Theoretical Pillars of Conflict Mediation

 Tania Almeida 1

 The multiplicity of theoretical contributions in Mediation is due to the contribution of different thinkers who, over time, have added knowledge to this practice and expanded their interventions in quantity and quality.

 As it does not restrict the profession of origin, Mediation can be enriched with views and contributions from different types of knowledge – the transdisciplinary character of Mediation.2 This dynamism gives the toolbox a multidisciplinary character of perennial construction. Open to updating and new contributions – there are numerous and constant offers in this regard – the practice of Mediation has been permanently enriched.3

From the countless theoretical pillars that can be selected to compose the basis of this practice, I chose: ethical guides, systemic thinking, the process of dialogue and reflective processes. The soil on which these four pillars are based is language – a scenario in which we are acculturated and to which we contribute with our existence.

Language as a form of social expression is thus conceived by the pragmatic philosophy of language4 and should not be examined in the abstract, but in relation to the social and cultural context that builds and uses it. In the field of linguistics and communication, discourse analysis5 aims to identify the nature of texts from different points of view – ideological, contextual, social, political and cultural, among others – and considers them as social, not individual, constructions. They reflect not only the author's worldview, but also the time and culture in which they are immersed. Thus, the contexts frame the texts.

Moved by the belief of co-authorship as the basis of support for any and all expression of theoretical thought – they are always the product of articulations made from what has been read or discussed previously with various interlocutors – I reaffirm that this text is a cut made by my look, for the social subject that I am, and I encourage readers to broaden this theoretical support base.

In my master's thesis, two bibliographic references were chosen, distinct from all the others, for each tool that makes up the set related to the themes worked - stages of the Mediation process, procedures, communication and negotiation contributions. I kept this format in relation to the four theoretical pillars highlighted here. The references are commented on to enable the reader to explore the sources from the summarized description of each work. In this proposal, there is an incentive to search for different types of reading to enrich the articulations that mediators can make, when they think theoretically.

I. Ethical Guides

Ethics – from the Greek ethos –, which means the set of customs, habits and values ​​of a particular society or culture, concerns our everyday social experience and invites us to permanently reflect on how we act in interaction with others. Thus, human freedom would be restricted by ethical values, introducing one of the most fundamental notions of ethics, that of duty towards the other. Ethics and Mediation are in the field of practice, the main reason for the articulation made here.

The Roman translation of ethos – mos, moris – gave rise to the word moral in Portuguese (from Latin moralis – usages and customs; from Greek éthicos – doctrine of character). For some, morals and ethics are similar. For others, distinction. as moral, Western culture understands the set of values ​​and rules of action proposed to individuals or groups by prescriptive contexts, such as the church, family, educational institutions, among others. These sets are validated as moral codes, as principles of conduct in a given context. We also call moral the level of obedience shown by the behavior of individuals in relation to these rules or values. For those who distinguish between ethics and morals, ethics is gender and morals are species. Ethics concerns, in the first instance, the interactive practice with the other.

According to Danilo Marcondes (2007), we could distinguish three dimensions of what we understand as ethics: (i) one of customs and practices, not dissociated from the concrete sociocultural reality; (ii) a prescriptive or normative one, contained, for example, in professional, Christian, Kantian, etc. codes of ethics, governed by specific thematic concerns; (iii) and another reflective or philosophical – metaethics, which examines and discusses the foundations of practices and the values ​​that support them, allowing for critical analysis by practitioners or non-practitioners.

With the speed of change, the dynamic technological advance and the consequent diversity of reference values ​​that characterize this historical moment, the feeling of ethical crisis emerges and (re)places us in contact with the relativity of values ​​and norms of conduct and in permanent connection with the reflexive or philosophical dimension mentioned by Marcondes. So, in order not to repeat the established, the usual, it is necessary that the diurnal reflection on how and why we act in a certain way accompany us.

The reflexive or philosophical dimension cited by Danilo Marcondes was chosen, in this article, as a guide for the analysis of the ethical values ​​that permeate Mediation. It is a selection among many other possible ones, and touches the thoughts of some philosophers – Aristotle, Kant and Max Weber – who have dealt with the subject.

Aristotle is the author of the first Western treatise on ethics in the relational sense we use today. The iconic text, among a set of texts, was addressed to his son, Nicomachus, and offered central lines for later Western discussions on the subject.

In Aristotle, ethics belongs to the field of practical knowledge,6 that which guides us to act with prudence and/or discernment, that is, to deliberate well about what is good and convenient for oneself and for the other, with the objective of happiness and/or personal fulfillment.

For Aristotle, happiness corresponds to well-being related to what we perform with excellence, a final good - that which is desirable in itself, and not because of something else. The excellence that would guide our achievements is understood by the philosopher as a virtue. Virtue would not be innate, but it could be taught and would result from habit,7 and therefore it would always be necessary to practice it in order to be internalized.

Mediation is an instrument that helps subjects to negotiate their differences based on Aristotelian discernment and virtue. Ethical actions based on this nature of discernment and virtue are the result of a permanent internal critical analysis, regarding the interaction with the other, regardless of an external normative. Such ethical actions would still be guided by the fair measure of the Aristotelian doctrine of the middle ground, the one that avoids the extremes characterized by excess and lack.

When in Mediation we refer to good faith, we are based on the Aristotelian belief that it is possible for human beings to dispense with external laws to guide their conduct in order to consider the other as legitimate in their needs, which must be met, as much as the own, to the right extent. Another legitimate one, also in its versions, in its ways of describing the world and events, which should be honored as much as their own.

Kant is one of the most influential thinkers on ethics in modernity. It proposes a principled ethics and has as its central theme reason in the theoretical and practical sense – how reason operates and its objective(s). The fundamental assumption of Kantian ethics is the autonomy of reason and Critique of Practical Reason is his most significant work in this field. There would exist in the mature subject - the one based on his own understanding - autonomy for the (public) exercise of his own reason, which would characterize his freedom.

It is in Kant, the famous principle of the categorical imperative – act only in accordance with that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law – that is, the fundamental criterion of the ethical character of an act is in its universality. What I do should in no way differ from what I accept being done to me.

Acting in a way that the action can be considered universal (also valid for the other) is a principle present in Mediation when it requests that mediates propose, in two ways, solutions of mutual benefit, also based on the needs and possibilities of all. Everyone's needs and possibilities can be identified when there is internal permission to visit the other's perspective.

Max Weber, one of the founders of contemporary social sciences, concerned with the influence of Calvinist Protestantism in the formation of European society and culture, had as one of the central themes of his social and political analysis the question of the limits of moral responsibility.

Weber formulated the famous distinction between an ethics based on conviction and an ethics based on responsibility, offering new biases for the analysis of human interactive behavior.

The ethics of conviction would be based on the commitment to values ​​associated with certain beliefs, religious or not. It would be more rigid and dogmatic and would give more importance to the intentions of practitioners than to the results of their actions. It is worth mentioning that, even taking into account these characteristics, the practice arising from this ethical nature, due to the fact that it disregards results, is not related to irresponsibility, but to conviction.

The ethics of responsibility would be based on acts whose consequences, as well as the relationship between means and ends, would be evaluated. It would be more critical, concerned with practice and more suited to decision making. It is worth mentioning that, even taking into account these characteristics, the practice arising from this ethical nature, because it considers results, is not about unprincipled opportunism, but about responsibility.

Mediation asks mediators to evaluate their actions and decisions based on the ethics of responsibility, sometimes going against cultural convictions. Requests that they examine the consequences of their actions for all those directly and indirectly involved, as well as the means they use to obtain what they want and their purposes.

Both – ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility – are not necessarily mutually exclusive. When considerations of consequences pertaining to the second and commitments to convictions relating to the first conflict in a Mediation process, the decision must be made consciously as to which of the two guiding principles should prevail.

Annotated Bibliography:
MARCONDES, Daniel. Basic Texts of Ethics – from Plato to Foucault. Rio de Janeiro Editora Zahar, 2007.
The book contains an anthology of texts on ethics, from the point of view of different philosophers. As it has didactic purposes, it is easy and objective to read and is systematized so that, at the end of the exposition of the ideas of each thinker, the reader finds questions that favor the understanding and construction of the corresponding knowledge, as well as the recommendation of other works. About the subject.

ECO, Humberto; MARTINI, Carlo Maria. What Believe Those Who Don't Believe. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 2010.
The existence and invention of God, as well as the foundations of ethics, compose the themes that motivate the dialogue between Eco – secular perspective – and Martini – religious perspective. In the form of a letter, this conversation commissioned and published by an Italian magazine leads to reflection on the values ​​of contemporary man and is commented on by philosophers, journalists, an extreme left theorist and a former minister of the Italian socialist party.

II. Systemic Thinking

Thomas Kuhn (2006), when investigating the process of human discoveries and inventions, also contributed to highlighting the idea of ​​paradigm (from the Greek paradigm, model, pattern): a system of beliefs that governs our worldview, the interpretation of facts. , our actions and curiosity.

Paradigms are built throughout existence from the family microculture, the time, place, moment and context in which we live. Shared paradigms form the basis of social organization. In Humberto Maturana's view,8 paradigms function as explanatory domains, generating domains of operational coherence in the practice of those who share a certain belief system – a family, a community, a social or professional group.

As the paradigms that govern our descriptions of facts correspond to social constructions, the notions of truth, reality and objectivity gained parentheses, in Maturana's view. These parentheses are graphic and symbolic representatives of the impossibility of apprehending truth, reality and objectivity.

Until the first half of the last century we were immersed in the Cartesian paradigm, of a mechanistic nature and based on the linearity of the direct relationship between cause and effect. As a scientific paradigm – one that validates knowledge – linearity played the role of organizing society around its principles. We segment knowledge into disciplines, subspecialize and, governed by the cause and effect equation, we begin to analyze and deal with events, strictly governed by specific knowledge. An example of this is the monocular vision of our professional specificities.

Paradigmatic changes take place from the consensus on the insufficiency and ineffectiveness of the current paradigm. That's why we changed laws, behavior, a way of dressing, etc. These changes are procedural and, sometimes, take place from a movement that includes the experimentation of the new and visits to the old way of being or proceeding. A coming and going called by Dora Schnitman (1986) the oscillatory state – a pendulum movement between the new and the old paradigms happens until the most recent can be installed in the culture.

The mediates experience this oscillatory state, between the paradigm of dispute and adversariality and that of collaboration, during the Mediation process and even after its end. Until they can get both feet into a new modus operandi, they 'surprise' the other (and themselves) by interspersing changes in behavior and attitudes with old actions and interpretations.

Mediation is consistent with new paradigms and tends to settle definitively in Western culture when the oscillation between old and new beliefs gains greater stability and, at the same time, when a significant social group – in terms of quantity and credibility – gives you validation.

Systems thinking9 has broadened our view of events and the world we live in, constituting, in contemporary times, a pillar for all sciences. It understands the world as a system, which means perceiving it as an integrated whole, composed of different interdependent elements that interfere with each other to a greater or lesser extent.

This idea can be transposed to any set of elements in coexistence - at a micro level, such as the family, or macro, such as a country or the universe - and supports the dialogue processes recently inaugurated by nations to take care of common interests - markets , the economy, ecology and sustainability of the planet, among others.

The systemic paradigm is largely responsible for the idea of ​​interdisciplinarity, for the proposal of complexity10 and for the belief in multifactorial causality, among other new-paradigmatic views. It came to save us from the narrow perception of monocular vision and allowed us to identify that the effectiveness of our actions is also due to the multidisciplinary treatment that we can give them. Sharing and integrating knowledge has become a maxim.

The belief in the systemic paradigm brings us some important consequences, all of which can be articulated with the practice of Mediation:

(i) the events we deal with are always part of a larger chain of occurrences - in the case of conflicts brought to the Mediation, they were initiated before the cut presented to the dialogue table and will have sequence beyond completion of consensus building work;

(ii) our interventions help to change the course of events and people's lives and need to be guided by care, multifactorial analysis and multifocal actions; it also implies that we do not lose sight of the repercussions they may have on the lives of those directly and indirectly involved in the situation – our interventions escape our control and forecast, which demands even greater care in acting;

(iii) the interdependence between the actors of the conflicting event is a fact and, as with planet Earth, the best results of their interaction will come from collaborative actions (and not from competitive ones); each actor is subject and object of his own action, which implies managing the benefits and consequences of his own acts and decisions;

(iv) the factors that contribute to the results are multiple – multifactorial – and depend on the interaction between various elements of the system. In the case of Mediation, it is necessary to consider the environment of the disagreement – ​​physical and human surroundings – and dimension its participation in the construction of the conflict and its resolution;

(v) one of the greatest contributions that systemic thinking offers to man is the invitation to protagonism and self-implication; as elements of the same system, we are co-authors and co-responsible for what we provide for ourselves and for what we provide for the other to live; how I am contributing to what happens to me and to the other is a pertinent question for mediators and for mediators – self-implication invites co-responsibility;

(vi) the systemic world is the world of differences since systems are composed of different interacting elements and that the possibility of complementarity and survival for the system itself resides in this diversity; so that, except for damage to ethics, all and all ideas are legitimate and subject to articulation, in Mediation and in coexistence.

Protagonism, self-implication, the collaboration of the mediates in the search for consensus, the recognition of the legitimacy of the other with their differences and the consolidation of solutions of mutual benefit, assumptions of the practice of Mediation, as well as the recognition of our contribution and participation as mediators for what is co-constructed, they convert systemic action into an ethical exercise.

Annotated Bibliography:
VASCONCELOS, Maria José Esteves. Systems Thinking – the new paradigm of science. Campinas: Papirus Editora, 2002.
Maria José invites us to the idea that new paradigms are built and adopted by science because there are scientists with a new-paradigmatic vision. Readers also need new-paradigmatic thinkers who help them, in simple language, to experience in texts what is narrated to them. This is what happens in this work full of information. A book to read and to consult.

CAPRA, Fritjof. The Turning Point – emerging science, society and culture. São Paulo: Editora Cultrix, 1982.
This is a classic, also made into a movie (worth seeing), about holistic or systems thinking. A book for the lay reader, which makes it possible to follow the influence of Cartesian-Newtonian thinking in our lives and its redemption to a new vision of reality, holistic or systemic thinking.

III. Dialogue as Process

Today, the productive bias of the magical architecture of dialogue is studied – an interactive practice, a moment in which expression, listening and inquiry in the search for clarification are shared, aiming at thinking and reflecting together (ISAACS, 1999).

The study of the dialogues made it possible to qualify them, taking into account their qualities, purposes and principles. Productive dialogues and debates, generative and appreciative dialogues, verbal and non-verbal dialogues, written and spoken dialogues, real or virtual, are examples of different qualities of this conversation practice.

Communication theorists such as Watzlawick – Pragmatics of Human Communication; philosophers such as Habermas – Theory of Communicative Action; Foucault – The Order of Discourse; or Socrates, with his maieutics; or even dialogue researchers such as William Isaacs – Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together –, among others, offer us reflections that call attention to the plural aspects of the construction of dialogues.

What stands out in the most contemporary studies on the subject is the incessant search – research and practice – for characteristics that make dialogues productive – those that privilege listening to counter-arguments, building consensus to debate, understanding to dispute. It is as if we had already taken care of ourselves enough to diagnose the ills of the dialogues, through countless processes of analysis, and we were now focused on the objective of obtaining a conversation that generates good results.

We are, in this moment of coexistence, especially interested in the study of dialogues in crisis situations, and we have made use of third parties, specialists in the field, to help people to make good use of the transforming possibility of crises. Appreciative (COOPERRIDER, WHITNEY, STAVROS, 2005) and generative (SCHNITMAN, 2000) dialogues are resources and object of studies for this purpose. Inspired by the past and the present – ​​appreciative dialogues – or the future – generative dialogues –, his most recent objects of investigation are the good results.

In the appreciatives, we seek to diagnose what worked well, what was productive during the past coexistence, with a view to bringing these elements to consciousness, in order to make good use of them in the present and in the future, especially in crisis situations. – opportunities for change and reconstruction of new interactions and actions. Rescuing positive aspects to feed the present and the future puts people involved in the disagreement in touch with their potential for doing good.

In generative dialogues, people are helped to design the desired future and, based on this prospective vision, it is sought with them to identify what is necessary to integrate in the present so that the identified future objective is achieved. Building a present from a desired and projected future invites people to be active, co-builders of new realities and attitudes, developed from moments of crisis.

The relationship with the other is the stage that makes it possible to expose and hear ideas, to be considered and considered, and therefore needs to be well cared for. As observers, we know exactly what the imperfections of those who dialogue with us are. How actors, we are not aware of our inadequacies nor are we aware of how we contribute to the other's inadequacies.

In productive dialogues, the other is treated well and issues are dealt with severely and seriously; in them, points of view are offered or complemented. In disagreements, without the interlocutor being disqualified, other points of view are presented and validated by the difference they bring and not by the competition with the previously offered idea.

In debates, the other is treated badly and issues are relegated to the background. In them, it is necessary to attack the other, his deeds and his ideas more than attacking the issues, even when the issues are the object of interest and the pretext for the conversation. In debates, points of view are overturned, eliminated and disqualified. And with them their authors.

The following table demarcates distinctions between dialogue and debate:

Dialogue

Debate

There is an attempt to build consensus or, genuinely, a respectful listening of understanding (cooperative).

It seeks to have a winning point of view; consequently, there will be a losing (adversarial) point of view.

One listens to the other to understand him in search of consensus or just to understand his point of view.

One reaffirms his point of view without listening to the other's; or still listens to the other with the aim of gathering counter-arguments.

One takes his point of view as a possibility and takes the other's idea as a possibility as well.

One takes his point of view as truth and disqualifies the other's point of view.

All participants are expected to have the possibility of flexibilizing their ideas.

Irreducibility and criticism of the position or idea of ​​the other are expected.

The best solution presented or the one composed of a mix of the ideas brought. Everyone contributes to building part of the solution.

We seek the prevalence of one idea(s) over the other(s) and work to exclude the ideas of opponents.

A common understanding is sought.

Differences are demarcated.

Part of the social competence of this beginning of the millennium is the ability to live together and deal well with difference. Differences between people, cultures, ideas. The contemporary world demands flexibility – depending on the speed of change and the diversity inherent to coexistence – and consequently demands the ability to negotiate through dialogue.

The positive result of the dialogues is an intangible asset that is extremely valued in private, community and corporate relationships. The relationship with the other, the interactive capacity, the ability to compose networks and partnership is a requirement of this millennium in which survival is guaranteed only if cooperative actions can exist.

The sustainability of any project – personal, community, corporate, national or continental – feeds on co-authorship. Co-authorship greatly expands the commitment to the practice of ideas and the execution of projects. Only productive dialogue makes co-authorship possible.

It is the incessant search for productive dialogue that provides the continuous redesign of new instruments of understanding at this moment of our existence, especially those aimed at building consensus between people in disagreement or between multiple actors with significant differences of any nature.

Annotated Bibliography:
COOPERRIDER, David L.; WHITNEY, Diana; STAVROS, Jacqueline M. Appreciative Inquiry Handbook. Brunswick, Ohio: Crown Custom Publishing, 2005.
The authors carried out a research in the organizational field and found that the consultancies based on pathological diagnoses – what is not working and needs to be reviewed – left aside the positive aspects of the corporation. Appreciative dialogue is based on the positivity of any system – family, company, community. The book shows a step-by-step guide in the construction of dialogues of this nature and proposes a paradigm shift in the field of dialogue facilitation.

ISACCS, William. Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together. New York: Currency, 1999.
The author is a member of the MIT Dialogue Project team, and the book, based on ten years of research, is dedicated to studying the positive characteristics of dialogue processes, highlighting the quality of expression and listening, the admission of difference and genuine curiosity that sees the new in familiar themes. The metaphorical image that the research built about dialogue was taken to the title of the book – the art of thinking together.

IV. Reflective Processes

In March 1985, Tom Andersen put into practice, for the first time, the idea of ​​the reflective team (2002). There were already at least ten years of studies supporting this possibility, discussed internally within the psychiatric hospital team in Tromso, Norway, coordinated by Tom Andersen. One of the great questions to refer to a different procedure with the families who attended was: can we conduct an interview without the possibility of making a final intervention? At the time, the final intervention in works of that nature was a maxim and allowed the family to return home with the opinion of the care team on the issues raised.

The reflective team was offered to the family as a possibility and worked in such a way that each member offered other descriptions that occurred to them, while listening to the family members. The team spoke among themselves, and the nature of the interventions was speculative, that is, the contents of the speeches were presented as possibilities, not as opinions; as versions and not as truths. After listening, the family would comment or not what they had heard. The proposal was to generate reflection and not the inversion of opinions – the family saying what they had considered pertinent from what they had heard. The reflection could still take place there in the service, or outside of it.

That job offer was new. The place given to therapists and, consequently, to the family was new. Therapists with less demonstration of knowledge and families faced with other versions of their issues, to actively, via reflection, expand or not their understanding, and, consequently, the course of actions.

Tom Andersen wrote articles and books on this proposal, articulated his thinking with that of other theorists and left an extremely rich support for future reflections on reflective processes in dialogues that aim to contribute to changes. Here comes the articulation with Mediation.

Mediation and the service coordinated by Tom Andersen have in common the mutual interest, between the service team and those assisted, in generating a different functioning from the current one, since the current functioning causes discomfort. This mutual interest of purposes enables the two systems – attended and attendant – to work on ideas that converge towards the understanding of the motivations that generate the discomfort and in the construction of possible changes.

The basis of this dialogue is reflection – those assisted reflect based on what they hear about themselves and based on what they hear from the attending team (questions and new versions made possible, for example, by summaries); assisting team reflects from what it hears from those assisted and from the interventions that the team itself generates: (i) reflects to build the interventions; (ii) reflects on the fact that they have chosen them to share with those served; (iii) reflects on the reason for choosing these interventions and not others; (iv) reflects on the possible impacts caused by these interventions. Same reflexive process that occurs in Mediation.

What are the basic lessons that that Tromso study group, on reflective processes, can offer to mediators? Many and significant, for example:

  • working with the idea of ​​making distinctions / identifying differences – Gregory Bateson (1972) contributed to this thought, by stating that we make distinctions when we identify something as different from us (from our environment, what we think, what we perceive). For Bateson, the idea of ​​making a difference is at the base of information – information is a difference that makes a difference in the body of knowledge. For the anthropologist, change would correspond to the incorporation of differences over time. Mediators work by generating information, especially via questions. Our questions then need to lead us to reflect on something new, different from those subjects' repertoire, so that they generate information and, over time, possible changes;

 

  • work with the idea that the interventions offered are not naive – Bulow-Hansen was a physical therapist with whom Tom Andersen worked and with whom he learned that interventions cannot be so weak that they are not noticed, nor so strong that they need to be avoided, for threaten integrity. However, they need to have the adequate strength to be perceived as a difference, and thus to constitute information. The same occurs in Mediation. Interventions need to be tailored to people's needs and possibilities. No more, to be refused; no less, to make no difference. The term chosen by Tom Andersen to describe interventions that would bring about distinction without refusal was unusual.
  • In this sense, the intention to favor the generation of information and change must be accompanied by interventions that are perceived as unusual;
  • working with the idea of ​​a structural repertoire - Tom Andersen's group was inspired by the biological approach of Maturana and Varela's (1987) ideas, ideas that have contaminated the social sciences and which claim: our repertoire of actions and possibilities is limited by the biological structures, that is, the human being transits through the world, also within biological possibilities (structural determinism). However, these possibilities can be altered in response to changes in the environment and in the subject himself. For mediators, the message remains that people initially react to proposals for change, within their repertoire. The feasibility of changes in this repertoire lies in the variable time and in the possibilities of each personal structure;

 

  • working with the idea of ​​language as the basis of our construction and expression – (i) the repertoire of each one of us is built in social interaction and is strongly expressed in acting, thinking and feeling, which are articulated, differently, depending, in particular, on the context and the interlocutor; (ii) we mean differently the same word or situation from this socially constructed repertoire, throughout our existence; (iii) we describe situations when we can still give them movement, and we explain situations when movement has been replaced by certainty; (iv) what we present to describe or explain situations are particular versions and not the expression of the truth, which, due to the uniqueness of each observer, is incomprehensible; (v) we build the idea that something is a problem from our perception and world view; the definition of something as a problem may not be shared in terms of quality and intensity. This set of guides based on language can help mediators in the proposal to promote reflection, in the sense of considering different interventions for different subjects and dissimilar responses for each one of them, in the face of the same interventions.

Reflecting means having an internal dialogue, talking to yourself and to the internalized voices that have crossed our history – those we live with and/or talk to, those we read, listen to and/or admire.

Reflection is present throughout the course of Mediation, in mediators and in mediatees: from training to continuing education, including service. The service, generally systematized in three moments – before, during and after – is marked by reflexive processes that include everyone who is part of the dialogue process.

There are models of work in Mediation that add the reflective process in a more explicit way: (i) sometimes offering reflective teams for the mediators, following the guidelines originally advocated by Tom Andersen; (ii) sometimes, promoting informal conversations between the service team, in front of the mediates, especially in training situations, when these teams include observers and comedians - the team talks about the case, also observing the purposes of offering versions and not opinions, questions and non-statements; (iii) there is also the possibility of a pair of mediators, not accompanied by a team, to talk to each other, both about other versions that occur to them about what they hear and perceive and about interventions they would like to include in the work, choosing primarily by trading them with your partner.

Reflection integrates our daily life, regardless of the moments of functional or professional performance. The idea of ​​this internal dialogue being prestigious in Mediation is based on the proposal of authorship with responsibility - both of the mediates and the mediators. As in the Socratic dialogue,11 reflection needs to take place, even if the consensus obtained includes attitudes and decisions that correspond to the usual, the current, the previously thought.

Annotated Bibliography:
ANDERSEN, Tom. Reflective Processes. Rio de Janeiro: NOOS and Rio de Janeiro Family Therapy Institute, 2002.

In this second edition, Tom Andersen adds new ideas and a review of previous ones. It historicizes the construction of work with reflective teams and offers its theoretical substrate, revealing the dialogue with different authors and different thoughts that formed the basis of that work. Guidelines for working with reflective teams and for reflective processes in general are offered.

WATZLAWICK, Paul. (Org.). Invented Reality. São Paulo: Editora Psy, 1994. This work compiles texts by different authors, all of whom are used to the theme of the impossibility of apprehending reality. I especially recommend the introduction, because it brings together Ernest von Glasersfeld – Introduction to Radical Constructivism – and Heinz von Foerster – Constructing a Reality. Both authors were a reference for Tom Andersen, in the construction of the idea of ​​the reflective team. They are dense but emblematic texts.

Conclusion

Ethics, as an impassable margin; systemic thinking, as an indispensable guide to any and all social action; the dialogue process, as a unique vehicle for consensus-based understanding; and reflective processes, as an essential practice in decision-making qualified by information and by considering the other's point of view, were chosen as theoretical pillars that support the exercise of Conflict Mediation.

At the base of these pillars, a soil constituted by language allows any performance to happen.

By investigating the linguistic scenario of Mediation and identifying the sociocultural context to which its paradigms and values ​​belong, as proposed by the pragmatic philosophy of language, we will see in Mediation a social practice focused on the peaceful handling of disagreements and their prevention, for the autonomy of the will. and the exercise of authorship, to seek to meet the needs and interests of all those involved in the controversy.

Still having the pragmatic philosophy of language as a guide for reflection, if we articulate Mediation with the idea that it is a political practice and a natural vehicle for the expression of power, we will observe that it is a practice that does not exclude any individual capable of exercising it. , neither as part of the dialogue nor as a mediator. Mediation proposes the balance of power between the mediates and demands the same from its results. It grants the participants equal participation and invites them to work in search of mutual satisfaction. for being a a win-win instrument,12 proposes a leveling of power between the mediators and between the importance of their interests and needs.

The Mediation discourse, like all others, from the point of view of discourse analysis, is a social construction that needs to be understood based on the historical-social context that re-edits it and contains an ideological construction. From this perspective, it reflects the world view of the society that establishes and uses it, in this historical moment.

The ideological construction present in the Mediation text is the peaceful resolution of disagreements through the construction of consensus and mutual satisfaction. Reborn in the 1970s, in the American scenario, Mediation reached the five continents and has been proposing paradigmatic changes in the management of disagreements with the other, in view of the ideas of self-composition, authorship and mutual satisfaction, the preservation of the social and of the dialogue.

In a historical moment in which the peaceful coexistence of differences is a demand, in which social and cultural boundaries are attenuated and in which the speed of change leaves little room to take a breath to deal with the new, negotiate and compose differences leaving room for disagreements and for the singular, it allows different needs and different values ​​to be respected and not unified.

Daughters of their time, the new-paradigmatic ideas arrive to allow social coexistence to take place, including contemporary demands.

References

ANDER-EGG, E. Interdisciplinarity in Education. Buenos Aires: Editorial Magisterio del Río de da Plata, 1994.

ANDERSEN, T. Reflective Processes. 2nd ed. enlarged. Rio de Janeiro: NOOS and Rio de Janeiro Family Therapy Institute, 2002.

BATESON, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972.

CAPRA, F. The Turning Point – emerging science, society and culture. São Paulo: Editora Cultrix, 1982.

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1 This article corresponds to a segment of my master's thesis on Conflict Mediation – The Mediation Toolbox: objectives, operationalization and expected impacts; articulations and theoretical contributions. Here are selected four theoretical pillars that support the scenario where Mediation develops - ethics, systemic thinking, the process of dialogue and reflective processes. Language is treated as the ground on which these theoretical pillars and all others that support this practice are erected.

2 In Interdisciplinarity en Educación (1994, p. 24), Ezequiem Ander-Egg establishes distinctions between multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity – an epistemological perspective that not only crosses and interpenetrates different disciplines but also erases the limits between them, integrating them into a single system.

3 Sharing knowledge is a premise for a systemic world in which the articulation of knowledge, its interdependence and complementarity are shown to be beneficial when considered. This belief motivates the continuing education advocated by Mediation, as a way to keep its practitioners up to date with new and constant contributions.

4 The pragmatic philosophy of language has John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960) as one of the greatest representatives of this idea. Austin was the first formulator of speech act theory. Along with Wittgenstein (1889-1951) he valued the concrete use of terms and expressions in their ordinary speech contexts (ordinary language).

5 Foucault (1926-1984) also dedicated himself to the analysis of discourses, privileging not the study of a ready-made discourse, but its production. Its archaeological method of analysis involves the excavation, restoration and exposition of speeches in order to see them articulated with a certain historical moment. In his archeology there is no search for the origin or secret meanings, but the search for understanding the conditions that made possible the emergence of a discourse at a certain historical moment.

6 There would be three major areas that systematize human experience: theoretical knowledge, or the field of knowledge, practical knowledge, or the field of action, and creative knowledge, or the field of production.

7 Habit has the same etymological root as ethics.

8 Humberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist who has greatly contributed to the paradigmatic constructivist and social constructionist views – how man builds reality and how this man who builds reality is built, respectively – from the analysis of the biological constitution of living beings. . See MATURANA (1995).

9 Ludwig von Bertalanffy was an Austrian biologist who published in 1968 the General Theory of Systems, a work dedicated to identifying the general principles of the functioning of living systems. The systemic paradigm governs scientific thinking today and includes concepts such as totality – the result of the interaction of different elements of a system is different from its sum – and interdependence – an emblematic mark of systemic theory.

10 In Science with Consciousness, Edgar Morin (1996) offers reflections on the interference in the field of physical, biological and social sciences of the paradigm shift from simplicity to complexity. For the author, facing the complexity of the real means considering the simultaneity of opposites, the singular and the fortuitous, always.

11 The structured process of dialogue proposed by Socrates – Maieutics – had reflection as its supreme intention. Son of a midwife, Socrates intended that his questions would lead his interlocutors to give birth to their own ideas, after reflection. That nothing was affirmed because it was norm or usual, without reflection provoking a critical analysis.

12 In the field of negotiation and consensus building, dialogue processes aimed at mutual satisfaction and the benefit of all involved are categorized as win-win. This denomination appears as a counterpoint to the lose-win methods, which make it possible for someone to lose and someone to gain reason, thus categorizing their results.