Book Review: Visions of Conflict: International Perspectives on Values and Enmity

Abstract

Alston's foreword states that this book represents a multidisciplinary dialogue among counselors, psychologists, mediators, attorneys, theologians and other experts centered on conflict resolution. The book opens with Clough's focus on religious and cultural constructions of the 'other', where he posits that agreement among such constructions may firmly coalesce around 'ultimate values'. Van Vust and Park employ a tribal instinct hypothesis in explaining human intergroup psychology from an evolutionary perspective. Via her experience of teaching conflict resolution skills to community leaders in Iraq, Levy offers practical advice on balancing cultural sensitivities while still respectfully challenging traditionalisms. In warming against the international community's insistence on sidelining religious voices from peacebuilding efforts in Kosovo, Scholaert historicizes the intertwined nature of the Orthodox Church and Serbian identity to offer a nuanced view of the contemporaneous concerns of cleronationalism and ethnophyletism (the doctrine that the Church should organize itself on the basis of ethnicity and race). [excerpt]