Hermeneutic/ Phenomenological Tradition
This approach toward conflict focuses on the discovery, description, and interpretation of conflict. It views conflict primarily as conflict of meaning. Conflict management, hence, becomes a process of elucidating discordant interpretations, clarifying misunderstandings, and restoring dialogue.
Whereas hermeneutics emphasizes crafting the art of interpretation, phenomenology is primarily concerned with the individual’s unique experience and interpretations of conflict. Theorized as dialogue or experience of otherness, communication is seen as central to overcoming differences in identity and experience so that authentic human relationships become possible. The primary difficulty of resolving conflict is thus located in intersubjective understanding, experiencing the other, and sustaining dialogue.This paradigm implies that conflict cannot be adequately understood or resolved by measuring and analyzing causal relationships between variables but rather through detailed explication of the agent’s unique experiences, emotions, and perspectives. To borrow Hawes’s (1977) analogy, if the communicative phenomenon of conflict can be likened to a stream, the hermeneutic phenomenologist might attempt to bring along appropriate gears, enter into the stream, and develop an intimate understanding of the stream. A rigorous interpretation of conflict requires deep immersion in the conflic- tual context itself and a critical examination of the often taken-for-granted presuppositions and previously hidden features of conflict. Through a vivid account of lived experience, the researcher/interpreter may produce something “that we can nod to, recognizing it as an experience that we have had or could have had” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 27).
For instance, Krider and Ross (1997) used a phenomenological lens to depict the often con- flictual lived experience of women in a public relations (PR) firm during the feminization of the profession.
Instead of relying on statistical surveys, the study opted to describe and interpret the everyday life of a PR woman so that “an understanding of the essence of a phenomenon can emerge” (p. 451). In this case, a PR woman entered the workplace “being, first, a woman, and second, a daughter” (p. 437) with a heightened awareness of her new identity as one of the “women in public relations.” Career woman, daughter, and family caregiver were depicted as conflicting societal roles and individual enactments with which participants struggle. As one woman stated: “I think the minute you get married, you are written off. If you have kids you are written off” (p. 445).In another study, Oduro-Frimpong (2007) adopted a phenomenological approach to study the use of silence as a conflict management strategy in married couples. The intent was not to uncover universal rules governing married couples’ behavior during conflicts, but rather to describe, condense, and interpret the unique ways silence was experienced and understood by both parties so that deeper understandings of the feelings and experiences of conflict and silence could be ascertained.