APMF abstracts - Culture

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Adelaide

Reconciliation: Conversations Beyond Cultural Boundaries

Conference at Adelaide, South Australia, 29 November - 1 December 2001

ABSTRACTS: CULTURE STREAM

Di Bretherton - Conflict, Language and Culture

Joanna Kalowski - Mediating across cultures: reorienting values and attitudes

Franca Petrone - Developing a culturally sensitive mediation process (1 hour facilitated dialogue)

Cathy Picone - Recovering from Whiteness: for whites working to end racism (1 hour workshop)

Conflict, Language and Culture

This is a proposal for a short paper, to be followed by a dialogue session.

It is a truism that lack of a common language can give rise to misunderstanding and conflict. Language may be seen as an essential tool for the analysis and resolution of conflict. However, language can also be used to escalate a conflict or damage an adversary. Indeed, so integral is language to cultural identity that language may itself become the object of the conflict, the matter that is fought over. This paper will explore some of the roles that language can play in conflict within and between different cultural groups.

In the discussion we will address questions such as: How do diverse cultures conceptualise and resolve conflict? What attitudes skills and knowledge promote intercultural understanding and constructive conflict resolution within and between cultures? To what extent can Western conflict resolution strategies be applied in other cultural settings?

Di Bretherton is Director of the International Conflict Resolution Centre and an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Melbourne. She is a Member of the Foreign Affairs Council of Australia and Chair of the Committee for the Psychological Study of Peace of the International Union of Psychological Science.

Joanna Kalowski: Mediating across cultures: reorienting values and attitudes

Recent events both national and international highlight the ambivalent feelings Australians hold towards those we view as "other."

The purpose of this workshop is to permit dispute resolution practitioners to examine their own responses at this time, and to engage in a critical analysis of a number of fundamental cross-cultural constructs. The goal is to enable those working in cross-cultural settings to revisit their own deeply held beliefs, and to work through ways in which personal positions may impact upon practice in the current environment.

If the group of participants were to arrive at an agreed view of the effectiveness of key strategies, this could be widely shared among conference delegates.

Joanna Kalowski is a mediator and management consultant with a lifelong commitment to social justice and human rights issues. A former member of the National Native Title Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal,

Jo has had the opportunity to examine the impact of policies on people, and struggles with the idea that statutes enshrining individual rights are of limited use to those wishing to address the rights of groups, especially minorities. She writes and lectures on cross-cultural perspectives in mediation, education and management practice.

Franca Petrone
MBA(Adel), LLB(Hons)(Adel), GDLP (SAIT), Grad Cert Int Trade Law (Turin), Accredited Mediator

Franca works as a mediator, consultant and an academic teaching Dispute Management and Legal Aspects of International Business at Flinders University. She has a particular interest in how mediation services are set up, promoted and evaluated. Franca has mediated and conciliated in numerous areas independently and within various organisational settings. She is a member of the LEADR Advanced Panel of Mediators, a Regional Advisor to the Public Service Merit Protection Commission, a Senior Case officer with the Child Support Agency and a legal member of the Drug Assessment and Aid Panel.

Cathy Picone

A workshop for whites working (or who wish to work) for the elimination of racism. Here we will develop the understanding that it is possible to actually eradicate racism from our own lives and from our social institutions.

Well-meaning attempts on the part of some whites ("whites like us") to mask our own racism represent short-term solutions at best. We may attempt to disguise our own racism and to hide it, even from ourselves.

Although we whites are inevitably racist, we are also good people and we can recover from "whiteness". Acting out of guilt diminishes the effectiveness of our anti-racism work. We can release blocked emotions from our past that have been getting in the way of our ability to respond as effectively as we would like. We can become more flexibly intelligent and thus more effective in our work. With another person's loving and respectful attention, we can release old (often hitherto unrecognised) emotional blocks and move beyond them.

Through interactive small group work, paired sharings and short theoretical presentations, this workshop will expose "whiteness" as an inherently oppressive position necessarily connoting privilege.

We whites need to come together with our friends of other cultural backgrounds as true equals:

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together." - Lila Watson

Cathy Picone has been an activist in the peace, women's and anti-racism movements for more than twenty years. Presently International Delegate for Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Australia - (WILPF). For many years WILPF representative on Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (SA). Currently member of the National Consultative Committee for Peace and Disarmament convened by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Cathy is also a group facilitator running numerous support groups and workshops.

(Established in 1915, WILPF is an international non-governmental organisation with consultative status with the United Nations ECOSOC and UNESCO.)

This conference is sponsored by the World Mediation Forum, the University of South Australia, and the Hawke Institute. The official airline is Ansett.

updated 03 May 2004