Mediation with a focus on discursive positioning

• Author: John Winslade
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.152
• Date: 01 June 2006
• Published date: 01 June 2006

Mediation with a Focus on Discursive Positioning

John Winslade

This article advances some alternative theoretical bases for understand-

ing conflict and building mediation practice on the basis of construc-

tionist social theory in general and on positioning theory in particular.

It outlines some goals for a narrative practice in mediation that are

distinctive from existing models of mediation.

Critiques of the problem-solving or interest-based model have been

made on the basis of the culturally located assumptions built into it

(for example, Gergen, 1999). Feminist critiques have challenged the ade-

quacy of this model of mediation for addressing gender privilege (Astor

and Chinkin, 1992; Leitch, 1986–1987; Neumann, 1992). Critics from

indigenous cultural viewpoints have taken issue with the focus on a

Western humanistic notion of the individual that does not always fit with

indigenous approaches to conflict resolution (Duryea and Grundison,

1993; Kruk, 1997; Nunnerly, 2002; Tomas and Quince, 1999). The pos-

sibility of mediator neutrality, especially with regard to the mediator’s val-

ues and opinions on the substantive issues in the conflict, has come under

uncomfortable scrutiny (Beck and Sales, 2000; Cobb and Rifkin, 1991;

Rifkin, Millen, and Cobb, 1991). It has even been argued that the very

focus of interest-based mediation on reaching agreement creates an instru-

mental focus that selects certain issues for greater attention than others

(Folger and Bush, 1994; Putnam, 1994). The interest-based model of

mediation embodies a particular cultural viewpoint.

If mediation is not to be built on a singular cultural viewpoint, these

critiques need to be taken seriously. They raise a problem for the practice

and the theory of mediation. It is a problem of the cultural colonizing that

CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY,vol. 23, no. 4, Summer 2006 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 501

and the Association for Conflict Resolution • DOI: 10.1002/crq.152