Railing

Forum Mundial de Mediación - World Mediation Forum - Forum Mondial de Médiation

FAMILY MEDIATION:DE-CONSTRUCTION of a COMPLEXITY by Marinés Suares

5: Railing

The observer's theory, by Heinz von Foerster, defies the possibility of "objectivity" and shows that the observer is permanently involved in what he/she is observing. And what is observed depends upon the ideas that he/she has. I have started from this perspective, on the basis of this epistemology that has been called "cybernetics of cybernetics", in order to construct this concept of "railing" that has been developed in a paper called "The family railing", where I quoted all the ideas that I consider useful to operate with families, but bearing in mind that they enable us to observe certain facts, interactions and relationships, but they are likely to conceal some others.

Later on, in my book "Mediación, conducción de disputas, comunicación y técnicas" ("Mediation, dispute management, communication and techniques"), I developed this concept as follows:

"[...] like a railing that we put between ourselves and the objects of observation; this idea comes from a foucaultian concept, that has been translated as "grille". I would rather use the word railing, because I am not aiming at exactly the same thing as Foucault, and because in our everyday life, "grille" is more related to "cleaning cloth". I might have used the word "grating", but the metaphor of "railing" also brings me the image of confinement. And I think we are often prisoners of our own railings, of our own thoughts, of our own ways of grasping reality. And this is more often observed in cases of conflicts and/or disputes, where the parties are kind of imprisoned, without being able to see facts other than the way they see them. [...]

But not all the railings are alike.

The less holes the railing has, the poorer the description we make of the object will be, and the poorer the understanding we have of the same object. This kind of railing is called: the poor railing.

Likewise, the stronger the railing is, the fewer our possibilities to adapt it to changes that take place in us, in the objects or in our context will be; i.e., the more riveted it is, the more tight and stronger the riveting is, the less possibilities to modify it. This one could be called the tight railing.

But if the railing is absolutely flexible and is full of holes, it will adapt to all objects and it will not be useful either. This one could be a lax railing.

[...] That is, we must have a set of railings, or a box of railings, where we can look into to find the right kind of railing, the one that will be the most useful to describe and -in time- to operate on the objects we observe.

We could define learning as the "construction of railings that enable as to 'read' reality (always between brackets) and to operate on it", and a meta-learning would be "the possibility of pondering about the learning, i.e. about the railings we have built."

This text will consist of two sub-texts. They are totally independent one from the other.

1) The theories; and
2) the mediation models .

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1.Why a...?

2. Contents

3. Mediating

4. Family

5. Railing

6. Mediator

7. Legal System

8. Social System

9. Bibliography

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