From Intragroup Pre-Negotiation to Intergroup Peace
Jay Rothman
Associate Professor
The Program on Negotiation and Conflict Management
Bar Ilan University
Israel
President
The ARIA Group, Inc.
www.ariagroup.com
[email protected]
Submitted for Panel: Transforming Identities:
Methods and Processes for Conflict Transformation
IPSA XXIInd World Congress
Madrid, Spain
July 2012
Introduction
For the past 25 years I have been toiling in the fields of identity-based conflict
(Rothman, 1992, 1997). These conflicts in which people's individual or collective
sense of self are threatened or frustrated are deep, abiding and frequently
violent. For almost this long, I have also been seeking to understand and foster
what I am now calling "identity-based cooperation" (Rothman, 2012), in which the
self-same identity configurations that often lead to "protracted social conflicts,"
(Azar,1990), or "intransigent conflict" (Ross and Rothman, 1999), or "intractable
conflict" (Coleman, 2011), actually provide the material of cooperation.
In this paper I will focus on two case studies in which boundary building within
separate groups may have been a primary reason that intergroup harmony was
fostered. I will hypothesize that when members of groups are able to foster
internal solidarity of a certain type and quality, they may be positively conditioned
to reach across the divide and cooperate with other groups and their members.
However, I will suggest that such solidarity, if it is to be expansive and
connective, cannot be built in the conventional way so common to intergroup
conflict: "we are we because we are not they." Rather it must be forged in the
sense that separate groups have engaged their own internal divides effectively
such that their identities are simultaneously secure and more flexible at once. My
hypothesis, supported by some case studies, is that such intragroup conflict
engagement, when successful, may help condition groups to be able to behave
similarly, with internal security and flexibility, during outgroup encounters.
After presenting some theoretical material about intragroup conflict engagement
and its potential role in fostering intergroup cooperation, I will illustrate this
theorizing with two practical case studies. One is a mini-case study of encounters
within and between small groups of Jewish and Arab college students in a
Northern Israeli college; a second is of a bridging effort between a divided ethnic
community in Nashville, Tennessee.
One: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
"...There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'."
(Excerpt from Robert Frost's "Mending Fences.")
If it were indeed true that human identities could be so discreetly separated like
apples and pines, conflict would rarely erupt. Rather, as the poet later muses,
fences are needed when the cows of one wanders on to the turf of another and
eat of its grass. Then conflict erupts. Less poetically now, members of groups
compete over scarce resources, diverge over different goals and values and
conflict over identities that clash (see Rothman, 2011, 2012). I have been most
interested in my theorizing and applied work in the latter, identity-based issues, in
which sides deeply conflict in their respective existential concerns that often,
correctly or not, seem exclusive and oppositional.
In their book Boundary Spanning Leadership (2011), Ernst and Chrobot-Mason
suggest the need for "buffering" (i.e. fence building or mending) involving the
defining of boundaries between people to foster a sense of internal safety. They
contend that "until boundaries are clearly defined and effectively managed,
groups will find it nearly impossible to work collaboratively...You must be able to
see group boundaries clearly before you can bridge them" (page 83). In my work
in intergroup conflict and its creative engagement (1997, 2012), I suggest that
groups actually need to articulate their antagonism to each other, either
analytically or interactively (i.e. dialogically), to make their differences and
animosity clear. Through the guided process of drawing and analyzing such
lines, they also can begin to make choices about if and when such antagonism is
functional and not.
In this paper's focus on intragroup pre-negotiation as a condition for effective
intergroup cooperation, I am extending, or internalizing, my idea of articulating
differences enroute to finding commonality across different groups, to groups
within themselves. I suggest, and my experience tends to lend credence to this
theorizing, that when groups can themselves surface their internal differences
effectively and bridge them, not by closing ranks against outsiders but rather by
reaching internal agreement about ways forward that could include the other,
they are on their way to intergroup cooperation.
i. From Boundaries to Nexus
If as Ernst and Chrobot-Mason contend, groups need to go inward before they
can link with external groups, what are the conditions that promote such linkage
and a widening of solidarity, or at least an acceptance of the other?
Neurobiologist Daniel Siegal suggests (2010), that the main function of the brain
is to seek and pursue "integration" (i.e. right and left hemispheres, mind and
body, self and other). For meaningful integration to occur, he contends,
individuals and the groups they form and that form them, must go through a
developmental process of "differentiation" and "linkage." That is, like the child
individuating from parents, people must first mark their own distinctiveness in
their individual identity formation or collective group solidarity. As Smithy
suggests in his paper, "It is only through contrasts that we can perceive the world,
think, analyze, and make decisions, all by drawing distinctions between things and
defining them by what they are not. In short, a certain measure of opposition is
inevitable and makes social life rich. (2012:2). However, if we stop at
differentiation, we have chaos and confrontation. Or in the words of Amin Malouf
(2003), we must learn
to accept multiple affiliations and allegiances; if [we] cannot accept [our] need for
identity with an open and unprejudiced tolerance of other cultures; if [we] feel
[we] have to choose between denial of the self and denial of the other – then we
shall be bringing into being legion of the lost and hordes of bloodthirsty madmen.
(preface)
Thus, the next and essential step in forging peaceful relations between
individuals and groups, is "linkage." That is, what are the vehicles by which
conflict is reduced and cooperation enhanced? Returning to the Resources,
Goals and Identity framework outlined above, linkage may be built through
sharing resources or pursuing them together in an expansive mode (i.e.
integrative bargaining, Follett, 1940), by fostering shared understanding and
commitment to common (superordinate) goals and values (Sherif, 1966). Or
linkage can be fostered perhaps at the most profound, if abstract, level, by
forging a supra-identity that is constituted of separate identities but also is larger
than each alone (Rothman, 2012).
ii. Seeking the Nexus
Ernst and Chrobot-Mason define this overarching identity as the "nexus"
constituted of frontiers that meet instead of boundaries that separate (2011: 238).
Their ideal is "spanning boundaries and harnessing the energy between groups
that is above and beyond the energy created by groups working alone" (page
222). This kind of cooperation is functional and akin to Sherif's long-established
notion of the power of superordinate goals. And yet, when deep and antagonistic
dynamics are in place, clearly something has to condition the shift whereby
parties are willing to entertain the notion of expansive cooperation. How can
different identity groups, say Jews and Arabs in Israel, or Moldovans and
Transnistrians, or Basque and Spanish nationalists, or at less complex levels of
analysis, African American citizens and police officers confronting one another
over issues of racial profiling in US cities, or rightwing and leftwing activists in the
run up to US elections, or managers and workers in industry - identity groups in
conflict all - muster the will for cooperation and belief in it?
My hypothesis is that by working within their own side, healing the rifts in their
own home as it were, finding bridges across their own differences, they can
begin to find the value in the process and outcomes and develop the will to do
the same with the other outside.
Two: Intragroup Conflict to Intergroup Cooperation
Conflict within groups is both notorious and relative to the problem, somewhat
under-studied. It is almost axiomatic, or at least apparently intuitive, that conflict
within sides' is often a significant cause of failed negotiations between them. In a
recent article in the popular American Jewish media, the author writes, "how is
successful negotiations possible when Hamas and PLO cannot reach agreement
between them?" [..] And yet, outside of organizational studies, little empirical or
applied work is done in this area when it comes to ethnic conflict and relations.
[bibliographical review of existing, if relatively scant literature here]
Volkan has described in some detail the psycho-dynamic of projection in ethnic
conflict in his treatise on "the need for enemies and allies" (1988). He suggests
that groups avoid their own negative features, including internal schisms, by
projecting them on the "evil other." And yet, even in this work, the main units of
analysis are individual actors. It is of course not easy to get beyond that, since
groups are themselves neither "beings" nor "actors" and thus studying them and
portraying group "actions" is misleading. Indeed, as Nikki Slocum writes, [one
must] "be careful not to (implicitly or otherwise) claim that a 'group' can act. Only
persons have agentive powers. I believe that this is an ontological pitfall that has
hugely contributed to the lack of practical utility of much of social scientific work"
[in this area].1
In reflecting on my experience as a mediator, facilitator and trainer of ethnic
groups in conflict (from South African to N. Ireland; From Cyprus to Sri Lanka;
1 personal correspondance, May 24, 2012. From Israel/Palestine to African Americans, Native Americans and White
Americans), I too have downplayed or at least bracketed internal differences and
conflicts within groups in favor of peace-seeking between them. Now, however, I
believe this is a fatal flaw in peacemaking efforts. Moreover, I think it is a
resource for peace that is relatively untapped.
A. The Need for Identity as Expressed and Protected and Promoted by Groups
For Burton (1990), and other human needs theorists the main cause of deep
conflict is the threat to and frustration of individual's basic needs such as
meaning, safety, dignity, control over destiny, identity, well-being and valued
relations. Groups and group identity are a primary vehicle through which
individuals seeks to secure and satisfy these needs (Kelman, 1983, Azar, 1990).
While somewhat circular, groups fulfill individual's needs by remaining intact. One
common way to remain intact is to have an Other who can be blamed as the
primary source of threat and frustration to such needs. Outgroup animosity is
both a political and psychological devise for building or maintaining ingroup
coherence. And, as described above, such animosity arises through mechanisms
such as projection or conflict opportunism when atavistic attitudes towards
outgroup are stirred up for political purposes by corrupt leadership (as in the
former Yugoslavia).
The relatively new theoretical direction, or at least new emphasis, of this present
research is that not only will such real or imagined threat or frustration to a
group’s ability to fulfill its individuals' needs lead to conflict with outgroups, but it
will also lead to and often follow from deep intragroup conflict. It leads to
intragroup conflict when groups divide internally, like Hamas and PLO, regarding
opposing ideologies towards the other (more or less ethnocentric, more or less
militant/accommodating, etc.). Thus, for these and so many more reasons, any
effort to heal rifts between groups must journey deeply through the landscape of
intragroup conflict. Thus, the major hypothesis that is guiding me in this research
is notion that for peace to prevail between groups, it must be deeply fostered
within groups prior to, during and following intergroup encounter.
Four: Case Study Presentation and Reflexive Musings
As a Fulbright Scholar in Emek Yizreel College in Northern Israel in 2005-6 in
which some 20% of the students are Palestinian citizens of Israel, reflecting the
wider societal demographics as well, I co-taught with my colleague Victor
Friedman, a course called, "Identity, Conflict and Visions of a Cooperative Future
in Israel" for about 40 students, about 40% of whom were Arabs. At the
conclusion of the seminar 7 students, four Jewish and three Arab, volunteered to
pilot a large scale action-research project I was exploring for young Jews and
Arabs in Israel to envision a more democratic, peaceful and cooperative future.
I was taking 7 of my students through a particular process of conflict engagement
and visioning called ARIA (see Rothman, 2012). First I gathered their individual
visions about a more peaceful future with the Other (i.e. Jews or Arabs of Israel).
Next, I brought members of each group together to build internal consensus,
which included surfacing internal conflicts and contradictions. Below I’ll describe
some highlights of conflict and consensus in each group separately and then
their somewhat surprisingly wholly positive encounter across their two groups.
a. Jewish Students: “Good neighbors – separately.”
Of the Jewish student participants in an early pilot test, one, who I will call "Etti,"
was the most politically ethnocentric (which is the label I will be working with
instead of right, center or left). In addition to visions about the end of enemy
images between the two sides, and repair in the relations between them, she
aspired for a future in which, “Jews live in peace and comfort in their own
separate territories; Arabs live in peace and comfort in their own separate
territories and both sides live as good neighbors with the other.” Given that the
visions of this pilot test were about Arab-Jewish relations in the shared country of
Israel, this vision seemed to share with extreme hard-liners (or rigid
ethnocentrists) a notion of “transfer” of Arab populations from Israel to an
eventual State of Palestine, which Palestinian Citizens of Israel absolutely reject.
Her colleagues were quite alarmed by this vision that they felt was racist and
dangerous. They told her they would not accept it as their own as is necessary in
for any goal to move forward as shared in the consensual process we use to
build goals (for some details on the "Action Evaluation" process see Rothman,
Chapter 8, 2012 and http://www.ariagroup.com/?page_id=5).
It grew a bit hot as she asserted this was her firm principle and didn’t want to be
part of a group that would reject it out of hand. In turn, "Tomer" who the next day
was to start his army reserve duty as a commander gave an eloquent plea for
change. “I am exhausted after the last war [in Lebanon, 2005],” he began. All
listened in stillness as he continued, “I believe as a people we [Israeli Jews] are
all tired. We want to live normal lives. To raise our children to have good futures
– not to fight forever. When we have to fight for our existence we must and we
will. But this last war had nothing to do with that…Rather, it was a leader’s war
and the people were just pawns…I live with Arabs; I grew up with them. We are
friends and this ensures that we don’t hate and fear each other….Etti, it won’t
help us to live separately; rather we must live better together.” Soon as the group
began negotiating its shared vision, Etti agreed to give up her advocacy for a
goal the group would obviously never accept, and was satisfied to live with the
general and accommodating goals the group could agree upon.
Consensus goals of Jewish students:
Reduce economic gaps and enhance equal opportunities (for Arabs in Israel).
Enhance cooperative living towards a better future.
Promote open and cooperative dialogue.
Build trust between us.
What happened here? The group goals are enlightened and pluralistic in nature.
Did Etti give up her ethnocentric ideas born, it seemed, of family of origin and life
experience, during this relatively brief intragroup dialogue? Did Tomer's personal
story and plea move her? Or rather did a convergence towards accommodation
occur such that Etti felt safe and her ideals of reducing enemy images and
building up the possibility of living cooperatively became a meaningful vision for
her? I asked why she gave up so easily, she smiled gently and said, “Why not?”
Sometimes I find peacemaking painfully easy when step-by-step processes are
possible. How long will this “Why not?” last for Etti? Probably not long; when she
goes back to her family and community, the reasons against "Why Not?" will
most likely be powerful, and unless she wants to reject and challenge her father’s
house, she may rebound the other way. I recall an Israeli Jewish high school
student I knew some 30 years ago who had been deeply impressed by an
encounter weekend she’d had with Arab peers. As she left the experience she
felt very much at odds with the Jewish State, with Zionism, with her family and
generally with the identity of her youth. A couple years later she became an ultraorthodox and very ethnocentric religious Jew. While I don’t know for sure, I have
always connected the dots between these experiences. So, while peacemaking
may be easy when it occurs in an island of sanity like I helped construct for my
students, in the wild ocean of life it is often easily washed away and can even
have a boomarang effect.
b. Arab Students “Primitivism or Oppression?”
From the beginning of the semester in our class “Identity, Conflict and Visions of
a Cooperative Future,” Randa and Khalwah were at each other’s throats. These
two Arab women while ostensibly from the same group – Israeli Arabs – clearly
had deep antipathy towards one other. So it was with some trepidation that I said
OK when the two volunteered to work on the same team for this pilot research
project. Randa, 38 years old, of fiery temperment, is clear that the problem of
Arab-Jewish relations in Israel, and indeed of Israeli-Palestinian relations at
large, is one of inequality and injustice by the Israeli-Jews towards her people.
She told the following story:
“When my grandfather was on his deathbed, he took the key he had kept for
more than 50 years to the house from which he was exiled in 1948 and went for
a last visit. When we knocked on the door, the Jewish woman who answered
was visably alarmed and demanded that to leave.” My student told this story with
a burning anger in her eyes. I asked her why this story was so important to her.
This is a delicate question since Why can sound either controversial, or deeply
caring. I think I struck the right chord as she answered quietly, “because my
grandfather died a month later and never saw the inside of his home again.
Because my family is scattered. We don’t live in our home. We are exiles here in
Israel.”
Khalwah, 23 years old, on the other hand, born in to a Christian Arab family,
railed against US-Them distinctions and in fact reserved her anger for the
narrowness of her own people. She called them “Primitive.”
During the Arab students visioning process Khalwah and Randa finally had the
opportunity for full conflict enagagement. On hearing Khalwah’s vision, “That the
Arabs will become more developed and less culturally Primitive,” Randa hit the
roof. “You are simply inverting the oppression of the Jews on to yourself. You
don’t understand at all that if there is limited development of our people, it is
because the Jews have held us down in order to maintain their dominance and
hegemony. This is so obvious, you are just too young and naive to understand.”
“And you” retorted 22 year old Khalwah, “hold on to outmoded ideas of your
parents and others who are so clannish and tied in to your own ways of seeing
things that you don’t even see what you can’t see. Blaming the Jews for all of our
faults will leave us simply with more faults. It certainly won’t change the way the
Jews act towards us. You know, I felt like you do during our conflict workshop
when Rachel talked about being unwilling to share this land with us as equals. As
a religious Jew she feels this land is hers; we can stay as strangers, but not
owners. I wanted to respond and tell her that this is really our land and she is
welcome as a guest here. I was angry…But as I’ve thought about it more, I’ve
realized that kind of response won’t help. Change will. I want us to change and
then perhaps we can change them.”
Randa laughed at her and said, “you are so naive.” I watched as Khalwah
struggled to control her own response. I decided to stop this undisciplined and
downwardly spiraling fight and invite them to engage their conflicts
systematically, “virtuously” and with a purpose.2 “Enough I said,” actually hold
2 In systems thinking a very important concept for conflict engagement is that conflicts normally spiral down a violent cycle. One says something mean. The other retorts. One pushes. The other punches. One pulls a knife; the other pulls a gun…However, the passion of the rising dissonance can be captured and converted in to passion of resonance, the downward spiral can be reversed in to a virtuous cycle in which a mean words is encountered with a question, “Why are you so angry?” An angry answer can be embraced as a puzzle, “I am quite confused by your venom right now, but I do want to understand why you feel that why and how I may my hands up between them like a referee in a boxing match after he has
separated the opponents from their death-lock. “Let’s get out your issues one by
one, expressing your Antagonism as a way to frame the issues, then inquire
about Why these issues matter to you so much in order to reframe them and
foster some Resonance. My hope is you might even come up with a shared
vision to replace the one that Khalwah strongly advocates and unequivocally
Randa rejects.”
I invite them to engage in conflict framing from the other’s perspective. I would
like to test if they’ve listened or not. The point is not to agree, but rather to see if
each has understood the other’s position.
Khalwah starts. Speaking as if she were Randa she says that “the main problem
here is prejudice against us by the majority and inequality of treatment and
opportunity. Moreover, that the Jews take our land and call it their own. Until we
have a State for all its citizens instead of a state that gives preferences to the
Jews, we will suffer and be second class. Focusing on our own faults as a
community is just besides the point right now. It's blaming the victim.”
Randa speaking as Khalwah says that “her” main concern is change. “Such
change,” she asserts “must begin within the Arab community itself where
primitive ways of thinking, clannishness, narrow-mindedness, restrictions on
women’s roles and rights keep us down more than any Israeli Jew.”
Commenting that indeed each has heard the other, I now inquire about their
Whys. “Speaking now again as yourselves, why do these things matter to you so
much? If you could summarize your main concerns with one word, what would
you say.”
Randa says her main word is “honor; We are a proud people and we must be
afforded dignity.” Khalwah says “Change. We need to move forward.”
With this, I asked them to review Khalwah’s goal of “Increase openness for
change and reduce primitivism in the Arab Community” and think about how they
might adapt it so much of their deeper and nicely interactive concerns for dignity
and change are addressed, or at least not frustrated. Khalwah suggests dropping
the word primitive and adding “future” and “both sides” so that it reads: “Both
sides need openness and development for a new future.” With that the Arab
students, including Ahmed who has been primarily an observer of the conflict
engagement process between his colleagues, reach full agreement on their
have contributed to it.” Of course, responding so “virtuously” in the heat of a battle is almost impossible for those locked in the struggle. That’s where a third party, either outside of the disputants, or from within the breast of one of the disputants and his/her inner-­‐angel comes in. platform of visions to share with the Jewish students at the next meeting. These
are:
Consensus Goals of Arabs Students:
Equality will bring peace between the two peoples in the State of Israel.
Acceptance and respect will transform the conflict.
Both sides need openness and development for a new future.
Again, what happened here?
The two woman, adversaries from the first day of class, worked together. Did
they feel any sense of breakthrough? Immediately after the session, Khalwah
told me she still felt exasperated by her younger colleague. I told her to reflect on
it all and that we would talk about it all later. I said I thought much learning had
occurred and progress had been made. “After all, you moved from barely being
able to address each other to coming up with a shared vision that would not have
existed if you hadn’t engaged your conflict first.”
c. Shared Vision
After a couple weeks, I brought the two groups together. We discussed their
experience in separate groups and each side expressed sincere satisfaction with
their respective goals as well as the process, including conflict engagement, they
went through to get their internal agreement. I asked them to share their data
with each other and explore how their separate consensus goals might be forged
in to shared goals. After a relatively short discussion, the groups merged the lists
through a consensus based process to one overarching list:
Joint Visions of Arab and Jewish Students
Reduce the gaps between Jews and Arabs in Israel to forge equality.
Develop mutual respect, acceptance and confidence building between the sides.
Foster intergroup dialogue and mutual openness in order to build a
new and cooperative future.
Together, merging their respective goals, narratives and action ideas they
generated the following Action Plan:
Five: Discussion
Clearly, my hypothesis that enhancing intragroup understanding, particularly
around conflict issues, as a vehicle for promoting intergroup cooperation has not
been in any way confirmed or even systematically developed in this case study.
And yet, I show the narrative data as a way to document the experience, and
begin to establish some markers to follow as I further develop a research plan
and agenda to pursue this hypothesis that successful intragroup pre-negotiation
can help condition the journey to intergroup peace.
We really have no way to understand Etti's "why not," nor Randa and Khawla's
turn from confrontation towards agreement from the data presented. But both
happened indeed and the path to consensus between the two groups was
tremendously smooth and satisfying for all involved. The only way I feel affirmed
in the sense that this hypothesis has some basis is through many, many previous
experiences in the same vein (Rothman, 2012). I will turn now to another case,
but only in brief and broad sweeps at this point due to the limitation of space, in
which a deeply divided ethnic community forged a common vision after each
separate group within it forged internal consensus.
Six: Community Rent Asunder and Reunited
All across the US in recent years, Jewish communal organizations are facing an
internal rift within its community over different political ideas about Israel and its
future. Since the launching of a new lobbying organization in Washington called
J-Street in 2008, there has been repeated confrontations between those in its
"camp" and other Jews in the more established and mainstream "American Israel
Political Action Committee" AIPAC "camp." J-Street's platform is based on a
commitment to a two-state solution and negotiation with the Palestinians. It
reads, "We believe in the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland in
Israel, in the Jewish and democratic values on which Israel was founded, and in
the necessity of a two-state solution." AIPAC, which has been around for
decades, self-identifies as "'America's pro-Israel lobby', working to strengthen
relations between the United States and Israel." It essentially supports Israeli
governmental policy however it expresses itself. In early 2011, in Nashville Tennessee, this conflict boiled after a J-Street affiliate
sought to hold a public meeting in the local Jewish Community Center/Federation
building. This was met with an outcry and condemnation, and in the end the
meeting was not held on the premises. This led to further rancor. Finally, a
project was initiated using the same ARIA visioning process used and broadly
outlined in the case above, sponsored by the Federation, to seek common
ground between those with "differing views on issues related to Israel and its
future" that could bridge this divide. In a public statement following the six-month
process, agreement was celebrated: "On May 2, 2012, members of the Nashville Jewish community with widely
differing views on issues related to Israel and its future met for over four hours
and reached a consensus on this statement:
When people hold strong and conflicting views about issues related to Israel and
its future, the goals of the Jewish community of Nashville are:
1. To respect each other and uphold Jewish values by carefully listening,
hearing each other out and seeking to understand each other’s
perspective.
2. To create a safe, inclusive environment in which members, without being
pejoratively labeled, vilified or excluded, can freely and respectfully
express their viewpoints.
3. To educate ourselves and deepen our understanding of modern Israel, its
history, current realities and the quest for peace through the critical
evaluation of diverse sources.
4. To stand as a united community in our support of Israel as the homeland
for the Jewish people.
5. That the leadership of all Jewish communal institutions will actively take
responsibility to support the implementation of these goals.
A total of 151 people participated in the process. They generated 403 proposed
goal statements, over 100 personal stories that explain why the goals are
important, and suggestions for action steps that fall into 25 different categories.
The Jewish Federation of Nashville and other local organizations are moving
ahead with an active campaign to translate these goals into a reality." (see
http://www.ariagroup.com/?page_id=647).
The "action evaluation" process that was used in this dialogue was the self-same
process used in Israeli with the Jews and Arabs. Here it is described in detail by
the facilitators:
"How the Nashville Conversations worked:
In the fall of 2011, the Jewish Federation of Nashville asked Roger Conner to
design a process that would allow members of the Jewish community of Middle
Tennessee to answer to this question:
What are our goals for the Jewish community when people hold strong and
conflicting views about issues related to Israel and its future?
The facilitators were given full control over the process and the data. They used
a tool from Action Evaluation known as ARIA C-3. ARIA stands for Aspiration,
Resonance, Invention and Action. C-3 refers to three ways to “see”–as
individuals, as groups and as a community.
C-1: Seeing the issue as individuals. The process began with an
announcement in the Jewish Observer on March 2, 2012, inviting everyone in the
Jewish community to give their input by answering a web-based questionnaire.
They were asked “WHAT are your goals for the community” when people
disagree strongly about issues related to Israel? For each WHAT goal, they
were asked to explain “WHY is this goal important to you,” as an individual, and
“HOW” could the goal be advanced. 148 participants suggested 403 separate
WHAT goals during this first phase.
C-2: Seeing the issues in separate groups. In the second phase, participants
were asked to assign themselves to one of three groups, defined by the following
statements:
•
•
•
“The best way to assure that Israel survives and prospers as a homeland
for the Jewish people is to support the current Israeli government’s
strategy on settlements, territory and negotiations, or to abandon the
peace process as not being in Israel’s best interests.”
“The best way to assure that Israel survives and prospers as a homeland
for the Jewish people is to encourage the government of Israel to give
much higher priority to negotiations leading to a two-state solution,
changing its current positions as needed to facilitate such negotiations.”
“I want Israel to survive and prosper as a homeland for the Jewish people
and both of the above groups have some good arguments.”
•
The professional staff of Nashville Jewish organizations and rabbis also provided
input into the process. However, they left it to community members to sort
through the ideas and find consensus. Each of the three groups spent an entire
evening at the Gordon Jewish Community Center discussing the issues and
hammering out an agreement on desired goals for the community from their point
of view. After these meetings, the 403 original WHAT ideas were reduced to
twelve goals.
C-3: Seeing the issues from the perspective of the community: On May 2,
2012, fifty people assembled in the Gordon Jewish Community Center to discuss
their shared and contrasting goals and seek consensus in a public forum. The
session was by turns passionate and reflective, gentle and tough. It was also
long, lasting more than four hours! By the end, the representatives agreed to five
goals by consensus. Despite the physical and emotional effort required,
representatives and attendees demonstrated how passionate people can listen
respectfully without sacrificing their principles.3
Six: Conclusion and Research:
Intragroup conflict can be a cause of intergroup conflict, for example as members
of groups project internal differences on to shared adversaries as one devise for
reducing their own animosity. Conversely, as I theorize in this and previous
writing (2006, 2008, 2011), intragroup cooperation can become a viable source
of meaningful bridge-building between different groups.
As described in the two cases in this paper, through a multi-staged
developmental process of building internal consensus over goals within groups,
conditioning may occur to help foster consensus building between groups. In
these examples, and in dozens of other consensus building interventions
including in US race relations, organizational conflicts, Israeli-Palestinian
peacemaking, community reconciliation in Eastern Europe, intergroup visioning
among youth leaders and more (see Rothman, 2012), the process of moving
individuals from an attitude of antagonism towards the "other" to intra-group
consensus about some valued future and finally from there to intergroup
consensus has been transformative.
We don't really know why it has worked so well, as up until now we haven't
systematically studied these successes. My hypothesis is that as group members
surface and heal internal rifts, they begin to find the value in such a process and
its positive outcomes, and may then also develop the will, and skill, to do the
same with members of the out-group. Exploring this and additional hypotheses
will hopefully animate future research projects focusing on transforming identitybased conflicts in to successful cooperation. This paper is an early effort in laying
out initial hypotheses and more importantly laying out a broader research agenda
to understand this experience of success and see if we can more fully
understand, and build upon its positive dynamics and characteristics.
3 Roger Conner. Lead Facilitator, Jean Hastings, Project Coordinator
Michele Maddox. Marietta Shipley. Abhishek Singh, Sarah Smith, Facilitators
(reprinted with permission. Accessed on 5/12/12 at
http://www.ariagroup.com/?page_id=661)
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