Recent Beyond Intractability Posts
Including Hyper-Polarization Posts
Posts by BI Section
Lists of recent posts are also available separately for each BI Section:
Hyper-Polarization Discussion Posts | Earlier Constructive Conflict Initiative Blog
Things You Can Do To Help | Conflict Frontiers | Conflict Fundamentals
Beyond Intractability in Context | Colleague Activities
- Contradictory Thoughts About Dialogue -- Dialogue can change attitudes, but those changes tend to be fleeting unless a great deal of thought and care goes into both the process and the aftermath. Designing for scale up is key. -- Jul 12
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of July 9 -- Reader-suggested articles along with Guy and Heidi's regular suggestions of colleague and context articles of interest for this week. -- Jul 08
- Bridging the Theory/Action Gap: One Key to Improving the Effectiveness of Efforts to Strengthen Democracy -- If democracy scholars and democracy actors began to know more about the activities of the other, both would see a benefit in terms of stronger pro-democracy outcomes. -- Jul 06
- Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess: The Key to Saving Democracy: Reducing Polarization? Promoting Justice? It Takes More Than That! -- There's no one answer to "saving democracy." We need to pursue many different things all at the same time. -- Jul 04
- Moving From Ladders of Engagement to Self-Organizing As Decentralized Leadership -- A description of a self-organizing strategy for producing a decentralized, non-hierarchical type of engagement and leadership that is better suited to the demands of large and complex societies. -- Jun 30
- Why it's so hard to fix the information ecosystem -- A thoughtful inventory of the things that make it so hard to remedy today's destructive information flows – problems which we have to find a way to overcome. -- Jun 30
- A Remarkable Effort to Do Trauma-Informed Peacebuilding Training in Ukraine Amidst Ongoing Trauma -- A description of a longer "practitioner reflection" about trauma-informed peacebuilding training in Ukraine, and how that reflects on peacebuilding challenges in less challenged places as well. -- Jun 29
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of June 25, 2023 -- More colleague and context posts, along with three reader-suggested references. -- Jun 27
- Rachel Kleinfeld and Shamil Idriss on Polarization, Philanthropic Plurality, Social Justice, and Democracy -- Those seeking to improve democracy should hold themselves accountable for advancing both peace and justice through collaborative action to meet common goals. -- Jun 26
- The Abortion Talks: A Documentary -- A documentary describing one of the conflict field's most successful efforts to build mutual understanding and respect across deep moral differences. -- Jun 26
- The American Left’s Fantastic Threats -- A provocative and, if true, game-changing argument that many of the things that the left most fears about the right are nowhere nearly as serious as is widely believed. -- Jun 24
- Social Justice Advocacy, Bridge-Building and Philanthropy: How Do These Intersect? -- What role should philanthropy play in the effort to fix democracy? Can they help? How? Or should they bow out, acknowledging that they are making the problem worse? -- Jun 22
- How to Succeed in the Foreign-Policy Blob -- Wise and practical advice for those seeking a career in international relations, peacebuilding, or any other conflict-related field. -- Jun 21
- Colleague and Context Posts for week of June 18 -- This week's links to news articles and organizations that are, in various ways, working to help us understand and more constructively handle intractable conflict. -- Jun 18
- The Science of What Makes People Care -- Five principles based in social science that will help organizations connect their work to what people care most about. -- Jun 16
- Manufacturing Dissent -- A look at the very long shadow cast by Noam Chomsky and the many others who have taught so many on the left and the right to look at the dark side of almost everything. -- Jun 16
- More Ways to Turn Down the Heat -- The second part of our short, readable summary (with lots of links) to what we collectively know about strategies for controlling destructive escalation. -- Jun 15
- The Promise (and Peril) of Anti-Wokeness -- A thought-provoking essay exploring ways of thinking about (but not being consumed by) things that make you angry. -- Jun 08
- Reversing or Better Yet, Avoiding, Destructive Escalation -- Once we understand the many ways in which escalation can trap us, we can avoid those traps. If we discover that we have already fallen into a trap, we can work to climb out--here are 5 ways to do that. -- Jun 08
- Palma Strand: A Path Out of Polarization: The Strengthening Democracy Challenge and the Civity Storytelling Intervention -- Civity is all about forming relationships across difference. It's the "secret sauce" of successful communities and organizations. And better yet, everyone can do it! -- Jun 07
- Colleague and Context for Week of June 4 -- More interesting reading from our colleagues within and outside the conflict resolution/peacebuilding field. -- Jun 05
- Our Weaponized Legal System Misfires -- A must read article explaining "lawfare" and how both parties are abusing the legal system in ways that constitute one of the most serious threats to democracy. -- May 31
- Divided Community Project: Speaking Out to Strengthen the Guardrails of Democracy -- One of the most important ways in which we can all act to strengthen our democracy is to speak out when others are acting in ways that threaten it. -- May 31
- The Ohio State University's Divided Community Project's Virtual Toolkit -- This toolkit is designed to support community leaders as they identify and address issues tearing at the social fabric of their respective communities with materials for on-campus and off-campus audiences. -- May 31
- Learning More about How the TRUST Network Does Massively Parallel Peacebuilding -- Democracy--and threats to it--are a complex adaptive system. We need complex, adaptive responses as well The TRUST Network is one. -- May 29
