About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


41 Negot. J. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/nejo41 and id is 1 raw text is: Perspective Societal Change John Marks The author describes his experiences building bridges between Tutsis and Hutus in Burundi through the organization that he founded, Search for Common Ground. He describes how he implemented the practice of societal conflict resolution. Keywords: societal conflict resolution, Search for Common Ground, Burundi, peacemaking Introduction Many years ago, I was at a meeting with a well-known professor who declared that there were only two kinds of conflict resolution: the problem- solving model, as pioneered by Roger Fisher, and the therapeutic model, as developed by Herbert Kelman. I was taken aback because neither model fully captured what we were doing at Search for Common Ground (com- monly referred to as Search). This was the NGO I founded in 1982. I told the professor that, while our activities included both problem-solving and therapeutic processes, we operated within a broader framework. He asked how I would describe our approach. On the spot, I invented a new term. I said I was a practitioner of societal conflict resolution. John Marks is the founder of Search for Common Ground and served as its president for 32 years. This article is adapted from his book From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship (Columbia University Press: 2024). His email address is jmarks@sfcg.org. 10.1162/ngtn_a_00013 © 2024 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Negotiation Journal Volume 41 2025 1