Routledge Root Narrative Theory and Conflict Resolution: Power, Justice and Values (Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution)

This book introduces Root Narrative Theory, a new approach for narrative analysis, decoding moral politics, and for building respect and understanding in conditions of radical disagreement. This theory of moral politics bridges emotion and reason, and, rather than relying on what people say, it helps both the analyst and the practitioner to focus on what people mean in a language that parties to the conflict understand. Based on a simple idea―the legacy effects of abuses of power―the book argues that conflicts only endure and escalate where there is a clash of interpretations about the history of institutional power. Providing theoretically complex but easy-to-use tools, this book offers a completely new way to think about storytelling, the effects of abusive power on interpretation, the relationship between power and conceptions of justice, and the origins and substance of ultimate values. By locating the source of radical disagreement in story structures and political history rather than in biological or cognitive systems, Root Narrative Theory bridges the divides between reason and emotion, realism and idealism, without losing sight of the inescapable human element at work in the world’s most devastating conflicts. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies and International Relations, as well as to practitioners of conflict resolution. Review ‘Root Narrative Theory and Conflict Resolution offers a novel, wide-ranging theoretical umbrella highlighting fundamental root structures underlying a range of modern, often seemingly intractable, conflicts. Simmons weaves together an impressive array of scholarship in the service of developing a useful conceptual tool for understanding reciprocal relationships between power, conflict, and values. Readers from a variety of backgrounds will find points of agreement while engaging disparate, too often isolated, literatures.’--Steve Hitlin, The University of Iowa, USA ‘Solon Simmons promises a "big picture book," and he delivers one. Root Narrative Theory is a major advance in our understanding of radical disagreement and protracted social conflict. It offers a new way to conceptualize power in the etiology and dynamics of conflict: conflict is about the perception and experience of social power abusively and unjustly deployed. Narrative is the way individuals "story," remedy, and resist the abuse. Four iconic thinkers, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, and Fanon, illustrate forms of abuse as threats to security, liberty, equality, and dignity, and provide frameworks for a "moral politics" raised in response. Simmons builds on the moral psychology of Haidt and the family metaphor theory of Lakoff, to remind us that root narratives, however motivated by emotions or framed by cognition and metaphor, have a sociological dimension, anchored in the social ecology of institutions, social relations and structures. Empirically grounded and richly illustrated with examples drawn from an impressive array of thinkers (Arendt, Polanyi, Hayek, and Habermas, among them), and practitioners (Robespierre, Reagan, and Martin Luther King…), Simmons argues for the productive analysis of deep conflict as the unpacking of root narratives in mutual contention, and of peace, if it is to come, as the refashioning of narratives and the overcoming of legacies of abusive power.’-- Kevin Avruch, George Mason University, USA ‘Solon Simmons’ new book Root Narrative Theory and Conflict Resolution presents an incredibly thoughtful and important tool for analyzing conflict stories, particularly in the field of moral politics. However, his Root Narrative Theory is not just a diagnostic – it has practical uses for building understanding, dialogue and peace. Simmons’ arguments are drawn from political and social theory. While often discussing dense concepts, Simmons keeps the content accessible and the tone conversational. He presents a broad range of source