In developing our community collaboration, our decision to create and facilitate dialogue processes was based on a belief in dialogue as a transformational tool for peacebuilding and reconciliation. Peacebuilding dialogue is a form of group interaction with a particular intent, purpose, and process: members of conflicted groups come together in the aftermath of deep‐rooted and historical fragmentation toward the goals of engaging in safe space and community conversations. In many communities where there has been longstanding conflict or trauma between groups, dialogue has been used to provide a safe and structured process for fractured parties. Out of these processes, there is often (but not always) increased mutual understanding, healing, reconciliation, and action for the future. This chapter will explore both the theoretical and practical dimensions of dialogue as a tool in community reconciliation, and provide a recommended model and framework for dialogue with diaspora communities.
Definition and Principles of Dialogue
Derived from the Greek term dialogos – dia meaning “through” and logos meaning “the word” – dialogue speaks to the flow of exchange through words. At its most fundamental, dialogue refers to parties coming together with the goal of increased mutual understanding. Though dialogue can occur between individuals or groups of various parties, in peacebuilding work, it is most commonly used as an intergroup process between members of conflicted societies. Dialogue processes derive from the principles behind the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954), which proposes that one of the most successful ways to reduce intergroup conflict, prejudice, and enmity is positive intergroup contact. This contact must be implemented through carefully considered mechanisms that allow the group interactions to successfully transcend the personal, social, and politically informed barriers that keep groups in conflict.
Defining dialogue is a challenging task, as the word is used in so many ways to mean so many different things. For our purposes, we assert that dialogue is a safe, intentional, constructed process that is based on certain principles, methods, and goals, which are rooted in the desire to develop mutual understanding and an enhanced relationship. These principles, methods, and goals will be elaborated on later in this chapter. The aim is that through these intentional, structured, and safe contact experiences, parties engage in ways that shift the relationship of enmity and reduce the power of competing social identities. One definition suggests that intergroup dialogue is “a form of democratic practice, engagement, problem solving, and education involving face‐to‐face, focused, facilitated and confidential discussions occurring over time between two or more groups of people defined by their different social identities” (Schoem, Hurtado, Sevig, Chesler, and Sumida, 2001, p. 6). Saunders suggests that dialogue is “a process of genuine interaction through which human beings listen to each other deeply enough to be changed by what they learn” (2001, p. 82). Feller and Ryan (2012) address the critical aspect of understanding and defining dialogue as a very particular dimension to peacebuilding work that includes efforts toward coexistence, relational movement, encountering the other, challenging assumptions, using creative and flexible approaches to group conflict, and implementing holistic interventions.
Contrary to debate, where parties are trying to persuade, convince, or win, dialogue operates as a safe space to explore difficult...
