Reflexive Mediation With a Sustainable Perspective

Vibeke Vindelov, who has written extensively about mediation and conflict resolution, has based this book on the idea of the interconnectivity of disputes in international politics, crime, economics, and climate change. Explaining how mediation can work in both smaller and larger conflicts, Vindelov promotes a mediation methodology that can work in many situations if it recognizes the needs of both the individual and society. With her background as both a lawyer and a psychotherapist, Vindelov believes it is time for mediators to look further than merely discussing skills, techniques, and models, and to take up the personal challenge and responsibility of being conscious of the deeper values that drive the mediator. During and after each mediation, mediators should constantly evaluate what they did and how they did it. What distinguishes this book from others on mediation is the way it links together the now classical elements of the mediation process with the explicit values and attitudes of the mediator. Appropriate for practitioners as well as students, this very accessible text argues that, in mediation, the ultimate responsibility for reaching a satisfactory outcome to a conflict belongs to the parties, and that every mediator has a responsibility for preserving mediation as a unique process in future sustainable conflict resolution processes. Chapters cover such topics as: conflicts and their escalation * negotiation * power and justice * mediation in international conflicts and the link between major and minor conflicts * ethics and liability * the different stages of the mediated meeting and agreement.