Ethics and field building: The chicken and the egg

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.3890190309
• Published date: 01 March 2002
• Author: Hrank Blechman
• Date: 01 March 2002

Ethics and Field 9uilding:The Chicken and the Egg

FRANK

BLECHMAN

In

this

article,

the

author

explores

the connection between develop-

ments

in

thejekd

of

conjlict resolution and the

evolution

of

effective

comprehensive ethics

to

guide and measure practitioners.

He

argues tbat

development offield requires clarijication

of

both broad social values

and

spec@

professional rules. Further,

he

suggests that the

field

must

soon

adress questions

of

dejnition and quality

;fit

wishes

to

remain

vital and growing.

have often expressed doubt that those individuals and groups loosely

I

associated under the umbrella

of

“conflict resolution” constitute

a

field

any more than the various plants and creatures in a wild meadow consti-

tute a bounded, defined, or managed field in the agricultural sense. We

have no center. We have no boundary. We have no gate. We have no gate-

keeper. We have no discipline for producing our products. We have no

standards for our products when we take them to market. We have

no

stan-

dardized marketing or distribution networks. (We do have a few marketing

cooperatives.)

Some

of

us are professionals in the sense that we make a majority of our

income doing something

we

define as conflict resolution-related activity.

Others of us are entirely amateurs, helping ourselves and others as a totally

unpaid, untrained, unsupervised, and unregulated avocation. In each

camp, and everywhere on the continuum in between, we find people

grounded in a number of intellectual and academic disciplines. We are

economists, educators, psychologists, lawyers, sociologists, philosophers,

political scientists, biologists, and engineers. We have Christians, Jews,

Buddhists, Animists, Muslims, and Agnostics. We are philosophers and

mechanics. Each of us brings the values and ethics from our background

into our effort to understand and transform conflict. Even among those of

us who practice “professionally,” a majority practice as a second profession.

CONFI.IC~

KFSOLUTION

QUARTERLY,

vol.

19,

110.

3,

Spring

2002

0

Wiky

I’rriodicals.

Inc.

373