Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T16:19:10.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Current Illusions and Delusions about Conflict Management—In Africa and Elsewhere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Laura Nader  and
Elisabetta Grande
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper provides a critical perspective on the use of U. S. alternative dispute resolution (ADR) approaches for managing conflict in African and other communities. It argues that imposition of American ADR as a condition for foreign aid or capital investment is deeply problematic, and urges a more sophisticated analysis of the power dimensions and ideological basis of ADR. When viewed as an ideologically laden paradigm for how conflict should be resolved (i. e., a conflict paradigm), ADR can be seen as carrying troubling baggage. For example, ADR approaches imported from the United States deal with dispute resolution simply in terms of mechanisms or techniques, ignoring substantive issues central to conflict management in African and other communities. The entire discourse surrounding ADR pays insuficient attention to problems with terms such as modern or traditional, and encourages an ingenuous denial of the effects of inequality in power and money on conflict resolution. This ideological baggage renders unreflective imposition of ADR incompatible with the best interests of African communities. The authors urge a more complete and objective analysis of the global ADR revolution—one that takes a broader perspective.

Type
“From the Trenches and Towers”
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Summer 2002 , pp. 573 - 591
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2002 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abel, Richard, ed. 1982. The Politics of Informal Justice. 2 vols. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, James. 1970. Islamic Law in Africa. London: F. Cass.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Jerold. 1983. Justice Without Law? New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bohannon, Paul. 1957. Justice and Judgment among the Tiv. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Boutwell, Jeffrey, Klare, Michael, and Reed, Laura, eds. 1995. Lethal Commerce: The Global Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons. Cambridge, Mass.: Committee on International Security Studies.Google Scholar
Brietzke, Paul. 1982. Law Development and the Ethiopian Revolution. London: Bucknell.Google Scholar
Bush, Robert and Baruch, A. 1996. The Unexplored Possibilities of Community Mediation: A Comment on Merry and Milner. Law and Social Inquiry, 21(3): 715–36.Google Scholar
Bussani, Mauro. 1996. Tort Law and Development Insights from the Case of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Journal of African Law 40: 43–60.Google Scholar
Castillo, Hernandez, Aida, Rosalva, and Nigh, Ronald. 1998. Global Processes and Local Identity among Mayan Coffee Growers in Chiapas, Mexico. American Anthropologist 100(1): 136–47.Google Scholar
Chanock, Martin. 1985. Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Sabia. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Colson, Elizabeth. 1953. Social Control and Vengeance in Plateau Tonga Society. Africa 23: 199–212.Google Scholar
Dahrendorf, Rolf. 1968. Essays in the Theory of Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Estes, Ralph. 1996. Tyranny of the Bottom Line: Why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.Google Scholar
Franck, T. 1986. Judging the World Court. New York: Priority Press Publications.Google Scholar
French, Hilary F. 1993. Costly Tradeoffs: Reconciling Trade and the Environment. World Watch Paper 113, March.Google Scholar
Fuller, Lon. 1978. The Forms and Limits of Adjudication. Harvard Law Review 92(2): 353–409.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. 1959. Custom and Conflict in Africa. Glencoe, III.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. 1955. The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, Sir James. 1994. The Trap. New York: Carroll and Gray.Google Scholar
Grande, Elisabetta, ed. 1995. Transplants, Innovation, and Legal Tradition in the Horn of Africa. Torino: Harmattan-Italia.Google Scholar
Grillo, Trina. 1991. The Mediation Alternative: Process Dangers to Women. Yale Law Journal 100: 1545–610.Google Scholar
Guadagni, Marco. 1998. Legal Pluralism. In The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics and the Law. Torino: L'Harmattan Italia.Google Scholar
Gulliver, P. H. 1963. Social Control in an African Society: A Study of the Arusha, Agricultural Masai of Northern Tanganyika. Boston: Boston University Press.Google Scholar
Hanlon, Joseph. 1996. Strangling Mozambique: International Monetary Fund “Stabilization” in the World's Poorest Country. Multinational Monitor 17 (7 and 8, July/August): 17–21.Google Scholar
Harr, Jonathon. 1995. A Civil Action. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Harrington, Christina B. 1985. Shadow Justice: The Ideology and Institutionalization of Alternatives to Court. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Havel, Vaclav. 1992. The End of the Modern Era. New York Times, March 1.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Susan. 1998. Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence. 1992. The Invention of Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hofrichter, Richard. 1987. Neighborhood Justice in a Capitalist Society: The Expansion of the Informal State. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Korten, David C. 1996. When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press.Google Scholar
Lappe, Frances M., and Collins, J. 1978. Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Laylin, J. G., and Bianchi, R. L. 1959. The Role of Adjudication in International River Disputes: The Lake Lanoux Case. American Journal of International Law 53 (1): 30–49.Google Scholar
Lederach, Jean Paul, 1997. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. Washington, D. C.: United States Institute of Peace.Google Scholar
LeVine, Robert A. ed. 1961. The Anthropology of Conflict: Journal of Conflict Resolution (special issue) 5(1).Google Scholar
Mattei, Ugo. 1990. Socialist and non-Socialist Approaches to Land Law: Continuity and Change in Somalia and Other African States. Review of Socialist Law 16: 17–55.Google Scholar
Marcus, George E., and Michael, M. Fischer, J. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally. 1988. Legal Pluralism. Law and Society Review 22(5): 869–96.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E., and Milner, Neal, eds. 1993. The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of Community Mediation in the United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Milner, Neal. 1996. Mediation and Political Theory: A Critique of Bush and Folger. Law and Social Inquiry 21 (3): 737–59.Google Scholar
Nadel, S. 1942. A Black Byzantium. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1979. Disputing without the Force of Law. Yale Law Journal (special issue on dispute resolution) 88(5): 998–1021.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1989. The ADR Explosion: The Implications of Rhetoric in Legal Reform. In Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, 269–91. Windsor, Ontario: University of Windsor.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1990. Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Mountain Zapotec Village. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1994. Civilization and Its Negotiators. In Understanding Disputes: The Politics of Argument, ed. Caplan, P. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura, and Jay, Ou. 1998. Idealization and Power: Legality and Tradition in Native American Law. New Directions in Native American Law: Oklahoma City University Law Review (special edition) 23(1).Google Scholar
Nader, Laura, and Shugart, Chris. 1980. Old Solutions for New Problems. In No Access Is Law: Alternatives to the American Judicial System, ed. Nader, Laura. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura, and Todd, Harry. 1978. The Disputing Process: Law in Ten Societies. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura, and Yngvesson, Barbara. 1974. On Studying the Ethnography of Law and its Consequences. In Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Honigman, J., 883–921. New York: Rand, McNally.Google Scholar
Ou, C. Jay. 1996. Native Americans and the Monitored Retrievable Storage Plan for Nuclear Waste: Late Capitalism, Negotiation, and Controlling Processes. In Essays in Controlling Processes, ed. L. Nader, Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 80: 32–88.Google Scholar
Rose, Laurel L. 1996. Are Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Programs Suitable for Africa? In Africa Notes, 5–7. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Laurel L. 1997. When Conflict Management Training Is Perceived as Religious Proselytization: A Case Study from Papua, New Guinea. Conflict Resolution Notes 14(3): 28–31.Google Scholar
Rubin, Elizabeth. 1997. An Army of One's Own: In Africa, Nations Hire a Corporation to Wage War. Harper's, February, 44–55.Google Scholar
Sacco, Rodolfo. 1996. Il Diritto Africano. Torino: UTET.Google Scholar
Schapera, Isaac. 1959. A Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schusky, E., and Abbott, D. n. d. Misperception and Misdirection in the Sahel. Paper presented at Symposium on Hunger, Work, and the Quality of Life. International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences post-plenary session, Hyderabad, India, December 1978.Google Scholar
Siegal, Bernard, and Beals, Alan. 1960. Conflict and Factionalist Dispute. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 90: 107–17.Google Scholar
Soros, George. 1997. The Capitalist Threat. Atlantic Monthly. February, 45–58.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2000. The Insider-What I Learned at the World Economic Crisis. New Republic, 17 April 17, 56.Google Scholar
Tsosie, Michael. n. d. Traditional Culture: Issues of Power and Control within Native American Communities. Typescript.Google Scholar
Ury, William L. 1990. Dispute Resolution Notes from the Kalahari. Negotiation Journal 6(3): 229–38.Google Scholar
Watson, Alan. 1974. Legal Transplants. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Worsley, Peter. 1984. The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zartman, I. William. 2000. Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict “Medicine.” Boulder, Colo.: Lynn Rienner.Google Scholar