Cultural conflict resolution is a social process that uses cultural theory to resolve conflicts. It includes diplomacy, peacebuilding, mediation, and community problem solving. It is often facilitated by professionals in psychology, law, or social sciences. It is an alternative to formal legal processes and takes a consultative approach. Aspects of an individual’s culture are important in conflict analysis, including how morals and history influence conflicts and how cultural values can reduce escalation. It has been applied to animal communities but typically yields less concrete results.
Cultural conflict resolution is a specific type of social process intended to help resolve difficulties associated with group or individual conflicts. Cultural or intercultural conflict resolution is a particular type of conflict resolution where cultural theory becomes valuable in providing the resolution. As a complex process, cultural conflict resolution is not strictly a legal process, although it often has legal components.
Different types of cultural conflict resolution apply to individual conflicts, including those that lead to disputes, as well as group conflicts, such as conflicts between state governments. These different types of conflict resolution are called diplomacy, peacebuilding, mediation, or community problem solving. Often, these processes are facilitated by professionals who have qualifications in individual or group psychology, law or the social sciences.
As an alternative to some formal legal process, cultural conflict resolution often falls into a category that also includes more concrete legal processes such as mediation or arbitration, where opposing viewpoints are mediated by a third party for a binding resolution, rather than being decided before a judge with each party’s counsel discussing their case. The cultural types of conflict resolution related to a legal case can take many forms. For example, a company’s management might work with a grassroots union through conflict resolution.
The resolution of cultural conflicts is one of several social processes that take a consultative approach, rather than the rather punitive approach favored in many state justice systems. Part of the ideology around this type of conflict handling is that the parties themselves may benefit more from a frank and honest discussion of grievances than a top-down, relatively unauthorized delivery of the matter to a local court or state. Conflict resolution practitioners often provide anecdotal or other evidence that this type of problem resolution can generally benefit the community as a whole, possibly easing the burden on a formal justice system.
In the various fields of cultural conflict resolution, aspects of an individual’s culture become important parts of the overall analysis. Aspects of cultural types of conflict resolution can include consideration of how the morals and history of a long-standing cultural group can influence the continuation of a very modern and current conflict and how the values of a culture can help reduce the escalation of a given issue that is controversial. At its most extreme frontiers, cultural conflict resolution has been applied, not just to humans, but to various animal communities, although this subfield does not typically yield the kinds of concrete results associated with human conflict resolution.
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