Abstract
This essay opens with two very different classrooms, one in a state correctional facility for women and another in a Protestant seminary housed in a university. Anger flares in both rooms, and Bounds observes that, despite their obvious differences, both classrooms afford the opportunity to learn through conflict. The classroom is a microcosm for studying conflict, for understanding one’s response to it, and for building capacity to engage it constructively. Bounds also uses these two microcosms to focus on issues of power in conflict and in transformation processes. Structural power is overtly displayed in the prison, and the conflicts among the incarcerated women cannot be understood apart from that institution. However, forms of structural power also shape the seminary classroom where students are differently positioned by race, ethnicity, educational background, and class. This essay calls teachers to attend to the forms of structural power at play in their classrooms and to learn through the conflicts that arise there.
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Notes
- 1.
DR is shorthand for a Disciplinary Report, which is a written report of a rule violation by an officer or other staff member. A Disciplinary Committee reviews the report, questions the offender and any witnesses, examines any evidence, and makes a ruling regarding the offender's action. Dismissal will erase the charge from an inmate’s record, while a guilty verdict will carry a sanction, usually a set amount of time in solitary confinement (“lockdown”). An inmate’s DR record can determine privileges and parole approval.
- 2.
David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 178.
- 3.
Cristina Rathbone, A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006), 58.
- 4.
For example, the only national survey carried out of incarcerated women found that well over ½ of women in state prisons reported prior experience of abuse and nearly about 80% of these women described it as sexual abuse. Carolyn Wolf Harlow, “Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Selected Findings, April 1999. These numbers were based on self-reporting responses to written surveys which could well suggest some underreporting.
- 5.
Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P Folger, The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict, Revised Edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 81.
- 6.
John Dear, Living Peace: A Spirituality of Contemplation and Action, Reprint edition (New York: Image, 2004), 24.
- 7.
John Lederach, Little Book of Conflict Transformation: Clear Articulation of the Guiding Principles by a Pioneer in the Field (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2003), 14.
- 8.
John Paul Lederach and Harold H. Saunders, The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), 116.
- 9.
Marc Gopin, Healing the Heart of Conflict: 8 Crucial Steps to Making Peace with Yourself and Others, Reprint edition (Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Books, 2005), 21–24.
- 10.
Or as practitioner Dominic Barter put it in a workshop, in marginalized social contexts violence may be a way of raising the volume because no one is listening (Workshop on Restorative Circles, National Conference on Community and Restorative Justice, Fort Lauderdale, FL, May 2015).
- 11.
Fiona Macbeth and Nic Fine, Playing with Fire: Creative Conflict Resolution for Young Adults, 6th edition (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1998), 7.
- 12.
John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, Reprint edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), ix.
- 13.
Lederach and Saunders, The Journey Toward Reconciliation, 23–24.
- 14.
John 8:7
- 15.
Dear, Living Peace, 10.
- 16.
Gopin, Healing the Heart of Conflict, 33–57.
- 17.
I use the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, developed by Ron Kraybill. For more information, see the Riverhouse EPress website, http://www.riverhouseepress.com/.
- 18.
I learned this exercise from my colleague, Ellen Ott Marshall, who derives it from Alice Evans and Robert A. Evans, Peace Skills: Leader’s Guide, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 71.
- 19.
I Kings 19.
- 20.
Kay Lindahl, The Sacred Art of Listening: Forty Reflections for Cultivating a Spiritual Practice, 1 edition (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths, 2001), 16.
- 21.
Bernard S. Mayer, The Dynamics of Conflict a Guide to Engagement and Intervention, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 54.
- 22.
Ibid., 16.
- 23.
Ibid., 67.
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Bounds, E.M. (2016). The Conflict Skills Classroom as Social Microcosm. In: Ott Marshall, E. (eds) Conflict Transformation and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_9
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