unfortunate incident illuminates the desperate need for increased conflict resolution skills within the community.
One site where that need is being met is Our Family Services (OF), a joint venture of Our Town Mediation Services and the Family Counseling Agency. Active in Pima County for over seventy-five years, OF serves more than 35,000 people a year. 2 Providing services ranging from counseling to education to mediation, OF has shaped itself around the needs of Tucson residents. Cur- rently, OF offers fifteen programs in areas such as elder care, crisis manage- ment, transitional living, disability services, reunification services, parenting
230 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
education, community mediation, and school mediation education. 3 Whereas all of these programs contribute valuable services, the mediation program has been especially effective at improving social conditions. Staffed by three full- time employees as well as ten to fifteen volunteers at any given time, the community mediation program provides "safe, neutral and voluntary medi- ations, in English or Spanish, for a variety of neighbor and family disputes. "4 OF offers comprehensive methods for improving conflict resolution skills using transformative mediation principles. Mediations last approximately two hours, are facilitated by two mediators, and use the "living room" configura- tion (a spatial organization conducive to community interaction) in order to create an amiable space where community members can comfortably discuss their differences. OF mediations construct important spaces for members of the same community to create productive discussions and preserve relationships.
OF has collaborated with Pima County to establish a transformative medi- ation program that provides free or low-cost mediation services for property and noise complaints. The most popular collaborative program is with Pima County Animal Care Center and involves individuals who file animal noise complaints toward neighbors. This program creates a great opportunity for neighbors to collaborate on more than just their immediate needs. As the Community Mediation Program director, Andrea Stuart, explains, "Most often it's not about the dogs. There are usually other things that have escalated. "5 Those who file complaints (plaintiffs) can pursue their issues through free, vol- untary mediation sessions. If plaintiffs agree to mediation, they contact OF mediation staff, who then contact the animal owners and arrange a media- tion session that offers an opportunity for parties to discuss their issues with each other instead of following through with the formal complaint process. The ensuing mediations follow a process conducive to successful collabora- tion--a process that attempts to transform what Tucson city prosecutor Alan Merritt describes as "the lines of communication [that] are not open between the dog owner and the complainant. "6 An important aspect of the process is that mediators often change parties' attitudes by shifting the frame of refer- ence away from securing agreement, a shift that encourages disputants to feel more in control and begin to listen and learn from each other in new ways.
While the democratic applications of rhetoric continue to provide popular justifications for its teaching, applications to public discourse often end up being reduced to writing letters to the editor, criticizing political propaganda, or critiquing popular ideologies. Our continuing concentration on academic discourse positions our work at a critical distance from rhetoric's professed concern for collective action. Our increased involvement with service learn- ing and community literacy work has been complemented by work with action research and social movement studies. This renewed concern for col- lective agency has been pivotal to the civic turn in rhetoric and composition
that is the subject of this collection of essays. As scholars and teachers, we need to build on these opportunities to consider new ways of thinking about how rhetoric relates to civic participation. We will contribute to this line of discussion by exploring a deliberative domain where we may be able to develop more broadly based engagements with the conflicts that people work with every day. Conflict mediation is one such mode of deliberation in which we may be able to rearticulate a civic vision of rhetoric that makes productive use of the differences that we have come to see as integral to public deliberations.
Conflict mediation provides a purposeful but open-ended mode of engag- ing with practical deliberations on issues ranging from barking dogs to toxic waste dumps. In "Rhetoric and Conflict Resolution," Richard Lloyd-Jones called for rhetoricians to consider how conflict mediation might help us be- come more broadly engaged with how people "contextualize conflict so that its energies can be directed toward positive ends. "7 A mediator is a third-party facilitator who does not have the authority to judge opposing arguments and pronounce a verdict. The judicial model of an expert judge overseeing the making of pro and con arguments before an impartial jury has continued to shape our thinking about deliberative inquiries even as we have come to question the foundations of disinterested objectivity. Such questions have prompted the development of models of conflict mediation that are less con- cerned with preserving impartiality than with investigating the heuristic potentials of differences in assumptions. These developments parallel recent trends in rhetoric and composition, and those parallels can help us to see these continuing trends in a different context, as often proves to be the case when community-based inquiries challenge the presumptions of academic researchers. Such moments have a heuristic potential that conflict mediators have learned to value.
The inventive capacities of conflicted situations are one of the points where trends in rhetoric and composition parallel those in conflict media- tion. For example, specific resolution practices like principled negotiation rely on rhetorical strategies to explore the dynamic relations among speakers, audiences, and contested situations. The inventive capacities of such strategies become apparent in places like Tucson, where people are pressed to resolve their differences. Much of the power of classical heuristics arises from their ability to make use of contested situations. As we will discuss, such heuristics have been configured in quite complementary ways by various schools of conflict resolution--most usefully by theories of transformative mediation. This school of conflict mediation challenges people who are enmeshed in conflicts to reflect upon how they can mediate their differences in ways that expand their sense of what can be achieved in the situation.
Sites of conflict are central to the civic tradition in rhetorical studies, and those of us who are versed in that tradition have much to offer, and to learn, from those engaged in mediating conflicts in community centers, large organizations, and other
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232 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
sites beyond the academy. Rhetoric's traditional concern for the art of discov- ering the possibilities of contested situations can be reinvigorated by engag- ing in work with conflict mediation, especially those approaches that look not simply to resolve differences but to open up their broader possibilities.
Rediscovering the Inventive Capacities of Conflicted Situations
Recent trends in rhetoric, composition, and a wide range of related fields can be benchmarked by the rediscovery of inventive capacities of conflicted situ- ations. Kenneth Burke challenged rhetoricians to expand the locus of their studies from persuasion to "identification," and his "dramatism" became part of the interpretive frameworks of social movement studies in communica- tions and sociology. 8 Scene-act ratios have also been used by compositionists such as Karen Burke LeFevre; her discussion of "resonance" is congruent with how conflict mediators attempt to help disputants reflect upon how their communities' values frame their decision-making possibilities. 9 Collaborative models of invention have reshaped how we think of writing itself, as can be seen in Jim Corder's writings on "generative ethos" as a means to engage in discovering the possibilities of situations with others. 10 In rhetorical studies, as in conflict mediation, these trends of thought have often been identified with the writings of Carl Rogers. Like Burke, "Rogerian collaborative rheto- ric," as Nathaniel Teich has termed it, has served as a resource for developing heuristics that can be used to investigate the transactional potentials of con- flicted situations in ways that are less tightly scripted than by the traditional emphasis on persuasion in classical theories of invention. 11
These familiar theories of invention provide a more open-ended frame- work for exploring the rhetorical dynamics of conflict mediation. "Conflict resolution" can generally be defined as a variable set of practices concerned with helping disputants reach agreement through noncoercive methods of collaborative inquiry. With clear parallels to our traditional emphasis on argu- ment, the distributive model treats conflict resolution as a "zero-sum" game that entails "a competition over who is going to get the most of a limited resource. "12 Here, the mediation process is envisioned as a competition for position, with participants focusing on what they want to achieve if they win out over their opponents. 13 As in rhetoric and composition, this model of conflict resolution has been replaced with approaches that have a more open- ended sense of the process--integrative theories of mediation, which look to resolve conflicts in ways that can be mutually beneficial. This school of con- flict resolution was popularized in Fisher, Ury, and Patton's Getting to Yes. 14 A best seller that has sold over two million copies in twenty-one languages, it attempts to enable people to reimagine conflict in order to work through their differences. The invention strategies are similar to those identified with Rogerian rhetoric, for disputants are encouraged to listen and brainstorm together in order to identify mutual goals. Conflict mediation becomes an
invention process concerned with discovering the possibilities of differing in- terpretations. Integrative theories of conflict resolution enlist invention strate- gies to help disputants break out of the assumption maintained by distributive negotiations that conflicts inevitably arise over a fixed set of resources to be divided between the disputants. 15 In these and other ways, integrative nego- tiators enlist invention strategies not to help disputants develop opposing arguments but to rethink the situation itself and their purposes in it.
Distributive and integrative approaches to conflict mediation have strik- ing continuities with how theorists such as Burke and Rogers reframed rhet- oric's classical focus on audience, situation, and purpose to develop situated models of purposeful interaction that are more open-ended than traditional conceptions of persuasion. As in composition studies, the counterpoised stances of the critic and the advocate have been replaced within discussions of conflict mediation that have adopted an integrative approach that is less intent on winning and more concerned with listening to others and reaching consensus. However, in both areas the tacitly perpetuated assumption is often that conflicts are to be resolved as quickly as possible so that people can move on to better things. This conception of conflict has lost its standing in both composition and conflict mediation. Rogerian rhetoric and an unproblema- tized faith in collaborative inquiry lost their standing in rhetoric and com position as we became attuned to how liberal models of building consensus often function to make a virtue of the power of persuasion. Consensus lost its authority among many practitioners when critics of collaborative learning called upon teachers and researchers to attend to how prevailing hierarchies are perpetuated by pressing diverging points of view to be reasonable and accept the will of the group. Critics such as John Trimbur argued that oppos- ing views can be better sustained and valued for their inventive capacities when "dissensus" is seen as a productive part of a healthy discussion about conflicted issues. 16 In rhetoric and composition, as in conflict mediation, we have become suspicious of the idea that collaborations should work toward consensus as we have learned to value the generative capacities of our differ- ences. Fortunately, conflict mediation offers such models of collaborative inquiry, which have expanded as we have looked beyond the classroom to community-based research projects. The work of Linda Flower aptly docu- ments these possibilities, as we discuss after we consider another school of conflict mediation that provides a complementary model to the concern for "dissensus" in rhetoric and composition. 17
Transformative Mediation as a Model for Learning from "Dissensus"
Insofar as we have become suspicious of consensus, we are likely to be criti- cal of the collaborative presuppositions of integrative conflict resolution, such as Fisher, Ury, and Patton's advice on audience or reframing as a process of
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invention. Such thinking suggests an unproblematized concern for consen- sus that tends to isolate conflicts from broader contexts that raise complicated issues that may require mediators to confront broader inequities and hierar- chies. For example, Getting to Yes offers four strategies--such as "separate the people from the problem" and "focus on interests, not positions"--to help disputants reconcile differences in order to reach agreement. 18 Even though these suggestions are oriented to mediating differences rather than winning out over others, these collaborative strategies mirror recent attempts to adapt classical rhetoric to a more liberal orientation on learning. They are con- cerned with solving problems, not with changing situations or using the col- laborative process as an opportunity to explore the potentials of collective action among people who may face problems not of their own making. As a result, integrative as well as distributive mediation strategies tend to manage conflicts in ways that do not challenge prevailing assumptions or help groups develop social capital through productive collaborations, and thereby develop coalitions to advance broader changes.
Such mediation practices may help people improve their immediate situations but may not help them understand the conditions that led to the conflicts. In fact, some resolution strategies are specifically intended to help people focus on the immediate problem and ignore broader factors. Concern for solving immediate problems is pushed to the forefront, eliminating chances to learn the broader contributing factors. Because agreement is the main goal, mediators do not focus on developing disputants' abilities to develop a sense of common cause. Some mediation practitioners, however, do attempt to ad- dress underlying inequities by envisioning conflict resolution not as a means to an immediate end but as part of a broader process concerned with enabling communities to discover the inventive capacities of their shared traditions and build up social capital by working through collaborations.
The most popular alternative approach is known as "transformative medi- ation. " It is guided by a vision of collaboration as a means to help people gain more control over their situations and create alternative resolutions. This school of conflict mediation was developed by Robert Bush and Joseph Fol- ger and articulated in their The Promise of Mediation: Responding to Conflict through Empowerment and Recognition and their revised version, The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict. These texts redefine the mediation process and mediator roles and provide case studies and commen- taries concerned with helping mediators to serve as collaborative educators by emphasizing relationship building over settlement. Bush, Rains Distinguished Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution Law at Hofstra University School of Law, and Folger, professor of Adult and Organizational Development at Temple University, offer a vision of mediation that moves beyond contempo- rary mediators' desires to increase satisfaction with dispute resolution or provide collective opportunities for community members. Transformative
mediators treat conflict not as something that must be solved but as an opportunity to change disputants' interpretive schema. This approach opens up opportunities for mediations to position the particular problem in broader contexts and try to provide a constructive atmosphere where disputants can air shared needs.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of transformative mediation is its redefinition of the purposes at issue in conflicted situations. The goal is not resolution, or agreement, but transformation. According to Bush and Fol- ger, "transformation" does not refer to a general reallocation of resources or restructuring of schema but a "change in the quality of social interaction, in and beyond conflict. "19 Transformative mediators attempt to change the way people understand conflict from negative and destructive to instructive and creative. Once disputants recognize conflict as "an emergent, dynamic phe- nomenon, in which parties can--and do--move and shift," they are more willing to participate in generative invention processes. 20 Disputants learn to appreciate the mediation process as an opportunity to expand inventive strate- gies by collaborating with others. Consistent with this framework, transfor- mative mediation offers a practical framework for improving people's strategies for addressing conflicts. Similar to problem-solving mediators, transformative mediators follow a general outline; however, transformative mediators expand invention strategies by pursuing four different goals: released process control in which disputants learn how to learn from conflict, expanded information gathering that may open up broader avenues of thinking about the issue, improved collaboration through recognizing mutual constraints and shared needs, and personal shifts in viewpoint that may arise as people learn that what may have appeared to be interpersonal conflicts arise from the struc- tures of situations or the assumptions imposed upon them.
By beginning with questions about how the mediation process should pro- ceed, transformative mediators seek to enable the sort of collaborative inven- tion processes that LeFevre has studied. Whereas problem-solving mediators begin by setting out a formal multistage process, transformative mediators delegate control of the process to disputants. As explained by Bush and Fol- ger, mediators "let the parties know that they can design the process as it unfolds. "21 Much as critical pedagogues begin by challenging students to become more actively involved in shaping assignments and expectations, dis- putants are encouraged to envision the situation as they see fit and bring in cultural values and social practices from their backgrounds that might foster a more collaborative environment. For example, because disputants control introductions, they can frame a conflict by acknowledging significant moral beliefs that affect their perspective and the purposes they envision. By creat- ing a participatory environment, transformative mediators attempt to open up the situation to encourage participants to articulate how their stance is consistent with the beliefs of the groups with which they identify. Through
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these broader identifications, participants can tap into commonplaces and topoi that may serve as productive resources for rethinking the issues at hand. Reframing conflicts in these ways can enable people to understand how oth- ers think and why they have acted as they have. At the same time, the speak- ers are presented with opportunities to reflect upon how well their traditional assumptions speak to the situation and their changing needs.
The four transformative criteria--released process control, expanded in- formation-gathering, improved collaboration, and personal shifts--expand disputants' discovery processes: by gaining control of the mediation process, disputants can identify concerns and topics specific to their situation; through expanded information-gathering processes, disputants include personal and community values; empowerment and recognition help disputants both re- gain control and acknowledge others; and increased collaboration parallels the dialectic nature of communication. These criteria provide a "rhetorical" sense of mediating differences that has heuristic power in thinking about work in the community and its relevance for broader trends in rhetoric and composition. Instead of simply attempting to resolve disputes, transforma- tive mediation attempts to create a space where disputants can think through their differences to put them to practical use, and not simply to rise above them (as presumed by traditional civic models). This approach has been highly successful in the U. S. Postal Service's national REDRESS mediation program-- a program that has been described by the New York Times as "one of the most ambitious experiments in dispute resolution in American corporate history"-- by creating opportunities for postal employees to control their disputes and participate in the outcomes. 22 Practiced across the country in many of our communities, transformative mediation offers a proven method being that can lead to an improved connection between rhetoric and social change.
A Place for Rhetoric--Tucson's Our Family Community Mediation Center
Whereas academic scholarship in rhetoric and composition locates places for rhetoric in community writing centers and various genres of public discourse, academics find difficulty speaking the same language as community mem- bers. Linda Flower and Julia Deems explain how rhetorical principles from sources such as Aristotle or Perelman carry an "air of book learning" in com- munity settings that can make the principles seem impractical. 23 Additional distractions can arise from class projects and service-learning programs that have a missionary ethos of helping out those in need. 24 Those in rhetoric and composition who are involved with community outreach have struggled to overcome such presuppositions to develop reciprocal relations with varied community members. The language problems involved can be usefully ad- dressed by principles of transformative conflict mediation, which are grounded in concerted efforts to help communities not just resolve but also learn from
their problems. Beyond improving interpersonal understanding, transforma- tive mediation can enable collective action by providing skills that can be applied to situations other than the immediate conflicts. People who develop transformative skills like empowerment, recognition, and increased data col- lection can help their communities develop practical deliberative capacities. Transformative mediation provides valuable transferable skills, not simply to persuade others but also to listen and work with neighbors and members of one's communities in order to act on their shared problems.
Community centers that practice transformative conflict mediation can help to develop people's capacities for collective action. Following upon the landmark Pound Conference of 1976, "Neighborhood Justice Centers" were established in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Kansas City to put transformative mediation into practice. 25 Following the cities' success, mediation centers and organizations like the National Association for Community Mediation (NACM) became more involved in promoting community interests by strengthening individuals' collaborative skills. NACM's mission is "to preserve individual interests while strengthening relationships and building connections between people and groups, and to create processes that make communities work for all. "26 Over 550 community mediation centers are currently mediating some 50,000 cases a year. 27 This direct connection to communities creates oppor- tunities for mediators to improve social invention strategies. It creates spaces where community members can learn how to better understand differences while focusing on immediate issues. Because transformative community medi- ators facilitate improved interpersonal interactions, disputants learn how to create similar spaces for working with differences.
After observing several animal noise complaint mediations in the spring of 2006, we witnessed firsthand how community members have gained skills helpful to better negotiating in their daily lives because they have developed rhetorical strategies that empower them to create change. Disputants trans- formed their conflicted experiences into constructive opportunities to create change. Whereas each mediation session was distinct--ranging from the close quarters of a mobile home park to the homogeneity of suburban gated com- munities to the isolation of open ranch lands in the foothills--and the var- ied sessions required different skills, several common characteristics enabled participants to be successful. Mediations succeeded when people overcame misunderstandings of invention, utilized positive physical spaces in which to interact, and developed framing strategies that increased their ability to nego- tiate differences.
First, disputants learned to work beyond narrow conceptions of the inven- tive possibilities of conflicts. When explorations of assumptions and needs are confined to the initial stage of the collaborative process, disputants tend to assume that they have thought through the problem and the issue is how to get others to agree with them, as is the case in distributive models of conflict
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mediation. This narrow conception of invention has been perpetuated, as Jim Corder suggests in Uses of Rhetoric, by assumptions that invention precedes deliberation. If the process is divided into five phases (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery), then people tend to assume that one phase pre- cedes the others. People do not anticipate that the process is recursive and not linear. For Corder, such assumptions of "sequentiality" limit people's abil- ity to improve communication by rethinking their intentions. 28 Prior to meet- ing at OF, disputants tended to assume that the purpose of mediation is to support and defend specific arguments. For example, in a lengthy and con- tentious mediation between a young couple and a retired U. S. serviceman about three large dogs, disputants had a difficult time working together be- cause they were obsessed with assigning blame. They constantly referred to evidence such as tape recordings, photographs, and personal research, and they read prewritten narrations of their experiences. Once they realized that the process of arguing back and forth was leading nowhere, they become more interested in rethinking their positions.
Second, disputants learned the values of the using the mediation process to step back from their conflicted relations and interact more constructively. The mediation space enabled them to assume different roles and relations. Because boundaries such as property lines and privacy walls often separate people's public and private lives, people are accustomed to dividing their interpersonal interactions. In a growing metropolis such as Tucson, residents are often separated from their immediate communities. Be it on open ranch lands or in trailer parks, disputants often understand private space in ways that limit their opportunities to interact productively. Using the "living room" model of spatial organization that places disputants on equal footing, trans- formative mediation sessions take place in a comfortable room where partici- pants sit close to each other and chairs are arranged in a semicircle with no structures or tables acting as dividers. Consequently, brainstorming sessions are highly interactive and foster collaboration. When a whiteboard is used, mediators do not dichotomize issues by dividing sides but instead use writing as a collaborative product. For example, during collective brainstorming ses- sions, mediators record disputants' suggestions in the middle of the board, without dividing the sides. In one vertical column, disputants' ideas exist together as they share the process of invention.
Within their communities, individuals can collaborate in spaces where they can mutually discuss issues and create change. In these spaces different ideas gain capital through what LeFevre describes as "resonance," a term she borrows from Harold Laswell. 29 As LeFevre explains, "Resonance comes about when an individual act--a 'vibration'--is intensified and prolonged by sym- pathetic vibrations . . . when people provide a supportive social and intel- lectual environment that nurtures thought and enables ideas to be received, thus completing the inventive act. "30 Resonance, therefore, results from direct
and indirect communication. OF mediators create environments that support resonance by establishing collaboration. Oftentimes this involves reminding individuals of who their audience really is--each other. For example, within several minutes of a mediation session involving retirees who had severed all communication among each other, OF mediators often reminded the dis- putants that they should talk to each other instead of talking to the media- tor. Once people begin addressing each other, they become more capable of working together. Recognition of the other party immediately changes peo- ple's tone as they begin to take control of their own situations.
Finally, disputants learned the importance of framing and reframing con- flicts. In conflict mediations, analyses of frames and efforts to reframe issues can help people construct more productive ways of seeing a problem. Refram- ing, as explained by Kovach, helps mediators explain "the disputed issues of the parties in more neutral manner, in such a way that the parties begin to focus on potential outcomes. "31 OF mediators reframe issues in order to clar- ify points and help people gain alternative perspectives, to filter out negative language and select more neutral terms so that disputants can see a situation differently. Successful reframing helps disputants shift their interpretive schema, and such shifts often form turning points in collaborations. As Beer and Steif discuss, at such a point disputants gain new perspective and begin to see through a different lens: they "shift from presenting their conflict as stories and positions to viewing the situation as a set of specific interests, principles, and mediatable issues. "32 As linguist George Lakoff explains, re- framing is an important step in creating change because reframing changes how people see the world: "It is changing what counts as common sense. "33 Community mediation centers are important sites for creating such change. Community centers like OF help people develop skills that they can use in their public lives. Transformative mediation--as it is practiced at OF--helps participants reenvision rhetoric as a mode of collective deliberation and con- flict mediation. Such sites have much to teach us about how to reframe our own concerns in ways that might be more broadly useful to our students, for the collaborative inquiries at OF provide frameworks for thinking about argu- ment, inquiry, and purpose in ways that can help us break out of the con- straints that have come to be assumed in rhetoric and composition classes.
Transformative Mediation in the Classroom
To contribute to efforts to integrate outreach into instruction, we want to sketch out how scenario-based classroom assignments can help students de- velop strategies to engage in conflict mediation and other community learn- ing processes. Working with scenarios in the classroom is not an alternative to service-learning assignments, but it can be a useful complement to them. By centering the class on a shared deliberative process, teachers and students can gain experience in working with the practical strategies and ethical issues
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that are likely to come up in community-based learning activities. By work- ing with each other in collaborative learning scenarios, students can gain skills such as empowerment and recognition while developing improved invention strategies vital to their academic success and civic literacies. Based on experi- ences from OF mediations, these two scenarios provide students with oppor- tunities to collaborate and practice important rhetorical skills, which can then be developed through service-learning assignments, internships, and other collaborations beyond the classroom.
"Showdown in Superior! "
"Showdown in Superior! " was a set of course-long assignments developed with three collaborating classes at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2005. 34 Several writing instructors created a scenario to have students work together to resolve a community dispute. Codesigned by Erik Juergensmeyer, David Reamer, and Brian Jackson, the unit combined an honors first-year composition class with business and technical writing classes to deliberate upon a regional mining issue in Superior, Arizona, a town that is two hours away from the University of Arizona campus. The curriculum asked students to work together and research, present, and deliberate upon how the mining issue will affect the town's residents. Students wrote such assignments as researched essays, letters to the editor, pamphlets, Web sites, and so on. These writings were circulated among the three classes in preparation for a mock town hall meeting. At the end of the semester, all three classes met together in a large lecture hall, presented their cases through PowerPoint presentations and public speeches, discussed the different issues and affected groups, and eventually voted on whether to support the copper company's mining pro- posal.
All three classes had distinct roles in the project. The technical writing class represented a local copper company looking to extract copper from Superior's vast reserves. As representatives of the mining company, they pre- pared Web sites, brochures, newsletters, and oral presentations that blended technical information with reasoned arguments encouraging the townspeo- ple to approve the mining project. Students who took on these roles were put in the position of defending their positions amid opposition from special interest groups and demonstrating their goodwill. Students in Erik's business writing class took on the role of several special interest groups that opposed the mining company's bid. Role-playing as local and national groups, stu- dents prepared professional documents arguing against permitting the min- ing project in Superior. They discussed their sides with employees of the copper company and attempted to convince town residents that they too were concerned with the town's best interests. Finally, the first-year honors class assumed the role of the townspeople of Superior. As townspeople, they wrote imaginary letters to Superior's newspaper, speeches for the town hall
meeting, and researched reports advocating that the town pursue a specific course of action.
During the semester, the students' deliverables were both engaged and specific. In Erik's business writing class, for example, student groups created fictitious organizations and focused on realistic viewpoints within a commu- nity. One group interested in studying law established the RACB (an acronym derived from students' first names) law firm, "a local law firm that has been serving the citizens and businesses of Superior since October 2005," "a small agency with a big mission and a lot of ground to cover. " After researching the specific geographical and environmental components of the mine proposal, RACB immediately identified their focus on a brochure intended for indiffer- ent townspeople: "We are committed to preserving Oak Flat Campground, Devil's Canyon, Queen Creek Canyon and Apache Leap for the benefit of this and future generations. " RACB espoused a mission of equal importance: "We are working in the best interest of the city of Superior, providing knowledge and education to its citizens. "
Another student group, operating under the acronym SAERG (Southern Arizona Economic Resources Group), focused on citizens of the town of Supe- rior opposed to the mining project. In an informational brochure, students of SAERG implored citizens to be more active in their community beliefs. Under a section entitled "What you can do," they provided several steps:
If you believe that RCC [Resolution Cooper Corporation] has no business in your town, then vote "No" in the town hall meeting next week. Now is the time to take a stand and fight. Here are a few things you can do:
Spread the word! Tell your friends and family about the economic dangers of the RCC project. Urge them to spread the word.
Make your voice known. There are many ways in which you can partner up with local or national interest groups that will side with you against RCC. Rally your fellow citizens, start a petition, do whatever it takes.
For students in SAERG, civic participation involves both negotiating through community interests and developing integrative skills that can help town citizens mobilize their interests. It also involves actively participating in community discourse and conflict.
The semester-long project culminated in a mock town hall meeting where all three groups, who had been exchanging research and documents, met for the first time and discussed their differing positions. Following PowerPoint presentations from the students role-playing as the mining company and special interest groups, members from all three classes joined small group collaborative sessions to discuss the issues in further detail. These groups of approximately twenty-five students (roughly one-third from each class) offered
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physical spaces for people to discuss the different positions and further ex- plain why they took their specific views on the mining proposal. Similar to the mediation rooms at OF, these spaces created opportunities for role-players both to collect data and recognize others' needs. After deliberations, all classes reconvened, and the townspeople took the stage, where they discussed what they had learned from talking one-on-one with the interest group and min- ing company representatives. Attempting to persuade their peers, different townspeople explained their sides and eventually voted for an appropriate course of action--in this case, opposing the mining company's bid.
"Showdown in Superior! " created an opportunity for the transformation of both invention and collaboration strategies. It provided a comfortable environment for students to discuss their different views and listen to their opponents in order to resolve conflicts. With the townspeople serving as medi- ators, the small group deliberative sessions paralleled transformative media- tion sessions where people control the agenda and discuss whatever issues they think are relevant to the case at hand. Modeled after the transformative principle of avoiding caucusing, these sessions created a place where inven- tion is not limited to the beginning of one's arguments and people can work together to actually invent new understandings and resolutions. Students both became empowered through documents and presentations and also recog- nized others by working together and listening to alternative views on their issues--views expressed by real people seated next to them. They learned con- flict resolution strategies that will help them examine and better negotiate their differences.
Breaking through the Border
Building on their experiences in "Showdown in Superior! " Erik Juergens- meyer and David Reamer joined with colleague Leslie Dupont to create another scenario designed to foster transformative mediation and rhetorical invention in a border town. Occurring during fall 2006, "Breaking through the Border" asked professional writing students to research, represent, and collaboratively discuss current issues at the Mexico-Arizona border, with par- ticular consideration of how these issues affect Tucson residents. Students con- fronted challenging issues that were both close to their lives and represented potentially intractable conflicts--scenarios where they could apply transforma- tive mediation strategies to create change. Ultimately, students had to suggest a specific course of action, such as increased border security or humanitarian support, that would influence local and state agencies. Students from Erik's business writing class researched and represented issues from the border de- bate based on their social impact on Tucson citizens.
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? Mediating Differences
Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
Like many developing cities, Tucson, Arizona, has experienced growing pains. Unfortunately, increased growth has brought increased conflict and compli- cations in a region already struggling to cope with its contentious geographic positioning. Located just fifty miles north of the southern border with Mex- ico, Tucson experiences its share of border town issues, while struggling to adapt its own cultural identity. An increasingly large amount of the conflict revolves around the swelling populations confined within the physical bor- ders of the city, so much conflict that the Northwest Police District--one of five in the city--struggles to handle even simple neighborhood disputes. According to Sergeant Ron Thompson, the district receives a call reporting a dispute between neighbors almost every other day. Not only were these calls burdening the district's resources, but after a fatal dispute in June 2006, all calls were approached with the utmost caution and treated as potentially dan- gerous. On June 22 Wayne Poppin was shot to death in front of his central Tucson apartment by a neighbor who was upset with the amount of noise Poppin was making in the mornings while loading his truck for work. Com- munity members remembered Poppin as an energetic man and good neigh- bor who was sincerely interested in his community. According to Poppin's widow, "All those people had to do was go and ask him to be quiet and he would have. "1 This unfortunate incident illuminates the desperate need for increased conflict resolution skills within the community.
One site where that need is being met is Our Family Services (OF), a joint venture of Our Town Mediation Services and the Family Counseling Agency. Active in Pima County for over seventy-five years, OF serves more than 35,000 people a year. 2 Providing services ranging from counseling to education to mediation, OF has shaped itself around the needs of Tucson residents. Cur- rently, OF offers fifteen programs in areas such as elder care, crisis manage- ment, transitional living, disability services, reunification services, parenting
230 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
education, community mediation, and school mediation education. 3 Whereas all of these programs contribute valuable services, the mediation program has been especially effective at improving social conditions. Staffed by three full- time employees as well as ten to fifteen volunteers at any given time, the community mediation program provides "safe, neutral and voluntary medi- ations, in English or Spanish, for a variety of neighbor and family disputes. "4 OF offers comprehensive methods for improving conflict resolution skills using transformative mediation principles. Mediations last approximately two hours, are facilitated by two mediators, and use the "living room" configura- tion (a spatial organization conducive to community interaction) in order to create an amiable space where community members can comfortably discuss their differences. OF mediations construct important spaces for members of the same community to create productive discussions and preserve relationships.
OF has collaborated with Pima County to establish a transformative medi- ation program that provides free or low-cost mediation services for property and noise complaints. The most popular collaborative program is with Pima County Animal Care Center and involves individuals who file animal noise complaints toward neighbors. This program creates a great opportunity for neighbors to collaborate on more than just their immediate needs. As the Community Mediation Program director, Andrea Stuart, explains, "Most often it's not about the dogs. There are usually other things that have escalated. "5 Those who file complaints (plaintiffs) can pursue their issues through free, vol- untary mediation sessions. If plaintiffs agree to mediation, they contact OF mediation staff, who then contact the animal owners and arrange a media- tion session that offers an opportunity for parties to discuss their issues with each other instead of following through with the formal complaint process. The ensuing mediations follow a process conducive to successful collabora- tion--a process that attempts to transform what Tucson city prosecutor Alan Merritt describes as "the lines of communication [that] are not open between the dog owner and the complainant. "6 An important aspect of the process is that mediators often change parties' attitudes by shifting the frame of refer- ence away from securing agreement, a shift that encourages disputants to feel more in control and begin to listen and learn from each other in new ways.
While the democratic applications of rhetoric continue to provide popular justifications for its teaching, applications to public discourse often end up being reduced to writing letters to the editor, criticizing political propaganda, or critiquing popular ideologies. Our continuing concentration on academic discourse positions our work at a critical distance from rhetoric's professed concern for collective action. Our increased involvement with service learn- ing and community literacy work has been complemented by work with action research and social movement studies. This renewed concern for col- lective agency has been pivotal to the civic turn in rhetoric and composition
that is the subject of this collection of essays. As scholars and teachers, we need to build on these opportunities to consider new ways of thinking about how rhetoric relates to civic participation. We will contribute to this line of discussion by exploring a deliberative domain where we may be able to develop more broadly based engagements with the conflicts that people work with every day. Conflict mediation is one such mode of deliberation in which we may be able to rearticulate a civic vision of rhetoric that makes productive use of the differences that we have come to see as integral to public deliberations.
Conflict mediation provides a purposeful but open-ended mode of engag- ing with practical deliberations on issues ranging from barking dogs to toxic waste dumps. In "Rhetoric and Conflict Resolution," Richard Lloyd-Jones called for rhetoricians to consider how conflict mediation might help us be- come more broadly engaged with how people "contextualize conflict so that its energies can be directed toward positive ends. "7 A mediator is a third-party facilitator who does not have the authority to judge opposing arguments and pronounce a verdict. The judicial model of an expert judge overseeing the making of pro and con arguments before an impartial jury has continued to shape our thinking about deliberative inquiries even as we have come to question the foundations of disinterested objectivity. Such questions have prompted the development of models of conflict mediation that are less con- cerned with preserving impartiality than with investigating the heuristic potentials of differences in assumptions. These developments parallel recent trends in rhetoric and composition, and those parallels can help us to see these continuing trends in a different context, as often proves to be the case when community-based inquiries challenge the presumptions of academic researchers. Such moments have a heuristic potential that conflict mediators have learned to value.
The inventive capacities of conflicted situations are one of the points where trends in rhetoric and composition parallel those in conflict media- tion. For example, specific resolution practices like principled negotiation rely on rhetorical strategies to explore the dynamic relations among speakers, audiences, and contested situations. The inventive capacities of such strategies become apparent in places like Tucson, where people are pressed to resolve their differences. Much of the power of classical heuristics arises from their ability to make use of contested situations. As we will discuss, such heuristics have been configured in quite complementary ways by various schools of conflict resolution--most usefully by theories of transformative mediation. This school of conflict mediation challenges people who are enmeshed in conflicts to reflect upon how they can mediate their differences in ways that expand their sense of what can be achieved in the situation.
Sites of conflict are central to the civic tradition in rhetorical studies, and those of us who are versed in that tradition have much to offer, and to learn, from those engaged in mediating conflicts in community centers, large organizations, and other
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sites beyond the academy. Rhetoric's traditional concern for the art of discov- ering the possibilities of contested situations can be reinvigorated by engag- ing in work with conflict mediation, especially those approaches that look not simply to resolve differences but to open up their broader possibilities.
Rediscovering the Inventive Capacities of Conflicted Situations
Recent trends in rhetoric, composition, and a wide range of related fields can be benchmarked by the rediscovery of inventive capacities of conflicted situ- ations. Kenneth Burke challenged rhetoricians to expand the locus of their studies from persuasion to "identification," and his "dramatism" became part of the interpretive frameworks of social movement studies in communica- tions and sociology. 8 Scene-act ratios have also been used by compositionists such as Karen Burke LeFevre; her discussion of "resonance" is congruent with how conflict mediators attempt to help disputants reflect upon how their communities' values frame their decision-making possibilities. 9 Collaborative models of invention have reshaped how we think of writing itself, as can be seen in Jim Corder's writings on "generative ethos" as a means to engage in discovering the possibilities of situations with others. 10 In rhetorical studies, as in conflict mediation, these trends of thought have often been identified with the writings of Carl Rogers. Like Burke, "Rogerian collaborative rheto- ric," as Nathaniel Teich has termed it, has served as a resource for developing heuristics that can be used to investigate the transactional potentials of con- flicted situations in ways that are less tightly scripted than by the traditional emphasis on persuasion in classical theories of invention. 11
These familiar theories of invention provide a more open-ended frame- work for exploring the rhetorical dynamics of conflict mediation. "Conflict resolution" can generally be defined as a variable set of practices concerned with helping disputants reach agreement through noncoercive methods of collaborative inquiry. With clear parallels to our traditional emphasis on argu- ment, the distributive model treats conflict resolution as a "zero-sum" game that entails "a competition over who is going to get the most of a limited resource. "12 Here, the mediation process is envisioned as a competition for position, with participants focusing on what they want to achieve if they win out over their opponents. 13 As in rhetoric and composition, this model of conflict resolution has been replaced with approaches that have a more open- ended sense of the process--integrative theories of mediation, which look to resolve conflicts in ways that can be mutually beneficial. This school of con- flict resolution was popularized in Fisher, Ury, and Patton's Getting to Yes. 14 A best seller that has sold over two million copies in twenty-one languages, it attempts to enable people to reimagine conflict in order to work through their differences. The invention strategies are similar to those identified with Rogerian rhetoric, for disputants are encouraged to listen and brainstorm together in order to identify mutual goals. Conflict mediation becomes an
invention process concerned with discovering the possibilities of differing in- terpretations. Integrative theories of conflict resolution enlist invention strate- gies to help disputants break out of the assumption maintained by distributive negotiations that conflicts inevitably arise over a fixed set of resources to be divided between the disputants. 15 In these and other ways, integrative nego- tiators enlist invention strategies not to help disputants develop opposing arguments but to rethink the situation itself and their purposes in it.
Distributive and integrative approaches to conflict mediation have strik- ing continuities with how theorists such as Burke and Rogers reframed rhet- oric's classical focus on audience, situation, and purpose to develop situated models of purposeful interaction that are more open-ended than traditional conceptions of persuasion. As in composition studies, the counterpoised stances of the critic and the advocate have been replaced within discussions of conflict mediation that have adopted an integrative approach that is less intent on winning and more concerned with listening to others and reaching consensus. However, in both areas the tacitly perpetuated assumption is often that conflicts are to be resolved as quickly as possible so that people can move on to better things. This conception of conflict has lost its standing in both composition and conflict mediation. Rogerian rhetoric and an unproblema- tized faith in collaborative inquiry lost their standing in rhetoric and com position as we became attuned to how liberal models of building consensus often function to make a virtue of the power of persuasion. Consensus lost its authority among many practitioners when critics of collaborative learning called upon teachers and researchers to attend to how prevailing hierarchies are perpetuated by pressing diverging points of view to be reasonable and accept the will of the group. Critics such as John Trimbur argued that oppos- ing views can be better sustained and valued for their inventive capacities when "dissensus" is seen as a productive part of a healthy discussion about conflicted issues. 16 In rhetoric and composition, as in conflict mediation, we have become suspicious of the idea that collaborations should work toward consensus as we have learned to value the generative capacities of our differ- ences. Fortunately, conflict mediation offers such models of collaborative inquiry, which have expanded as we have looked beyond the classroom to community-based research projects. The work of Linda Flower aptly docu- ments these possibilities, as we discuss after we consider another school of conflict mediation that provides a complementary model to the concern for "dissensus" in rhetoric and composition. 17
Transformative Mediation as a Model for Learning from "Dissensus"
Insofar as we have become suspicious of consensus, we are likely to be criti- cal of the collaborative presuppositions of integrative conflict resolution, such as Fisher, Ury, and Patton's advice on audience or reframing as a process of
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invention. Such thinking suggests an unproblematized concern for consen- sus that tends to isolate conflicts from broader contexts that raise complicated issues that may require mediators to confront broader inequities and hierar- chies. For example, Getting to Yes offers four strategies--such as "separate the people from the problem" and "focus on interests, not positions"--to help disputants reconcile differences in order to reach agreement. 18 Even though these suggestions are oriented to mediating differences rather than winning out over others, these collaborative strategies mirror recent attempts to adapt classical rhetoric to a more liberal orientation on learning. They are con- cerned with solving problems, not with changing situations or using the col- laborative process as an opportunity to explore the potentials of collective action among people who may face problems not of their own making. As a result, integrative as well as distributive mediation strategies tend to manage conflicts in ways that do not challenge prevailing assumptions or help groups develop social capital through productive collaborations, and thereby develop coalitions to advance broader changes.
Such mediation practices may help people improve their immediate situations but may not help them understand the conditions that led to the conflicts. In fact, some resolution strategies are specifically intended to help people focus on the immediate problem and ignore broader factors. Concern for solving immediate problems is pushed to the forefront, eliminating chances to learn the broader contributing factors. Because agreement is the main goal, mediators do not focus on developing disputants' abilities to develop a sense of common cause. Some mediation practitioners, however, do attempt to ad- dress underlying inequities by envisioning conflict resolution not as a means to an immediate end but as part of a broader process concerned with enabling communities to discover the inventive capacities of their shared traditions and build up social capital by working through collaborations.
The most popular alternative approach is known as "transformative medi- ation. " It is guided by a vision of collaboration as a means to help people gain more control over their situations and create alternative resolutions. This school of conflict mediation was developed by Robert Bush and Joseph Fol- ger and articulated in their The Promise of Mediation: Responding to Conflict through Empowerment and Recognition and their revised version, The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict. These texts redefine the mediation process and mediator roles and provide case studies and commen- taries concerned with helping mediators to serve as collaborative educators by emphasizing relationship building over settlement. Bush, Rains Distinguished Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution Law at Hofstra University School of Law, and Folger, professor of Adult and Organizational Development at Temple University, offer a vision of mediation that moves beyond contempo- rary mediators' desires to increase satisfaction with dispute resolution or provide collective opportunities for community members. Transformative
mediators treat conflict not as something that must be solved but as an opportunity to change disputants' interpretive schema. This approach opens up opportunities for mediations to position the particular problem in broader contexts and try to provide a constructive atmosphere where disputants can air shared needs.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of transformative mediation is its redefinition of the purposes at issue in conflicted situations. The goal is not resolution, or agreement, but transformation. According to Bush and Fol- ger, "transformation" does not refer to a general reallocation of resources or restructuring of schema but a "change in the quality of social interaction, in and beyond conflict. "19 Transformative mediators attempt to change the way people understand conflict from negative and destructive to instructive and creative. Once disputants recognize conflict as "an emergent, dynamic phe- nomenon, in which parties can--and do--move and shift," they are more willing to participate in generative invention processes. 20 Disputants learn to appreciate the mediation process as an opportunity to expand inventive strate- gies by collaborating with others. Consistent with this framework, transfor- mative mediation offers a practical framework for improving people's strategies for addressing conflicts. Similar to problem-solving mediators, transformative mediators follow a general outline; however, transformative mediators expand invention strategies by pursuing four different goals: released process control in which disputants learn how to learn from conflict, expanded information gathering that may open up broader avenues of thinking about the issue, improved collaboration through recognizing mutual constraints and shared needs, and personal shifts in viewpoint that may arise as people learn that what may have appeared to be interpersonal conflicts arise from the struc- tures of situations or the assumptions imposed upon them.
By beginning with questions about how the mediation process should pro- ceed, transformative mediators seek to enable the sort of collaborative inven- tion processes that LeFevre has studied. Whereas problem-solving mediators begin by setting out a formal multistage process, transformative mediators delegate control of the process to disputants. As explained by Bush and Fol- ger, mediators "let the parties know that they can design the process as it unfolds. "21 Much as critical pedagogues begin by challenging students to become more actively involved in shaping assignments and expectations, dis- putants are encouraged to envision the situation as they see fit and bring in cultural values and social practices from their backgrounds that might foster a more collaborative environment. For example, because disputants control introductions, they can frame a conflict by acknowledging significant moral beliefs that affect their perspective and the purposes they envision. By creat- ing a participatory environment, transformative mediators attempt to open up the situation to encourage participants to articulate how their stance is consistent with the beliefs of the groups with which they identify. Through
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these broader identifications, participants can tap into commonplaces and topoi that may serve as productive resources for rethinking the issues at hand. Reframing conflicts in these ways can enable people to understand how oth- ers think and why they have acted as they have. At the same time, the speak- ers are presented with opportunities to reflect upon how well their traditional assumptions speak to the situation and their changing needs.
The four transformative criteria--released process control, expanded in- formation-gathering, improved collaboration, and personal shifts--expand disputants' discovery processes: by gaining control of the mediation process, disputants can identify concerns and topics specific to their situation; through expanded information-gathering processes, disputants include personal and community values; empowerment and recognition help disputants both re- gain control and acknowledge others; and increased collaboration parallels the dialectic nature of communication. These criteria provide a "rhetorical" sense of mediating differences that has heuristic power in thinking about work in the community and its relevance for broader trends in rhetoric and composition. Instead of simply attempting to resolve disputes, transforma- tive mediation attempts to create a space where disputants can think through their differences to put them to practical use, and not simply to rise above them (as presumed by traditional civic models). This approach has been highly successful in the U. S. Postal Service's national REDRESS mediation program-- a program that has been described by the New York Times as "one of the most ambitious experiments in dispute resolution in American corporate history"-- by creating opportunities for postal employees to control their disputes and participate in the outcomes. 22 Practiced across the country in many of our communities, transformative mediation offers a proven method being that can lead to an improved connection between rhetoric and social change.
A Place for Rhetoric--Tucson's Our Family Community Mediation Center
Whereas academic scholarship in rhetoric and composition locates places for rhetoric in community writing centers and various genres of public discourse, academics find difficulty speaking the same language as community mem- bers. Linda Flower and Julia Deems explain how rhetorical principles from sources such as Aristotle or Perelman carry an "air of book learning" in com- munity settings that can make the principles seem impractical. 23 Additional distractions can arise from class projects and service-learning programs that have a missionary ethos of helping out those in need. 24 Those in rhetoric and composition who are involved with community outreach have struggled to overcome such presuppositions to develop reciprocal relations with varied community members. The language problems involved can be usefully ad- dressed by principles of transformative conflict mediation, which are grounded in concerted efforts to help communities not just resolve but also learn from
their problems. Beyond improving interpersonal understanding, transforma- tive mediation can enable collective action by providing skills that can be applied to situations other than the immediate conflicts. People who develop transformative skills like empowerment, recognition, and increased data col- lection can help their communities develop practical deliberative capacities. Transformative mediation provides valuable transferable skills, not simply to persuade others but also to listen and work with neighbors and members of one's communities in order to act on their shared problems.
Community centers that practice transformative conflict mediation can help to develop people's capacities for collective action. Following upon the landmark Pound Conference of 1976, "Neighborhood Justice Centers" were established in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Kansas City to put transformative mediation into practice. 25 Following the cities' success, mediation centers and organizations like the National Association for Community Mediation (NACM) became more involved in promoting community interests by strengthening individuals' collaborative skills. NACM's mission is "to preserve individual interests while strengthening relationships and building connections between people and groups, and to create processes that make communities work for all. "26 Over 550 community mediation centers are currently mediating some 50,000 cases a year. 27 This direct connection to communities creates oppor- tunities for mediators to improve social invention strategies. It creates spaces where community members can learn how to better understand differences while focusing on immediate issues. Because transformative community medi- ators facilitate improved interpersonal interactions, disputants learn how to create similar spaces for working with differences.
After observing several animal noise complaint mediations in the spring of 2006, we witnessed firsthand how community members have gained skills helpful to better negotiating in their daily lives because they have developed rhetorical strategies that empower them to create change. Disputants trans- formed their conflicted experiences into constructive opportunities to create change. Whereas each mediation session was distinct--ranging from the close quarters of a mobile home park to the homogeneity of suburban gated com- munities to the isolation of open ranch lands in the foothills--and the var- ied sessions required different skills, several common characteristics enabled participants to be successful. Mediations succeeded when people overcame misunderstandings of invention, utilized positive physical spaces in which to interact, and developed framing strategies that increased their ability to nego- tiate differences.
First, disputants learned to work beyond narrow conceptions of the inven- tive possibilities of conflicts. When explorations of assumptions and needs are confined to the initial stage of the collaborative process, disputants tend to assume that they have thought through the problem and the issue is how to get others to agree with them, as is the case in distributive models of conflict
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mediation. This narrow conception of invention has been perpetuated, as Jim Corder suggests in Uses of Rhetoric, by assumptions that invention precedes deliberation. If the process is divided into five phases (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery), then people tend to assume that one phase pre- cedes the others. People do not anticipate that the process is recursive and not linear. For Corder, such assumptions of "sequentiality" limit people's abil- ity to improve communication by rethinking their intentions. 28 Prior to meet- ing at OF, disputants tended to assume that the purpose of mediation is to support and defend specific arguments. For example, in a lengthy and con- tentious mediation between a young couple and a retired U. S. serviceman about three large dogs, disputants had a difficult time working together be- cause they were obsessed with assigning blame. They constantly referred to evidence such as tape recordings, photographs, and personal research, and they read prewritten narrations of their experiences. Once they realized that the process of arguing back and forth was leading nowhere, they become more interested in rethinking their positions.
Second, disputants learned the values of the using the mediation process to step back from their conflicted relations and interact more constructively. The mediation space enabled them to assume different roles and relations. Because boundaries such as property lines and privacy walls often separate people's public and private lives, people are accustomed to dividing their interpersonal interactions. In a growing metropolis such as Tucson, residents are often separated from their immediate communities. Be it on open ranch lands or in trailer parks, disputants often understand private space in ways that limit their opportunities to interact productively. Using the "living room" model of spatial organization that places disputants on equal footing, trans- formative mediation sessions take place in a comfortable room where partici- pants sit close to each other and chairs are arranged in a semicircle with no structures or tables acting as dividers. Consequently, brainstorming sessions are highly interactive and foster collaboration. When a whiteboard is used, mediators do not dichotomize issues by dividing sides but instead use writing as a collaborative product. For example, during collective brainstorming ses- sions, mediators record disputants' suggestions in the middle of the board, without dividing the sides. In one vertical column, disputants' ideas exist together as they share the process of invention.
Within their communities, individuals can collaborate in spaces where they can mutually discuss issues and create change. In these spaces different ideas gain capital through what LeFevre describes as "resonance," a term she borrows from Harold Laswell. 29 As LeFevre explains, "Resonance comes about when an individual act--a 'vibration'--is intensified and prolonged by sym- pathetic vibrations . . . when people provide a supportive social and intel- lectual environment that nurtures thought and enables ideas to be received, thus completing the inventive act. "30 Resonance, therefore, results from direct
and indirect communication. OF mediators create environments that support resonance by establishing collaboration. Oftentimes this involves reminding individuals of who their audience really is--each other. For example, within several minutes of a mediation session involving retirees who had severed all communication among each other, OF mediators often reminded the dis- putants that they should talk to each other instead of talking to the media- tor. Once people begin addressing each other, they become more capable of working together. Recognition of the other party immediately changes peo- ple's tone as they begin to take control of their own situations.
Finally, disputants learned the importance of framing and reframing con- flicts. In conflict mediations, analyses of frames and efforts to reframe issues can help people construct more productive ways of seeing a problem. Refram- ing, as explained by Kovach, helps mediators explain "the disputed issues of the parties in more neutral manner, in such a way that the parties begin to focus on potential outcomes. "31 OF mediators reframe issues in order to clar- ify points and help people gain alternative perspectives, to filter out negative language and select more neutral terms so that disputants can see a situation differently. Successful reframing helps disputants shift their interpretive schema, and such shifts often form turning points in collaborations. As Beer and Steif discuss, at such a point disputants gain new perspective and begin to see through a different lens: they "shift from presenting their conflict as stories and positions to viewing the situation as a set of specific interests, principles, and mediatable issues. "32 As linguist George Lakoff explains, re- framing is an important step in creating change because reframing changes how people see the world: "It is changing what counts as common sense. "33 Community mediation centers are important sites for creating such change. Community centers like OF help people develop skills that they can use in their public lives. Transformative mediation--as it is practiced at OF--helps participants reenvision rhetoric as a mode of collective deliberation and con- flict mediation. Such sites have much to teach us about how to reframe our own concerns in ways that might be more broadly useful to our students, for the collaborative inquiries at OF provide frameworks for thinking about argu- ment, inquiry, and purpose in ways that can help us break out of the con- straints that have come to be assumed in rhetoric and composition classes.
Transformative Mediation in the Classroom
To contribute to efforts to integrate outreach into instruction, we want to sketch out how scenario-based classroom assignments can help students de- velop strategies to engage in conflict mediation and other community learn- ing processes. Working with scenarios in the classroom is not an alternative to service-learning assignments, but it can be a useful complement to them. By centering the class on a shared deliberative process, teachers and students can gain experience in working with the practical strategies and ethical issues
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that are likely to come up in community-based learning activities. By work- ing with each other in collaborative learning scenarios, students can gain skills such as empowerment and recognition while developing improved invention strategies vital to their academic success and civic literacies. Based on experi- ences from OF mediations, these two scenarios provide students with oppor- tunities to collaborate and practice important rhetorical skills, which can then be developed through service-learning assignments, internships, and other collaborations beyond the classroom.
"Showdown in Superior! "
"Showdown in Superior! " was a set of course-long assignments developed with three collaborating classes at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2005. 34 Several writing instructors created a scenario to have students work together to resolve a community dispute. Codesigned by Erik Juergensmeyer, David Reamer, and Brian Jackson, the unit combined an honors first-year composition class with business and technical writing classes to deliberate upon a regional mining issue in Superior, Arizona, a town that is two hours away from the University of Arizona campus. The curriculum asked students to work together and research, present, and deliberate upon how the mining issue will affect the town's residents. Students wrote such assignments as researched essays, letters to the editor, pamphlets, Web sites, and so on. These writings were circulated among the three classes in preparation for a mock town hall meeting. At the end of the semester, all three classes met together in a large lecture hall, presented their cases through PowerPoint presentations and public speeches, discussed the different issues and affected groups, and eventually voted on whether to support the copper company's mining pro- posal.
All three classes had distinct roles in the project. The technical writing class represented a local copper company looking to extract copper from Superior's vast reserves. As representatives of the mining company, they pre- pared Web sites, brochures, newsletters, and oral presentations that blended technical information with reasoned arguments encouraging the townspeo- ple to approve the mining project. Students who took on these roles were put in the position of defending their positions amid opposition from special interest groups and demonstrating their goodwill. Students in Erik's business writing class took on the role of several special interest groups that opposed the mining company's bid. Role-playing as local and national groups, stu- dents prepared professional documents arguing against permitting the min- ing project in Superior. They discussed their sides with employees of the copper company and attempted to convince town residents that they too were concerned with the town's best interests. Finally, the first-year honors class assumed the role of the townspeople of Superior. As townspeople, they wrote imaginary letters to Superior's newspaper, speeches for the town hall
meeting, and researched reports advocating that the town pursue a specific course of action.
During the semester, the students' deliverables were both engaged and specific. In Erik's business writing class, for example, student groups created fictitious organizations and focused on realistic viewpoints within a commu- nity. One group interested in studying law established the RACB (an acronym derived from students' first names) law firm, "a local law firm that has been serving the citizens and businesses of Superior since October 2005," "a small agency with a big mission and a lot of ground to cover. " After researching the specific geographical and environmental components of the mine proposal, RACB immediately identified their focus on a brochure intended for indiffer- ent townspeople: "We are committed to preserving Oak Flat Campground, Devil's Canyon, Queen Creek Canyon and Apache Leap for the benefit of this and future generations. " RACB espoused a mission of equal importance: "We are working in the best interest of the city of Superior, providing knowledge and education to its citizens. "
Another student group, operating under the acronym SAERG (Southern Arizona Economic Resources Group), focused on citizens of the town of Supe- rior opposed to the mining project. In an informational brochure, students of SAERG implored citizens to be more active in their community beliefs. Under a section entitled "What you can do," they provided several steps:
If you believe that RCC [Resolution Cooper Corporation] has no business in your town, then vote "No" in the town hall meeting next week. Now is the time to take a stand and fight. Here are a few things you can do:
Spread the word! Tell your friends and family about the economic dangers of the RCC project. Urge them to spread the word.
Make your voice known. There are many ways in which you can partner up with local or national interest groups that will side with you against RCC. Rally your fellow citizens, start a petition, do whatever it takes.
For students in SAERG, civic participation involves both negotiating through community interests and developing integrative skills that can help town citizens mobilize their interests. It also involves actively participating in community discourse and conflict.
The semester-long project culminated in a mock town hall meeting where all three groups, who had been exchanging research and documents, met for the first time and discussed their differing positions. Following PowerPoint presentations from the students role-playing as the mining company and special interest groups, members from all three classes joined small group collaborative sessions to discuss the issues in further detail. These groups of approximately twenty-five students (roughly one-third from each class) offered
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physical spaces for people to discuss the different positions and further ex- plain why they took their specific views on the mining proposal. Similar to the mediation rooms at OF, these spaces created opportunities for role-players both to collect data and recognize others' needs. After deliberations, all classes reconvened, and the townspeople took the stage, where they discussed what they had learned from talking one-on-one with the interest group and min- ing company representatives. Attempting to persuade their peers, different townspeople explained their sides and eventually voted for an appropriate course of action--in this case, opposing the mining company's bid.
"Showdown in Superior! " created an opportunity for the transformation of both invention and collaboration strategies. It provided a comfortable environment for students to discuss their different views and listen to their opponents in order to resolve conflicts. With the townspeople serving as medi- ators, the small group deliberative sessions paralleled transformative media- tion sessions where people control the agenda and discuss whatever issues they think are relevant to the case at hand. Modeled after the transformative principle of avoiding caucusing, these sessions created a place where inven- tion is not limited to the beginning of one's arguments and people can work together to actually invent new understandings and resolutions. Students both became empowered through documents and presentations and also recog- nized others by working together and listening to alternative views on their issues--views expressed by real people seated next to them. They learned con- flict resolution strategies that will help them examine and better negotiate their differences.
Breaking through the Border
Building on their experiences in "Showdown in Superior! " Erik Juergens- meyer and David Reamer joined with colleague Leslie Dupont to create another scenario designed to foster transformative mediation and rhetorical invention in a border town. Occurring during fall 2006, "Breaking through the Border" asked professional writing students to research, represent, and collaboratively discuss current issues at the Mexico-Arizona border, with par- ticular consideration of how these issues affect Tucson residents. Students con- fronted challenging issues that were both close to their lives and represented potentially intractable conflicts--scenarios where they could apply transforma- tive mediation strategies to create change. Ultimately, students had to suggest a specific course of action, such as increased border security or humanitarian support, that would influence local and state agencies. Students from Erik's business writing class researched and represented issues from the border de- bate based on their social impact on Tucson citizens.
