Mediatorship: Exploring transformational conflict narratives that elicit generative processes through interconnected continuums that cultivate conflict wisdom

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• Author: Susan Mossman Riva
• Date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21414

PRACTICE NOTE

Mediatorship: Exploring transformational

conflict narratives that elicit generative

processes through interconnected continuums

that cultivate conflict wisdom

Susan Mossman Riva

Department of Cultural and Social

Studies, Creighton University, Omaha,

Nebraska, USA

Correspondence

Susan Mossman Riva, Department of

Cultural and Social Studies, Creighton

University, Omaha, NE, USA.

Email: susanmossmanriva@

creighton.edu

Abstract

Narrative inquiry, narrative conflict resolution, and

auto/duoethnography can be seen as sources of agency,

fostering emancipatory processes. Autoethnography is

a method that can elicit constructive social change by

cultivating narrative coherency. These generative

methods and practices have the ability to enkindle a

cultural shift. We need new stories to initiate transfor-

mational processes, resetting individual life trajectories

and humanities' course. Writing Homing In: An

Adopted Child's Story Mandala of Connecting, Reunion,

and Belonging, provided an autoethnographic explora-

tion that encompassed notions of the good life in an

autoethnographic process akin to spiritual journey. This

adoption and reunion story gave rise to concepts and

transformational learning pedagogies that can be used

to engender resolution processes that can be understood

as “lines of flight”or flyways. The homing in mecha-

nism that was found in cases of adopted children that

were able to find their birth parents, is shown to work

as a compass, guiding individual life trajectories. Auto/

duoethnography are methods that elicit relational trans-

formation while contributing to the development of con-

flict wisdom. Transformagram Portfolios incorporating

these approaches were designed to teach courses within

the Cultural and Social Department at Creighton

Received: 25 August 2022 Revised: 19 September 2023 Accepted: 24 September 2023

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21414

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2024;41:367–383. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 367

University. Writing conflict and illness narratives

elevated personal questing to art form by using future

forming research methods to beautify story mandalas.

Auto/duoethnography can be developed as an effective

conflict resolution tool in response to current “glocal”

challenges. Transformational pedagogies have facetted a

holistic lens by creating reflexive space. In this context,

mediatorship is a vessel of exploration that transports

conflict resolution practices, while orienting experiential

learning that interconnects the inner and outer journey.

Transformagram Portfolios use auto/duoethnography to

nurture narrative coherency, living wisdom, and gener-

ativity by scaffolding learning processes that provide an

innovative pedagogical instrument for conflict resolution.

1|INTRODUCTION

Exploratory research using narrative conflict resolution methods will be storied to illustrate

generative resolution process and practices. Storytelling brings together story strands in a form

of narrative concrescence that can be understood as a holistic approach to conflict resolution.

Writing to transform relations enkindled transformational processes that spanned from the

level of self-transformation to a larger relational matrix, within an interconnected continuum

(Riva, 2019b). I first used autoethnography as a method to author an adoption and reunion

story. I then incorporated auto/duoethography into a transformational pedagogy designed for

conflict resolution courses. This recollection explores how auto/duoethnography can be used as

a tool for engendering narrative conflict resolution processes in an academic landscape where

autoethnography is increasingly recognized as a promising form of qualitative inquiry (Gergen

et al., 2015).

Writing Homing In: An Adopted Child's Story Mandala of Connecting, Reunion, and Belonging,

provided an experiential template for exploring relationships and notions of the good life in an

autoethnographic process akin to spiritual journey (Riva, 2020). In my case, the autoethnographic

method was used as a tool for conflict resolution in thecontext of adoption and reunion. This pro-

cess not only created a reflexive space that I could use to work through unresolved issues but led

me to developing concepts that gave rise to transformational learning pedagogies. A teaching tem-

plate was developed to elicit constructive social change that incorporates intrapersonal conflict

resolution. In this way, Homing In evolved into a teaching story using autoethnography and crea-

tive mythology (Campbell, 1986) to cultivate interconnectedness and a holistic vision.

My quest led to Stiffler's analysis of families separated by adoption. Stiffler studied adoptees

and birthparents, relating the importance of synchronicity (Stiffler, 1992), a key Jungian concept

that emerged from Jung's autoethnographic process illustrated in The Red Book (Jung &

Shamdasani, 2009). Stiffler's research describes the homing in mechanism that was documented

in case studies involving adopted children who reunited with their birth families. Synchronicities

were understood as signs, leading adoptees to homecoming. “For those who have endured the

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