Figure 1: The Big Picture of Conflict Transformation
A key paradox of the presenting issues is the connection between the present and the past. The patterns of “how things have been” provide the context from which the immediate issues of dispute rise to the surface. The presenting issues create opportunity to remember and recognize, but presenting issues do not in themselves have the power to positively change what has already transpired. The potential for constructive change lies in our ability to recognize, understand, and redress what has happened. Positive change requires a willingness to create new ways of interacting, to build relationships and structures that look toward the future.
To return to our definition, the immediacy of the presenting issues, and the energy released as people contend over these issues, defines the “episodic” expression of the conflict. Moving through the presenting issues toward the spheres of relational and historical patterns takes us to the epicenter of conflict, which is always capable of regenerating new episodes, either on similar or on different issues. Transformation seeks to see and understand both: the episode and the epicenter. This takes us to another level of inquiry—Inquiry Three—but first we need to examine another set of embedded spheres, the horizon of the future.
Inquiry 2:
The horizon of the future
The second point of inquiry helps us think about the horizon of the future. The image of a horizon may be an appropriate way to imagine the future. A horizon can be seen but not touched. It can provide orientation, but it requires constant journeying each day. The future is something we can visualize but do not control.
In our big picture the future is represented as a set of spheres and is meant to suggest an open and dynamically evolving future. Embedded in this space of engagement and exploration are smaller spheres— immediate solutions, relationships, structures—that involve possible avenues for dealing with the immediate presenting issues, as well as processes that address relational and structural patterns. The inquiry into the horizon of the future brings forward questions like these: What do we hope to build? What would we ideally like to see in place? How can we address all levels—immediate solutions as well as underlying patterns of relationships and structures?
If these two sets of spheres or levels of inquiry (the presenting situation and the horizon of the future) were the only components of the big picture, we might have a model of linear change: a movement from the present situation to the desired future. However, it is important to visualize the overall picture as an interconnected circle. We can see this in the energies depicted by the arrows. The presenting situation spheres create a push to do something about these issues. They are a kind of social energy creating an impulse toward change, depicted as the arrow moving forward. On the other side, the horizon of the future harnesses an impulse that points toward possibilities of what could be constructed and built. The horizon represents a social energy that informs and creates orientation. Here the arrow points both back toward the immediate situation and forward to the range of change processes that may emerge. The combination of arrows provides an overall circle. In other words, our big picture is both a circular and a linear process, or what we earlier referred to as a process-structure.
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Inquiry 3:
The development of change processes
This brings us to the third major inquiry, the design and support of change processes. Again, we can visualize these in the form of a sphere with embedded components. This overall sphere requires that we think about response to conflict as the development of processes of change that attend to the web of interconnected needs, relationships, and patterns on all four levels: personal, relational, cultural, and structural.
Note that we describe “processes” in the plural. Processes of change require us to hold together at the same time multiple interdependent initiatives that are different but not incompatible. Transformation requires us to reflect on multiple levels and types of change processes, rather than addressing ourselves only to a single operational solution. The change processes address both the episodic content and the patterns and context or epicenter. We must conceptualize multiple change processes that address solutions for immediate problems and at the same time processes that create a platform for longer-term change of relational and structural patterns.
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