Mediating Across Difference: Oceanic and Asian Approaches to Conflict Resolution

Mediating across Difference is based on a fundamental premise: to deal adequately with conflict-and particularly with conflict stemming from cultural and other differences-requires genuine openness to different cultural practices and dialogue between different ways of knowing and being. Equally essential is a shift away from understanding cultural difference as an inevitable source of conflict, and the development of a more critical attitude toward previously under-examined Western assumptions about conflict and its resolution.

Morgan Brigg is lecturer in the School of Political Science and international Studies at the University of Queensland. Roland Bleiker is professor of international relations at the University of Queensland.