Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide - Hardcover

Pearce, W. (Walter) Barnett; Littlejohn, Stephen W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761900527 ISBN 13: 9780761900528

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1997

Synopsis

Moral Conflict, the subject of this book is passionate and difficult to resolve. Responses that are normally effective such as explaining, persuading, and compromising can make matters worse and drive people further apart in such conflicts. Moral conflicts occur when incommensurate social realities come to clash. Disputes about abortion, religion in politics and education, legal rights for homosexuals, and environmental politics are issues in which well-intentioned parties have created polarized and diverse patterns of communication. The most virtuous actions of each side not only fail, but widen the schism. Such conflicts require us to find forms of communication that go beyond our normal ways of dealing with disagreement. In an original synthesis of communication theory and their own research, W. Barnett Pearce and Stephen W. Littlejohn describe a dialectical tension between the expression and suppression of conflict that can be transcended in ways that lead to personal growth and productive patterns of social action. In Moral Conflict several projects are described as practical examples of these new ways of working through difficult struggles.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Littlejohn (Ph.D., University of Utah), is a conflict management consultant, mediator, facilitator, and trainer.  He is consultant for the Public Dialogue Consortium and a partner in Domenici Littlejohn, Inc.   Stephen is co-author of Moral Conflict:  When Social Worlds Collide (Sage, 1997) and has written numerous other books and articles on communication and conflict.  He was a professor of communication at Humboldt State University in California and is currently Adjunct Professor of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico.  He has done research on mediation and conflict management for 19 years and has been an active mediator for eight.  Stephen has been a consultant for such clients as the Waco Youth Summit, the Alliance for Constructive Communication, the City of Cupertino, Columbia Basin College, and Washington State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761900527
• ISBN 13: 9780761900528
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248