NCJ Number
106440
Journal
Missouri Journal of Dispute Resolution Volume: 1986 Dated: (1986) Pages: 109-129
Date Published
1986
Length
21 pages
Annotation
The growing mediation movement in the United States has tended increasingly toward professionalization, bureaucratization, and legalization, although efforts still exist to strengthen the type of mediation that is community-based and aimed at achieving social and political transformation.
Abstract
The dominant trend is likely to continue. Thus, supporters and practitioners of transformational medication will have to continue to struggle to survive and will have to make compromises, face retrenchment, and hope that the future will bring a new trend that is favorable to their approach. All societies have a variety of methods for resolving disputes. The mediation movement in the United States arose over a desire to provide an alternative to the more complex traditional methods of resolving disputes. As mediation programs grew, however, various professions, government, and quasi-governmental agencies used the available bases of power and money to convert mediation to their own purposes. Current trends favor a continuation of their domination. Nevertheless, the university-based model as practiced at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu demonstrates elements in common with community-based, democratically oriented, citizen-empowerment programs. Still, mediation in academic settings is experiencing the same trends as are found in the general mediation movement. However, these trends could change, just as political movements have gone through cycles of change during the 20th century. Data tables and 35 footnotes.