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Mundial de Mediación - World Mediation
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Mundial de Mediación - World Mediation
Forum - Forum Mondial de Médiation
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The use of the gerund "mediating" is due to the fact that I consider mediation as a process and avoiding the gerund can make us treat it as a thing and look for "recipes" for carrying out a good mediation, and thus, forget about this "process" essence, i.e. something that builds itself with time, where we are one of the parties that collaborate with its execution.
I would like to point out, as I have already done in "Mediación. Conducción de disputas, comunicación y técnicas" ( "Mediation, dispute management, communication and techniques" ), that I do not consider the words dispute and conflict as synonyms. The dispute is a part of the conflict, it is the "public side" of the conflict. The latter can be much bigger and go beyond the frame of the mediation. While I consider this difference very suitable for all fields in mediation, it is much more so on the field related to families. Being able to fully understand this difference allows us to delimit the field of family therapy and that of the so-called family mediation.
Besides, the generalization 'family disputes' encompasses many different disputes which go from looking after the elderly to the dissolution of the community property in a divorce. A mistake is usually made when confusing logical types and identifying the kind: "family disputes" with the sub-kind: "disputes in divorce transactions"; although most of family mediations deal with this issue, it is not the only one.
I would rather say disputes in families, instead of family disputes, because their distinctive quality is that they take place at the bosom of an institution that we call family. The term "family" is so common, so obvious, that precisely for this reason, we should ponder about what we understand by "family" and what our clients or parties understand by "family". As it is a global institution that has developed itself throughout time, its meaning is in permanent change and it is completely related to the habits, history, myths, beliefs, etc, of each place.
In spite of my preference for the use of the expression "mediating in disputes in families", I also use the term "Family Mediation", because it is a well-known term, but always bearing in mind that I am talking about a process.
I think that the most typical thing of this field in mediation is its complexity.
If we define family mediation as : "a neutral third party- that can be either a single person or a team made up of two or more people- who help settling a family dispute", we get three "complex" elements: "the mediators team"; the co-construction or re-construction of the dispute (the problem) in order to get to its settlement; and the family.
All this is pervaded by the legal system, where mediation takes place.
And all this is also affected by the social system that encompasses the mediation, the parties, the mediators and the legal system.
If we take these elements as constitutive or at least as interacting and/or influencing recursively in the mediation in disputes in families, we have no doubt that Family Mediation can be focused as a complex system.
This complexity is increased because one of the basic differences between this and other kinds of mediation is the importance of the "Relationship" that the parties have built throughout a complex network of interactions and the fact that this will continue, in one way or other, after the mediation process. This process can - and it actually does it in many cases- transforms it.
I consider it important on this field to elaborate theoretically the concept of Relationship and to create the devices that will enable us to observe it, and, given the opportunity, to operate on it. I have devoted the "Relationship" text in the "Hypertext, Virtual Space 1 of Family Mediation" for its theoretical elaboration.
And, finally, there are different models in existence nowadays. This increases the complexity, because even if they can complement each other in some items, they are totally opposed in others. These differences have to do with the process: its stages; the mediator's role and his/her possibilities of giving guidelines, advising and/or suggesting; the techniques to apply; the techniques that are effectively used: summaries; open, closed, circular questions; empowerment and recognition; alternative story, etc. Complexity is completely evident.
Since in a mediation in disputes in families we can find: parties, mediators with their theories and models, relationships, contents, the context or contexts and the Relationship, as parts or elements of Family Mediation, I think that in order to examine it we should turn to the new paradigm or the complexity paradigm.
The environment of hypertext is a fitting environment for complexity.
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