Engaged Community Conflict Scholarship

Given the interactive and transformative nature of the experience of community con­flict, important lessons can be learned from previous research. Intergroup conflict research is especially relevant, given classical studies by Tajfel and colleagues (e.g., Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and more recent work (see, e.g., Harwood & Giles, 2005) as well as related research under the heading of intercultural communication and conflict.

For groups seeking to initiate or maintain intergroup dialogue as a primary goal, con­flict management strategies of avoidance, at one end of the continuum of intervention, and forcing, at the other, generally are regarded by practitioners as the least productive. By avoiding an issue, a group may give in to the goals or desires of another without attending to its own needs or wants. Avoidance can be seen very commonly in the high school expe­rience of the bullied students, who might, at all costs, alter their daily routines to circum­vent the path of an aggressor and hence avoid confrontation or abusive behavior. Denial of a problem may also occur in such situations, often until the sheer weight of reports or com­plaints compels sustained institutional atten­tion. Avoidance and denial strategies pose challenges to researchers: Getting people to talk about something that they are passively or actively finding ways to stay away from is difficult, especially when no relationship exists between the researcher and commu­nity members.

Community groups in power (e.g., neigh­borhood associations in elite parts of a city, expert associations in their interactions with lay publics) should realize that resolving con­flict by coercion (i.e., restraining or dominat­ing via force) tends to encourage retaliation, circumvention, or escape. Thus, observations of workplaces featuring autocratic or tyran­nical leadership could predict bullying in the workplace based on knowledge of the wider culture and typical interaction patterns (Hoel, Glaso, Hetland, Cooper, & Einarsen, 2009).

The researcher’s own strategic approaches may include accommodation, compromise, or integration (Wilmot & Hocker, 2010). Accommodation is an attractive but often only temporary solution. For example, faced with racial or class conflicts, some communica­tion researchers have determined that accom­modation is preferable to overt and perhaps sustained conflict between groups. Or group leadership may acknowledge that acceptance of a group’s current intergroup relations may be necessary when the group is in early stages of maturity or strategy development. Still, alli­ances may be made through cooperating in short-term goals, with the interest of building rapport and social capital for future interests.

Collaborative or integrative styles of con­flict management, whether between individ­uals or groups, generally are consistently supported in the scholarly and practitioner- oriented literatures. However, no consensus exists on a single approach or strategy, partic­ularly when cultural differences are taken into account (e.g., Ting-Toomey, 1988). In addi­tion, the celebration of integrative solutions toward conflict should be tempered by the situation and a recognition that phases may occur in any particular conflict, especially over an extended time.

Groups within larger community structures have important factors to consider when deciding how to engage other community groups. In addition to the interpersonal abili­ties of a group’s membership, the selected strategy may be constrained by situational and historical contexts. Central to a group’s deci­sion making are the origin of the conflict, the history and status of the relationships between the group and others, any past experience with conflict resolution, comparative assessment of perceived options, and the ultimate motivation for future resolution. In other words, we find that conflict styles are doubly relevant in the context of this review—in both the commu­nity itself and with respect to the engagement of scholars with those community conflicts.

Exploring Dimensions of Community Engagement Where Conflict Is Found or Where Conflict Arises