Engaging Collective Memories of Conflict: Toward an Integrated Framework of Inter-Group Dialogue and Capacity-Building

This essay is an attempt to construct an integrated framework for understanding multi-faceted meanings of history that correspond to different communal experiences of social conflict. The concept of conflict history is introduced to describe a worldview of a conflict party in search of a coherent explanation of the conflict’s origin, evolution, and significance. Four interconnected approaches to conflict history – orthodox, different, mediative, and alternative – are explored to integrate empirical inquiry into polarized relationships with unexplored possibilities of more peaceful coexistence that has not materialized in the past. This exercise of theory-building draws on the author’s applied practice in conflict resolution dialogues on US-Pakistan relations, as well as on the Taiwan Strait. It examines hypotheses emerging from his field experience from sociological, psychoanalytic, and other social scientific perspectives. The author employs a dialogical way of communication – including storytelling – throughout the essay