CONFLICT: HUMAN NEEDS THEORY

Conflict: Human Needs Theory

Edited by

John Burton Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution George Mason University, Virginia, USA

© John Burton 1990 Foreword © Samuel W. Lewis 1990

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-52147-2

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First published 1990

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

Reprinted and bound 1995 in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Burton, John W. (John Wear), 1915-Conflict: human needs theory-(The conflict series; V.2) . 1. Social conflict. Resolution I. Title II. Series 303.6 ISBN 978-1-349-21002-2 ISBN 978-1-349-21000-8 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21000-8

The Conflict Series

1. CONFLICT: RESOLUTION AND PROVENTION, * by John Burton

2. CONFLICT: HUMAN NEEDS THEORY, edited by John Burton

3. CONFLICT: READINGS IN MANAGEMENT AND RESOLUTION, edited by John Burton and Frank Dukes

4. CONFLICT: PRACTICES IN MANAGEMENT, SETTLEMENT AND RESOLUTION, by John Burton and Frank Dukes

*Provention The term prevention has the connotation of containment. The term provention has been introduced to signify taking steps to remove sources of conflict, and more positively to promote conditions in which collaborative and valued relationships control behaviors.

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Foreword to the Series Samuel W. Lewis President, United States Institute of Peace

We seem to know much more about how wars and other violent international conflicts get started than we do about how to end them. Nor do we understand very well how to transform settlements that terminate immediate hostilities into enduring peaceful relationships through which nations can continue to work out their differences without violence. The lack of attention to these questions, at least with regard to relations among sovereign governments, is due in some degree to the way international relations as an academic subject has traditionally been studied. By and large, more academic theory and analysis have been devoted to patterns and causes in international behavior with an eye to perfecting explanatory theory than to effective, usable remedies to international conflicts. We have assumed the remedies would become plain once the correct theory was found.

That imbalance is now being corrected. Interest is now growing in the theory and practice of "conflict resolution," a new field concerned specifically with the nature of conflict as a generic human problem and with techniques or initiatives that might be applied productively in addressing conflicts. This new emphasis is reflected in the emer­gence of alternative dispute resolution methods in the law profession, of peace studies or conflict resolution programs in many of the nation's colleges and universities, of research journals devoted specifically to conflict and its resolution, and of community mediation or problem-solving strategies at the local level and "second-track diplomacy" at the international level.

Providing much of the conceptual foundation for an explicit focus on conflict itself has been a small but growing group of interdisciplinary scholars engaged in a search for formulas and processes that seem to work in ending conflicts among nations and groups. They are seeking to identify those institutional and societal structures that have the best chance of ensuring a lasting and just peace among conflicting interests. Unfortunately, the work of these scholars has not reached the widest circles of policy makers, professionals, students, and researchers who could benefit from the stimulating explorations of the conflict resolution school of thought.

The United States Institute of Peace wishes to commend the four

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book Conflict Series: an effort by one of the acknowledged founding fathers of the conflict resolution field to summarize the main insights of the field to date for a wider readership. In these books, John Burton, with the assistance of other major contributors, delineates the distinctive scope of the conflict resolution field, defines its key concepts, explains how the field emerged out of existing approaches to conflict and peace and how it differs from them, summarizes the field's leading substantive insights about conflict and its resolutions, collects some of the best readings produced by the field, and probes where the field needs to go in the future to strengthen its theory and applicability to real problems. The series also surveys extant practical techniques for conflict management such as mediation, adjudication, ombudsmen, interactive management, and problem-solving work­shops and explores their utility for different types of conflict situations. Of course, the views expressed in these volumes are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect views of the Institute of Peace.

Impressively, John Burton and Frank Dukes completed this broad examination of the conflict resolution field during Burton's year as a Distinguished Fellow of the United States Institute of Peace in 1988-89 while he was also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Center for Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Virginia. No one in the world is better qualified to present the conflict resolution field's distinctive perspectives and unique contributions than is Burton, whom many in the field regard as its first leading explorer and one of its most ardent spokesmen before students, scholars, and governments since its beginnings in the late 1950s. In preparing this series, Burton has drawn on the wealth of his extensive academic training in economics and international relations and his 25 years of research and teaching at universities in three countries, as reflected in his previous ten books and numerous articles. He also has applied the lessons of his practical experience as a diplomat for the Australian government and as a third party facilitator in efforts to end such conflicts as Lebanon, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka.

The United States Institute of Peace is a non-partisan, independent institution created and funded by the United States Congress to strengthen the nation's capacity to understand and deal more effec­tively with international conflict through peaceful means. It serves this purpose by supporting research and education projects that will expand and disseminate available knowledge about the nature of international conflict and the full range of ways it can be resolved

Foreword to the Series ix

within a framework that maximizes freedom and justice. Within this challenging mandate, one of our tasks is to identify serious, innova­tive, but less well known approaches that may bear further examin­ation and to bring the insights from these approaches to wider circles so that fruitful dialogue among different perspectives is fostered.

John Burton's work complements another Institute project that is mapping all the major "roads to peace" - e.g., international law, diplomacy and negotiations, transnationalism, deterrence theory, non-violence traditions, and international organizations - that have been emphasized in the scholarly literature and world of practice as important methods and tools for achieving international peace. The conflict resolution method and outlook is one of the approaches the Institute wishes to see more widely understood so their respective strengths and limitations can be sorted out and constructive syntheses can be developed. In short, we seek to stimulate much faster dissemination of ideas and cross-fertilization than normally would occur across the barriers of different academic disciplines, professions, governmental spheres, and private organizations that are concerned in various ways with international conflict and its resolution, although they may not necessarily describe their concerns in exactly these terms.

By supporting John Burton's work, the United States Institute of Peace hopes that the perspectives, insights, and new directions for analysis of this relatively new field of conflict resolution will be brought before, and enrich the work of, a wider readership of international relations and conflict resolution students; practitioners in fields such as law, government, labor and industrial management, and social work; policy makers at all levels; as well as scholars concerned with conflict issues.

Washington, D. C.

Preface to the Series It is not easy for those who are seeking new approaches to move from deterrence theories and practices of conflict settlement and management to conflict resolution theory and practice. The jump to prevention and the predictive capabilities that prevention requires, is even more challenging. These are different fields with different assumptions. While they exist concurrently they are in different conceptual worlds. Some practitioners and theorists seek more effective institutional and management constraints, power negotiating techniques and peace through technologies of mutual threat. There are consensus seekers who employ more sophisticated socialization processes largely within existing systems. Problem-solving advocates pursue more analysis of human behaviors and seek to deduce processes of conflict resolution and provention. There cannot be communication between different approaches, or with policy makers and the public generally, until there is a precisely defined language, appropriate concepts that enable a clear differentiation of the various approaches, and an adequate and agreed theory of human behaviors at all social levels. This is the purpose of these four books concerned with the study of Conflict.

There are four books in this Conflict Series. They are:

1. Conflict: Resolution and Provention. This book seeks to provide an historical and theoretical perspective, and a framework for consideration of theory and practice in conflict resolution and proven­tion. It is in five parts: Part I defines the approach; Part II deals with the political context of conflict provention; Part III is concerned with the theory of decision making, and with conflict resolution processes; Part IV is concerned with the longer-term policy implications of provention; and Part V draws together some conclusions.

2. Conflict: Human Needs Theory. An adequate theory of behavior is required to provide a basis for the analysis and resolution of conflict, and particularly for prediction of conflict and a guide to conflict provention. "Needs theory" is put forward as this foundation. The chapters contributed in this book were written as a result of an international conference convened in July 1988 for that purpose.

3. Conflict: Readings in Management and Resolution. A new subject has origins in many fields, and this is an attempt to bring

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together some earlier contributions from a broad spectrum of discip­lines. A newly developing subject also has gaps requiring attention, and this book includes contributions requested to fill some of these gaps. It also contains an extensive annotated bibliography.

4. Conflict: Practices in Management, Settlement and Resolution. It is useful to survey practices generally, even those that proceed from contradictory theories. This book is a general survey of management, settlement and conflict resolution practices.

Conflict, its resolution and provention, comprises an a-disciplinary study, that is, a synthesis that goes beyond separate disciplines, beyond interaction between separate disciplines, and beyond any synthesis of approaches from several disciplines. An a-disciplinary approach accepts no boundaries of knowledge. Consequently, it has as yet no shelf in any discipline-based library. These four books seek to make a start.

JOHN BURTON

CONFLICT: HUMAN NEEDS THEORY

Acknowledgements Human Needs, edited by Katrin Lederer, was published in 1980 as a result of a seminar in Berlin in the previous year. The participants were interested in human needs as a theory of development. Some years later, after much applied work in the areas of community and international conflict, and after observing major powers being defeated in wars with small nations and central authorities failing to control religious and ethnic conflicts within their boundaries, it became clear to me that conflicts of this kind were not generated primarily - or even at all - by shortages of material goods, or even by claims to territory. There were fundamental issues in all cases, issues touching on personal and group security, identity and recog­nition, and especially a sense of control over political processes that affected security, identity and recognition. The power of human needs was a greater power than military might. The conditions that explained conflict and, therefore, suggested means toward its resolution were frustrated human needs, not human lawlessness or character deformities. Needs theory moved the focus away from the individual as a miscreant and aimed it at the absence of legitimization of structures, institutions and policies as the primary source of conflict.

A general or generic theory of this order would obviously be a challenge to scholars accustomed to working with their own discipli­nary concepts. With the help of the German Marshall Fund of the United States a preliminary conference was held at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Virginia, in January 1988 to discuss needs theory with sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and scholars who had taken a particular interest in conflict and its resolution. I submitted a general statement describing a needs theory approach to conflict resolution that included definitions of terms and elaboration of concepts.

This exploratory discussion justified an international conference of scholars interested in conflict resolution, and those who had given special attention to needs theory. It seemed to me that it would be useful to bring together a number of scholars who had contributed to the Berlin conference, others from the United States and elsewhere whose field was conflict resolution, and my colleagues at the Center at George Mason University. In this way the needs theory group and

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XVI Acknowledgements

conflict resolution researchers and practitioners would be able to interact, possibly to the benefit of all concerned.

With the support once again of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a conference took place in July, 1988. Both groups were surprised at the added perspectives which the interaction promoted. Papers, submitted in advance were discussed and subse­quently reconsidered. The chapters in this book are a result of that meeting.

It will be at once obvious to the reader that there are still differences in the use of terms, and differences in conceptual frameworks. Nonetheless, the reader will have a sense that fundamental a­disciplinary issues are at last being addressed.

Professional conferences tend to throw scholars together who already know each other's work. In any event they meet in panels for a few hours only. It is true that barriers which separate disciplines are gradually breaking down, but this seems to lead to further barriers between those in the same field who adopt different approaches. There is little meaningful interaction, for example, between those in management studies and those in conflict resolution, yet the fields adjoin. The open-mindedness that is required for seminal communi­cation seems to be promoted far more by small seminar interactions lasting for some days than by the ordinary conference interactions of professional societies.

It is for this reason that my colleagues and I are greatly indebted to the German Marshall Fund of the United States for making possible these two valuable conferences, and for the improved quality of thinking that has been a result. I hope other foundations will follow its example.

I have acknowledged in Conflict: Resolution and Provention my debt to the United States Institute of Peace, and to my colleagues at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and to others who have contributed to this project. I wish to express my appreciation for the cooperation of Pam Tribino, whose responsibility it was to organize the July conference, and of Gertrude Wetherall, who edited the contributions in this book, both of whom were involved in the Center academic program.

The editor and publishers also acknowledge with thanks permission from the following to reproduce copyright material: The Free Press, for the quotation from John C. Eccles and Daniel N. Robinson, The Wonder of Being Human (1984) in Chapter 9; Cambridge University

Acknowledgements xvii

Press, for Figure 8.1, from N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (1965); Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, for Table 5.1, from Katrin Lederer (ed.), Human Needs: A Contribution to the Current Debate; Springer-Verlag Publishers, for extracts from Ronald Fisher, The Social Psychology of Intergroup and International Conflict Resolution (1990).

Contents

Notes on the Contributors

Introduction

PART I HUMAN NEEDS

1 Needs as Analogues of Emotions

Paul Sites

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1

7

2 Meaningful Social Bonding as a Universal Human Need 34

Mary E. Clark

3 The Biological Basis of Needs in World Society: 60 The Ultimate Micro-Macro Nexus

Dennis J. D. Sandole

4 Needs Theory, Social Identity and an Eclectic Model 89 of Conflict

Ronald J. Fisher

PART II NEEDS AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

5 Conflict and Needs Research

Katrin Gillwald

115

6 Social Conflicts and Needs Theories: Some Observations 125

Ramashray Roy

7 Necessitous Man and Conflict Resolution: More Basic 149 Questions About Basic Human Needs Theory

Christopher Mitchell

8 On Conflicts and Metaphors: Toward an Extended Rationality

Oscar Nudler

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xx Contents

PART III NEEDS THEORY AND BEHAVIORS

9 Self-reflexivity and Freedom: Toward a Prescriptive 205 Theory of Conflict Resolution

Joseph A. Scimecca

10 Human Needs and the Modernization of Poverty

Victoria Rader

11 Taking the Universality of Human Needs Seriously

Christian Bay

12 The Role of Knowledge in Conflict Resolution

Yona Friedman

13 Processes of Governance: Can Governments Truly Respond to Human Needs?

William R. Potapchuk

219

235

257

265

14 Applying a Human Needs Perspective to the Practice of 283 Conflict Resolution: The Israeli-Palestinian Case

Herbert C. Kelman

PART IV ASSESSMENTS

15 International Development in Human Perspective

Johan Galtung

16 Basic Human Needs Theory: Beyond Natural Law

Richard E. Rubenstein

Name Index

301

336

356

Notes on the Contributors

Christian Bay received his LL.B in 1934 and his Ph.D. in 1959 from the University of Oslo, Norway. He has had appointments at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; the University of Alberta, Edmonton; and has been a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto since 1972. He received the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science Association in 1959 for his Structure of Freedom. His areas of research have included problems of freedom, justice, personality development and political orientations.

Mary E. Clark was born in California and received her undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of California, Berkeley where in 1960 she received her Ph.D. in zoology. She is a professor at San Diego State University, California where she teaches biology and has carried out research on the biochemical adaptations of organisms to conditions of water stress, particularly high salinities. She has been dedicated to making the living world understandable to non-specialist students and wrote the first major textbook, Contemporary Biology, which incorporated not only "facts" but applications of those facts in everyday life. She has just published Ariadne's Thread: The Search for New Modes of Thinking, which addresses limits to growth, human nature, the development of the Western worldview and affecting change (St. Martin's Press, 1989).

Ronald J. Fisher is Professor of Psychology and Coordinator of the Applied Social Psychology Graduate Program at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada where he received his undergradu­ate and master's degrees. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. During 1989-90 he has held an appointment as Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security and in 1990-91 was a Visiting Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His primary interests include the development of theory, research and practice in applied social psychology and the resolution of intergroup and international conflict through third-party consultation.

Yona I<'riedman, an architect by profession until 1957, turned to

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related sociological activities and other scientific interests and applied his findings to practice. He has taught at several of the large American Universities, including Harvard, MIT, and Princeton. Friedman is a consultant to the Council of Europe, UNESCO, and UNEP, among other institutions.

Johan Galtung studied at the Universities of Oslo and Bergen and received the equivalents of the Ph.D. in mathematics in 1956 and in sociology in 1957. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of Oslo and has been visiting professor and researcher at numerous universities throughout the world. He founded the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo and the Journal of Peace Research. He is a consultant to a large number of international organizations and served as director general of the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik. He has been the research coordinator of the United Nations University Project on Goals, Processes, and Indicators of Development.

Katrin Gillwald received her degree in sociology in 1971 from the University of Hamburg. From 1971 to 1973 she was a member of a city and regional planning consulting office in Berlin, and from 1973 to 1975 she worked with the Berlin Center for Future Studies. Between 1976 and 1983, she was with the International Institute for Environment and Society, Science Center Berlin, involved with the further development and application of environment-related needs research and with the theory, methodology and strategies of socially relevant environmental research and policy. From 1983 to 1988, she worked as a deputy managing director for the same institute. Since 1988, she has gone back to active research, joining the President's Working Group Social Reporting at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fUr Sozialforschung (formerly Science Center Berlin).

Herbert C. Kelman is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University and Chair of the Middle East Seminar at the Harvard Center for International Affairs. In 1989-90, he was a Jennings Randolph Distinguished Fellow at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. He is past president of the International Studies Association, the International Society of Political Psychology, and several other professional associations. He is recipient of a number of awards, including the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest

Notes on the Contributors xxiii

(1981). His many publications include International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (editor, 1965); A Time to Speak: On Human Values and Social Research (1968); and Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (with V. Lee Hamilton, 1989).

Christopher Mitchell is currently Professor of International Relations and Conflict Resolution at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Virginia. Prior to that he was Professor of International Relations at the City University in London. His main fields of interest have always been international conflict and its mediation, but he is also interested in the development of mediation skills for use within the community and between individuals. To this end he set up the Conflict Management Research Group at City University and helped to launch the community mediation movement in the UK by holding conferences, courses and training workshops on the theme of alternative dispute resolution. He has acted as an informal facilitator in a number of international and intercommunal disputes and has written books and journal articles on the theme of mediation and conflict management, most notably The Structure of International Conflict and Peacemaking and the Consultant's Role.

Oscar Nudler is Project Coordinator of the United Nations University (Costa Rica) and Senior Fellow of the Bariloche Foundation, a not­for-profit organization devoted to research and postgraduate training in the development problematique. He has published many articles and co-edited Human Development in its Social Context and Time, Culture and Development. He has developed an epistemological approach to conflicts involving alternative frameworks or "worlds."

William R. Potapchuk is Associate Director of the Conflict Clinic, Inc., a private not-for-profit organization created to improve the practice of conflict resolution in disputes of public significance. He received his M.A. in Political Science from the University of Missouri in 1988. He serves as a Board Member of the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution and has chaired the Board of Directors for the Lentz Peace Research Laboratory. He has been an author of many articles in the field including "Using Conflict Analysis to Determine Intervention Techniques" and "Getting to the Table: Three Paths" both for the Mediation Quarterly.

XXIV Notes on the Contributors

Victoria Rader is Professor of Sociology at George Mason University. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and is a past president of the Association for Humanist Sociology. The focus of her work has been the study of social conflict and social change. She has published articles about dramaturgical sociology, sociology of knowledge and social change. In 1986 she published Signal through Flames after her research on the homeless movement in the US. From that fieldwork experience she became sensitized to the elite domination of social science knowledge and has taken seriously the conceptions which emerge from ordinary people struggling for their liberation.

Ramashray Roy, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India, is a political scientist by training. Through his work on the Indian political system and its linkages with socio-cultural dimensions of Indian society, he came to examine the concept of development, particularly man's relationship with his external environment. Finding Western approaches to development inadequate, he is currently exploring the nature of traditional Indian thinking for understanding what development involves. Two of his books, Self and Society: A Study in Gandhian Thought and Dialogues on Development: The Individual, Society, and Political Order (with R. K. Srivastava), both published by Sage of Delhi, are the result of this exploration.

Richard E. Rubenstein is Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason University and a core faculty member and Director of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He is the author of Rebels in Eden: Mass Political Violence in the United States (1970); Left Turn: Origins of the Next American Revolution (1973); and Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World (1987). Rubenstein was educated at Harvard College, Oxford University and Harvard Law School. Before joining the faculty at George Mason University, he had been a practicing attorney, Profes­sor of Political Science at Roosevelt University in Chicago and Professor of Law at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. He has been an advisory consultant to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence and assistant director of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs.

Dennis J. D. Sandole received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the

Notes on the Contributors xxv

University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and is presently Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution and International Rela­tions at George Mason University. He has taught at the University of London (University College), Garnett College, Kingston Polytechnic and the City University, all in London, England. He has also taught for the University of Southern California Graduate Programs in International Relations in both England and Germany. His research interests, in which he has published, include international relations theory and methodology, conflict analysis and managementlresolution, attitude change and paradigm shifts.

Joseph A. Sci mecca received his Ph.D. from New York University. He is Professor of Conflict Resolution and Sociology at George Mason University where he has been Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He is the author of Crisis at St fohn's: Strike and Revolution on the Catholic Campus (1968); The Sociological Theory of c. Wright Mills (1977); Education and Society (1980); Society and Freedom: an Introduction to Humanist Sociology (1981); and co-editor of the forthcoming Conflict Resolution: Cross Cultural Perspectives.

Paul Sites has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and is now Emeritus Professor at Kent State University. He is the author of Lee Harvey Oswald and the American Dream; Control: The Basis of Social Order; Control and Constraint and many professional papers and articles. He has a special interest in seeing Human Needs Theory being accepted as part of social theory.