Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

ABSTRACT

Mediation has become a competition between brands vying for distinction not unlike cereal manufacturers competing with each other for access to the market of potential consumers. This is not a positive development for a professional field of endeavor. Mediation has much more to offer than competing claims of superiority that attempt to deride and disparage the competition. This article, which is written from a sociological viewpoint, challenges these claims and suggests that the mediation community should instead develop a broader integrated approach to mediation that is pragmatic, flexible, opensource, and based on a robust theoretical foundation.

PREFACE

This article is written from a social-science perspective and it uses terms that are not in everyday use. Two of the most important are ontology and epistemology, terms borrowed from philosophy. A simplified definition of ontology in philosophy is the study of existence. Epistemology means the study of the origins, methods, and limits of human knowledge.1 Because these terms have a particular meaning in this article, I am defining them up front. With regard to social conflict, ontology as used in this article refers to the existence of that reality, while epistemology refers to knowledge of that reality.