Another Journal Entry

As I may have said in the last journal entry I'm tending to fall behind in this writing. I guess it is because like so many of us these days I'm attempting to juggle many different hats all at once. Plus, I feel as if the journal entries take away a bit from my ability to keep up with my patterns.

Anyway, in considering what to write about for this journal entry I began to think about how the local emphasis in this class over the more global or international context of environmental conflict has been an interesting element. I have been so focused upon the international element of sustainable development that it can be easy to forget or ignore the richness of the actually place in which you live. In many ways, I think this whole shift from political science to environmental science has facilitated this more localized perception on my part.

In many ways I think this is related to the ability to walk out my door and see nature, the environment and the built structures of society co-mingling together and it gives me a concrete vision, something that I can comprehend in the here and now. Ultimately, I think there is something spiritually invigorating about that. The shift in focus is grounding me.

Plus, I have been asked to choose a topic of study for the Conflict class that addresses a specific environmental issue and it is my job to highlight the conflict and process of mitigating the conflict along with the environmental issue at the core of the conflict.

So the easiest thing and yet something very important to me is the need to address the process of conflict negotiation surrounding the Duwamish River clean up in the south Seattle area. In fact, one of the first classes that motivated me towards this environmental path was a course in Puget Sound Ecology and we even spent a lot of time focusing on the issue of the Duwamish. In fact, I think this was the same year it was designated as a Superfund site.

Anyway, most of the focus I took was on the science of course and address those scientific concerns, where as this class wants me to address the human dynamic surrounding the science, so it is presenting a differing perspective worth analysis.

ESRP Journal Entry...

So I'm a little behind on my journal as I missed the first simulation and felt like I had little to go on in regards to formulating a worthwhile discussion on my experience in class.

However, yesterday I had the opportunity to actually show up for the conflict resolution simulation where are engaged in a process of addressing the issue regarding degraded clam beds in hypothetical county here in Washington state. Anyway, my position is to represent the Pacific Northwest Salmon Coalition in this mock-up negotiation process.

The experience was extremely interesting and brought home a lot of the readings we have been doing up to this point in a way I did not expect. I got a sense that despite the focus upon human resources based framing that Emmett takes, I find myself possessing a very politically oriented frame where I was constantly trying to identify ways to gain leverage through the initial phases of the negotiation process. The strange thing is we are only in the phase of formulating ground rules. We haven't even begun to address the issues on the table.

I guess through the process I became very aware how critical the ground-rules are in any negation procedure and especially the ground-rules that dictate decision-making among the group. Now, I have been doing a lot of reading regarding the processes associated with conflict negotiation or engagement if that is the preferred lexicon, but until you actually engage in it many of these concepts are just that, concepts. It seems that with out rising out of the book in some concrete way they would ultimately remain some abstract thing.

So overall I would say that the simulation process is an extremely useful mechanism for driving many of these central concepts home, even if it appears hokey at first. For instance, I could recognize the frames I was working out of; I recognized the value of clarity in all aspects that govern procedures and rules. As an example referring back to frames, I notices that at first my basic inclination was to work from a human resources frame as it seems that is the frame most commonly spoken about. However, despite my initial leaning towards that approach I found a political frame coming in when my initial conception or frame was not being accepted by others within the simulation, so I began conceiving of ways through political means to achieve a more human resources based set of ground-rules. Ha!

I’m a schemer….

Journal for ES/RP 535

So along with presenting my thinking on patterns this blog is also going to serve as a journal for my classes. I have been asked to keep a journal for at least one of my classes which means that I will have to make at least 2 "lengthy" posts a week regarding the readings and experiences of the in class simulations. Which, I don't think will be to hard.

Anyway, the class is Environmental Conflict Resolution, which appears to be a very hands-on class that attempts to bridge course readings with in class simulations where students take on the characters of various parties within a particular environmental conflict. While so far we have only to set the stage for our first simulation I have had an opportunity to begin digging into the readings for the course.

Immediately, I was struck by the parallels between some of the literature and the work already present within the Liberating Voices! project. For instance, one of the initial readings assigned was by Lee Bolman and Terrance Deal titled “Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership,” that addressed the various frames used in Conflict Negotiation. The basic frames they highlight are the Structural Frame, the Human Resource Frame, the Political Frame and the Symbolic Frame. All of these have their own purpose at a given time that help accentuate the others, in a sense empower the others when crossroads in negotiation out live the usefulness of a particular frame. That is not to say that frames don’t come in and out of the picture over time, but their basic illustration seemed to mimic a pattern based approach that recognizes the inherent dynamic complexity of conflict negotiation.

After contemplating the reading I could see how these various elements could be used to serve as elemental patterns to enable the functioning of an already existing pattern, Multi-party Negotiation for Conflict Resolution recorded by Helena Meyer-Knapp and Stewart Dutfield.

Just as interesting though is the examples used in the pattern description which parallel one of the other readings provided in class that was essentially an excerpt from "Getting to Yes." In a way it shows how the various people associated with the pattern project have come together in ways to identifying missing links in the system to help continually refine and adapt the repository. It also shows how useful ideas make their way into the minds of people and represent an impact that equates into their adoption into a system that is meant to be a record of social heuristics, in this case the heuristic is for conflict resolution.

Likewise, delving into these readings also highlights areas where pattern participants could either begin to further refine these conflict centric patterns or even use this Multi-party negotiation pattern to aide in defining a set of sub-patterns directly related to the practice of negotiation and conflict resolution.