Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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Does mediation have a culture all its own?

Mediation is derived historically from the Bible (it was Solomon who was going to cut the baby in half to resolve a dispute between two mothers mediating or arbitrating when the “real” mother said “give it to her, rather than cut it in half.”); Confucian “harmony” culture (Joel Lee & Teh Hwee Hwee Teh, eds., An Asian Perspective on Mediation (Singapore: Academy Pub. 2009); Irene K. H. Chew & Christopher Lim, “A Confucian Perspective on Conflict Resolution,” Int’l J. of Human Resource Mgt. 6 (1): 143– 57 (2006)); sulha (peace or “resolution”) in Islamic and Middle Eastern cultures (Mohammed Abu-Nimer, “Conflict Resolution Approaches.: Western and Middle Eastern Lessons and Possibilities,” 55(1) Am. J. of Econ. & Soc. 35 (1996)), and various forms of African community dispute resolution processes (“it takes a village”; Adeoye O. Akinola & Ufo Okeke Uzodike, “Ubuntu and the Quest for Conflict Resolution in Africa,” 49 (2) J. of Black Studies 91 (2018)).

Mediation as a conflict resolution process actually has several cultures. Is its goal to produce a settlement (a “task” focus)? To encourage understanding and recognition and improve the relations of the parties (Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger, The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict, Rev. ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2005))? Or to preserve harmony and peace for the larger community, in addition to resolving the particular disputes of the parties?