CONF 301 Conflict Resolution

CONF 301 Conflict Resolution

Question

Answered

Task:
 
The goal of conflict research is to answer certain questions about protracted conflicts. Why do conflicts occur? How do they evolve? What are the social and/or political forces that caused them? Who is affected by the resulting violence? And, how can conflicts be prevented, or, if not prevented then reduced in severity? Of course, the nature of protracted conflicts makes these questions very difficult to answer. Protracted conflicts are extremely complex, difficult to understand fully, and virtually impossible to predict. These problems create special challenges for researchers. Brief descriptions are always inadequate, and explanations that rely on a single cause are shallow. Yet, the importance for answering the questions above cannot be overstressed. So, how is this done? This course examines the kinds of activities and skills needed for a genuine understanding of the cause, conditions, and characteristic of conflicts, of various sorts. Such understanding requires identifying the problems/questions that motivate the researchers, planning on the ways to gather information, and determining the meaning of the information. No single method can serve the needs of all researchers, for all kinds of conflict. The necessity of multiple methods, to reveals the complexity of every conflict, is obvious. This course is organized around themes that are particularly central to our field. Throughout the semester, we will show how questions about the character of a particular conflict merge with decisions about methodology, and that methodology is learned through a critical reflection on case studies. We will also engage in “do it yourself” activities to practice the learned skills. Throughout the term, students develop their critical understanding of the research process as they develop their own comprehensive research proposal on an individually identified researchable problem that is relevant to the field and for which they can access primary data sources.