The art of facilitating a neutral and safe space for dialogue and networking : formality and informality in a study course about peaceful conflict resolution

Abstract

This thesis follows the trajectory of a Norwegian study course about peaceful conflict resolution for an ethnically mixed group of young people from Former Yugoslavia. It is argued that 'the facilitator' of the study course was able to provide direction and identity to the study course by way of negotiating, translating and relating the skills of the invited participants.This thesis also demonstrates how the identity and direction of the study course was partly contested and undermined by the invited participants. The work of 'the facilitators' is considered here as bringing about the formal order of the study course. A formal order, it is argued, is what allows development agencies the opportunity to intervene and create 'development'. Here this formal order was partly a result of the discursive framework of the facilitators. The facilitators, it is argued, could however only create 'development' by negotiating and relating this framework to the practices of the participants.

The participants practices that would contest and undermine the identity and direction of the study course is understood here as an informal process. It is argued that the formal order of the facilitator displaced or even ignored aspects of the participants' aims, interests and identities. However, it is argued that the study course could be undermined and later sustained by the invited participants not only due to failed representations on part of the facilitators. The participants knew very well the premises upon which the study course rested and could use it to undermine and sustain the direction and identity of the study course.

Theoretically, this thesis draws on the analytical vantage point of post-development theories. These theories look at development as a constructed practice on part of the west that has appropriated the right to speak on behalf of the development concepts and the development objects. It is argued however that a more actor-oriented focus on how development is created is needed and this is provided through an analytical framework named a process of translation. By using the theoretical insights of this framework it is suggested that the power to create development was not merely residing in the unitary visioning and practicing of a study course. Rather, 'development' could happen to the extent that successful relations was established by the facilitators between the different actors involved in the study course.