NCJ Number
101115
Date Published
1984
Length
400 pages
Annotation
Using ethnographic data from two Delaware programs studied in 1977-79, this document highlights State-planned versus community-based approaches to community mediation.
Abstract
The Wilmington Citizen Dispute Settlement Project illustrates the State-planned approach; the Friends Suburban Project Community Dispute Settlement program exemplifies the community-based approach. In addition to varying in their ideological foundations, the approaches differed in their use of coercion and consensus, the postures of their mediators, the forms and contents of the verbal and written discourse employed by mediators and disputants, the notions of underlying cause, and the tensions experienced by mediators and disputants. An assessment of these approaches in terms of traditional conceptions of disputing behaviors and dispute resolution indicates that such conceptualizations are incomplete. It is argued that community mediation can be best understood within the context of crisis regulation and as a means of effecting social restructuring during a period of decay in traditional mediating institutions.