“Educating for Constructive Conflict Transformation” – Louis Kriesberg has published an article in Peace Studies Journal (vol. 6 no. 2) focusing on how conflicts, when conducted well, can contribute to achieving peaceful societies and peaceful international relationships.

 A Mile in Their Shoes: Anthropology Students Gain Different Perspectives from Shadowing Campus Union Workers - Students working in conjunction with PARCC’s Labor Studies Working Group are conducting research on the experiences of union sectors across campus, including groundskeeping, food services, library services and housekeeping. The goal of the project is to help students see workers as three-dimensional individuals who spend their daily lives committed to the university.

Resolving Conflict and Rebuilding Lives in Darfur  - A region scarred by civil violence and a resulting humanitarian crisis over the past decade, Darfur in western Sudan still struggles to reach peace between the government and rebel factions. Its citizens, however, are not waiting to start rebuilding their lives and communities. Anthropologist Peter Castro glimpsed their determination while training a group of community leaders in natural resource conflict management in Central Darfur. “People are very eager to get back to their lives. They are trying to reoccupy land and re-establish communities and strengthen the way they manage natural resources,” he says. Castro, an associate of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Collaboration and Conflict (PARCC) at the Maxwell School, spoke earlier this month as part of PARCC’s Conversations in Conflict Studies Series. He was joined by NEF Darfur program manager Mohamed Dahia, pictured here with Castro and PARCC Director Catherine Gerard.

Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012)

Professor Tina Nabatchi has published an edited volume with John Gastil, G. Michael Weiksner, and Matt Leighninger, addressing the big questions of deliberative civic engagement. Although the field of deliberative civic engagement is growing rapidly around the world, our knowledge and understanding of its practice and impacts remain highly fragmented. Democracy in Motion represents the first comprehensive attempt to assess the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement. The volume is organized in a series of chapters that use theory, research, and practice from around the world to explore what we know, how we know it, and what remains to be understood. More than a simple summary of research, the book is designed to be accessible and useful to a wide variety of audiences, from scholars and practitioners working in numerous disciplines and fields, to public officials, activists, and average citizens who are seeking to utilize deliberative civic engagement in their communities. The book significantly enhances current scholarship, serving as a guide to existing research and identifying useful future research. It also has promise for enhancing practice, for example by helping practitioners, public officials, and others better think through and articulate issues of design and outcomes, thus enabling them to garner more support for public deliberation activities. In addition, by identifying what remains to be learned about public deliberation, practitioners and public officials may be inspired to connect with scholars to conduct research and evaluations of their efforts. 

A Place We Call Home: Gender, Race, and Justice in Syracuse (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution, SU Press, 2012)

K. Animashaun Ducre, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University, has published a book focused on women living on Syracuse’s Southside, a predominantly African-American and low-income area, who took photographs of their environment to facilitate dialogues about how they viewed their community. A Place We Call Home chronicles this photography project and bears witness not only to the environmental injustice experienced by these women but also to the ways in which they maintain dignity and restore order in a community where they have traditionally had little control. Through a cogent combination of words and images, the book illuminates how these women manage their daily survival in degraded environments, the tools that they deploy to do so, and how they act as agents of change to transform their communities. Syracuse University Press’s Peace and Confict Resolution series is edited by Robert Rubinstein.

Patrick Coy, PARCC Alumus and Professor and Director of the Center for Applied Conflict Management, recently published “Nonpartisanship, Interventionism and Legality in Accompaniment: Comparative Analyses of Peace Brigades International, Christian Peacemaker Teams, and the International Solidarity Movement,” in The International Journal of Human Rights (vol. 6, no. 7): 963-981.

“The Skill Set of the Successful Collaborator,” Public Administration Review 72 (s1): 70–83, November/December 2012. Rosemary O’Leary, Yujin Choi, and Catherine Gerard have published an article focusing on members of the U.S. Senior Executive Service who choose collaboration as a management strategy to increase performance and, in particular, their views of the skill set of a successful collaborator.

Watershed Community Connections Final Report (Prepared by Onondaga Environmental Institute and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, September 2012)

In June 2012, the Onondaga Lake Partnership and the Onondaga Lake Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Trustee Council hosted a collaborative community outreach effort called Watershed Community Connections. The event was emceed by PARCC Faculty Research Associate Tina Nabatchi and Meredith Perreault, Project Manager at Onondaga Environmental Institute. More than twenty government agencies and community organizations participated in the forum, where approximately 130 attendees helped to define interests, visions, challenges, and next steps for the lake watershed. This final report will be useful to decision-makers in preparing for and conducting further community conversations regarding the future of the Onondaga Lake watershed. Download the full report (PDF). 

Collaboration Across Boundaries: Insights and Tips from Federal Senior Executives (IBM Business of Government, 2012)

Rosemary O’Leary, Professor of Public Administration, and Catherine Gerard, PARCC Director, have published a report based on survey responses from over 300 members of the federal Senior Executive Service. This report provides valuable insights into how federal senior executives view collaboration. Survey respondents clearly recognize that the job of senior executives today involves collaboration within their agency, their department, and the federal government, as well as with key external partners and stakeholders. The report presents valuable insights into why agencies collaborate, the barriers to collaboration, and the skill set needed to be a collaborative manager. Download the report free of charge (PDF).

Rosemary O'Leary was interviewed about this study on Federal News Radio on "In Depth with Francis Rose." Listen to the interview.

"Putting the ‘Public’ Back in Public Values Research: Designing Participation to Identify and Respond to Values"

Tina Nabatchi, Asst. Professor of Public Administration, has published an article in Public Administration Review Volume 72, Issue 5. Read the abstract online.

Practicing Military Anthropology: Beyond Expectations and Traditional Boundaries (2012 Kumarian Press)

Co-edited by Robert A. Rubinstein, this collection explores the relationship between anthropologists and the United States military, which has commanded attention especially in regard to the controversial Human Terrain System (HTS) that embeds anthropologists in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this volume, anthropologists who have either worked with the U.S. armed forces or who teach at military service academies reflect on what they do and teach in their military anthropologist personae. Revealed here are thoughtful and moving essays that deal with issues of ethics, morality and professional decorum. Essential reading for those considering anthropology as a career, those concerned about the relationship of the academy to the military and for those seeking to fathom transformations in our lives following 9/11 and the ongoing “war against terror.”

Systems Research and Behavioral Science Special Issue: Collaborative Problem Solving Amid Conflicts 

PARCC Director, Catherine Gerard, along with former PARCC Visiting Fellow and Professor of Public Administration of the Department of Public Management at Beijing Institute of Technology, Ya Li, are  two of the co-editors of Systems Research and Behavioral Science Special Issue: Collaborative Problem Solving Amid Conflicts.  In addition to writing the Opening Editorial for the Special Issue, they co-wrote an article along with Zhichang Zhu, of the University of Hull Business School, United Kingdom, "Learning from Conflict Resolution: An Opportunity to Systems Thinking."   

Louis Kriesberg,  Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict Studies, and founding director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (1986–1994) at Syracuse University, also wrote an article, "Mediation in Conflict Systems," which is published in the journal.  

Globalization and Third World Women- Exploitation, Coping, and Resistance 

Adopting the notion of “third world” as a political and geographical category, this volume analyzes marginalized women’s experiences of globalization. It unravels the intersections of race, culture, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and class that have shaped the position of these women in the global political economy, as well as their cultural and national history. In addition to a thematically structured and highly informative investigation, the authors offer an exploration of policy implications, which are commonly neglected in mainstream literature. The result is an invaluable volume for scholars in the fields of sociology and women’s studies, social policy experts, and professionals working within non-governmental organizations. Edited by Ligaya Lindio-McGovern is professor of sociology at Indiana University. She is the author of Globalization, Labor Export and Resistance: A Study of Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Global Cities. and Isidor Walliman is a visiting research professor at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He is the coeditor of On the Edge of Scarcity: Environment, Resources, Population, Sustainability, and Conflict.   

Climate Change and Threatened Communities:  Vulnerability, Capacity, and Action

Co-Edited by A. Peter Castro, Associate Professor of Anthropology and PARCC Faculty Associate.  This book addresses global climate change  and how it disproportionately affects rural people and indigenous groups, but their rights, knowledge, and interests concerning it are generally unacknowledged. Shifts in precipitation, cloud cover, temperature, and other climatic patterns alter their livelihood pursuits and cultural landscapes, accentuating their existing social and economic marginalization. This book argues that planners and researchers of climate change mitigation and adaptation must take into account the knowledge and capacity of rural people, and engage them as active participants in the design and governance of interventions, not as a matter of courtesy, but because it is their right. Furthermore, inclusion of local communities in genuine partnership will likely make climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts more effective.  Presents 15 case studies and a variety of approaches to document the capacities and constraints to be encountered among communities facing changing climates in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, Ecuador, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, South Africa, Sudan, United States, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.  

"A Manager's Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation"

PARCC Faculty Affiliate and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Tina Nabatchi authored, "A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation," which was just published by the IBM Center for The Business of Government.  This report provides a practical assessment guide for government program managers so they can assess whether their efforts are making a difference.  The report lays out evaluation steps for both the implementation and management of citizen participation initiatives as well as how to assess the impact of a particular citizen participation initiative.  An appendix provides helpful worksheets, as well.  

Fourth Edition of Constructive Conflicts: From Escalation to Resolution Released 

Louis Kriesberg, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict Studies, and founding director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts and Bruce W. Dayton, Associate Director, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs and Co-Research Director of the International and Inter-State Conflicts Program at Maxwell’s Program for the Advancement of Research on Collaboration and Conflicts (PARCC) have published, . This comprehensive and highly regarded book provides a framework for analyzing diverse social conflicts.