Beyond Neutrality: Confronting the Crisis in Conflict Resolution - Hardcover

by Bernard S. Mayer (Author)

In this thought-provoking, passionately written book, Bernard Mayer--an internationally acclaimed leader in the field--dares practitioners to ask the hard questions about alternative dispute resolution. What's wrong with conflict resolution? Why aren't more individuals and organizations using conflict resolution when they have a problem? Why doesn't the public know more about it? What are the limits of conflict resolution? When does conflict resolution work and when does it not? Offering a committed practitioner's critique of the profession of mediation, arbitration, and alternative dispute resolution, Beyond Neutrality focuses on the current crisis in the field of conflict resolution and offers a pragmatic response.

Front Jacket

In this thought-provoking, passionately written book, Bernard S. Mayer-an internationally acclaimed leader in the field-dares practitioners to ask the hard questions about alternative dispute resolution. What's wrong with conflict resolution? Why aren't more individuals and organizations using conflict resolution when they have a problem? Why doesn't the public know more about it? What are the limits of conflict resolution? When does conflict resolution work and when does it not? Offering a committed practitioner's critique of the profession of mediation, arbitration, and alternative dispute resolution, Beyond Neutrality focuses on the current crisis in the field of conflict resolution and offers a pragmatic response.

Mayer urges practitioners to evolve from resolution to engagement and actual advocacy, going beyond neutrality in order to redefine conflict resolution at a level of participation more appropriate to the current era. Mayer argues that to be more effective, conflict resolution professionals must become conflict engagement specialists and thereby become a more powerful force for changing the way conflict is conducted. By building on the old roles of mediators and facilitators, conflict resolution professionals can dramatically expand what they offer to people in conflict.

Beyond Neutrality challenges mediators, arbitrators, therapists, attorneys, and counselors to take conflict resolution to the next level of effectiveness, utility, and engagement.

Back Jacket

Praise for Beyond Neutrality

"In this passionate and provocative book, Bernie Mayer challenges the field of conflict resolution to reinvent itself so as to include advocacy and engagement at its core. Mayer practices what he preaches by engaging us in a vital discussion sure to stir productive controversy."
-William Ury, co-author, Getting to Yes, and author, The Third Side

"Takes us into challenging and potentially transforming territory by shedding light on how too narrow a commitment to neutrality or an exclusive focus on 'resolving' disputes can limit our usefulness in the clashes of passion, positions, and power struggles inherent in how people actually confront (and avoid) their deepest conflicts."
-Gail Bingham, president, RESOLVE, Inc.

"As professional fields develop, people look back and identify a few books that stand out because they marked turning points wherein the stroke of a pen incisively pushed both theory and practice to a higher plane of understanding and purpose. Beyond Neutrality will mark such a place for the conflict resolution field in the first decade of this century."
-John Paul Lederach, professor, the Kroc Institute and Eastern Mennonite University

"This book will inspire conversations that will shape our field for years to come."
-David Hart, CEO, Association for Conflict Resolution

"Guaranteed to spark lively debate and dialogue."
-Nina Meierding, former president, Academy of Family Mediators

"The first major step toward the field's 'second wave.'"
-Christopher Honeyman, director, Broad Field Project

"Bernie Mayer's book is honest, forthright, and filled with wise and loving criticism for the field of conflict resolution he has significantly helped to build."
-Jay Rothman, president, ARIA Group, and author, Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in

Nations, Organizations and Communities

"Mayer exposes some tough realities that focus on how we have limited our identity, narrowly defined what we do, and why disputants don't always like what we have to offer."
-Brian Polkinghorn, associate professor, Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution, and executive director, Center for Conflict Resolution, Salisbury University

"Beyond Neutrality is a foundational work for creating a deepened, more robust field. The premises of this book will be debated, revised, and expanded, but they will set the agenda for our field for the next generation."
-Carl Schneider, director, Mediation Matters, Bethesda, Maryland

Author Biography

Bernard S. Mayer, Ph.D., is a partner at CDR Associates, in Boulder, Colorado. He has worked since the late 1970s in the conflict resolution field as a mediator, facilitator, trainer, researcher, program administrator, and dispute systems designer. He is the author of The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution: A Practitioner's Guide (Jossey-Bass, 2000), as well as many other writings about conflict and conflict resolution.