Keystone Conference: No, We Are Not A Field and Here is Why the Question Matters

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“People are what they do.”
– James Lee Burke

This is a rare gathering of very experienced mediators so today is not the day to pick nits and split hairs over small things. Knowing full well that there are many different and nuanced meanings we could give to them, let’s assume the words “field” and “discipline” are synonyms for profession. Let’s also assume the Wikipedia definition which reads as follows:

A profession is an occupation that requires extensive training and the study and mastery of specialized knowledge, and usually has a professional association, ethical code and process of certification or licensing. Examples are accounting, law, teaching, architecture, nursing, pharmacy, medicine, finance, the military, the clergy and engineering.

All that as a preface, I’ll start with the second question first which matters this way: if we really are a profession, then let’s stop dithering about it and get on with the hard political organizing needed to stake it out and lay full claim to it. If we are a profession, let’s make very specific recommendations from this conference to that effect and set in motion an agenda for pursuing it. This means finalizing agreed upon principles and practices, creating licensing and regulatory regimes to prevent any further encroachment of our work by other professions, and even poaching back that which has been nibbled away by others.

On the other hand, if we are not a field but part of some kind of multifaceted social movement, then let’s not waste more time on professionalization issues and get on with strategically changing a few more parts of our societies for the better.

This will be unpopular at this gathering but I lean towards the second. I think mediation and its allied processes are modest, interesting, and helpful social innovations but they are not the be-all and end-all that the most mediator-centric among us would have them be. As innovative methods and techniques they probably mirror deeper impulses regarding our visions of how democracy and civil societies should function. Certainly they have diffused and adapted into different corners of our societies and have influenced and altered parts of our legal system for the better. But, at the end of the day, they are just methods and techniques used by diverse people in diverse ways and for diverse purposes. And taken together they don’t add up to a coherent, collective, and common enterprise that warrants professionalization.

The shared values and techniques that seemingly link us together seem more like surface yearnings than a real commonality. They also stretch thin when we try to seriously connect our efforts across different areas of expertise. It’s a bit like an interfaith conversation between Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Episcopalians, Buddhists, and Hindus. They all share an inspired belief in something universal and profound but the conversations don’t sustain very far except when they talk about the conventional techniques they all must engage in for tithing, offerings, managing church properties, and negotiating contracts with church boards of trustees. These are not unimportant “guild” issues but they aren’t the core that holds a larger profession together over the long run.

As mediators and facilitators, we have evolved, not into a profession, but into something like a set of partially developed trades. We are like plumbers, framers, electricians, and dry-wallers who might work side by side and who all might have some larger shared interest in the fate of the construction industry but who, in the end, have their own apprenticeships, their own certifications and public regulations, and their own unions. Watch our fellow mediators at meetings and you see some of this. Watch who people huddle with, talk to, listen to, network with, who they seem to respect as peers, and who they treat as colleagues, comrades, and kindred spirits.

Mediators, like, airline pilots, stock brokers, meeting planners, corporate compliance officers, hotel managers, disaster specialists, and X-Ray technicians, hang with their own kind. In our little world, community mediators come together because they share a certain philosophy of locale-based embeddedness, voluntarism, and loyalty to “place.” So too with the victim offender mediators, the special education mediators, the higher education mediators, the peer mediators, the workplace mediators, the environmental mediators, and the court mediators all of whom have their own close circles which rarely include mediators from other trades. Family mediators gravitate towards family court judges, social workers, and psychologists for their intellectual nourishment, their business contacts, their marketing, and their accountabilities. Environmental mediators like to talk with water experts, urban planners, and officials from the Department of Interior. The same holds true with each affinity group. This doesn’t mean that mediators in different areas don’t have things to learn from each other. It just means our professional identities are linked more to substantive application areas and less to procedural commonalities.

Trades, no less than professions, are interesting things. They evolve, mature, persist or die in relation to changing intellectual, technological, economic, or social circumstances. They bind people together who share like-minded ends or means, who claim a special intellectual and practice domain that is different from other domains, and who ultimately define, regulate, and defend the boundaries of their work. The hard truth is we are not a field because we are not really like minded and what we actually do, when you unpack it, is both universal and specialized. In our work, we are as different from each other as astronomers and astrologers and cosmologists and cosmetologists. We share certain general principles and values and some innovative methods and techniques but we apply them towards very different ends and in different ways.

Techniques by themselves also do not create or constitute professions. Nor do the standards for applying techniques. In 1853 two European doctors, Charles Gabriel Pravaz and Alexander Wood, working independently developed the modern syringe through which fluids can be extracted and medicines delivered. It was an astoundingly important and profession-changing innovation but it didn’t become a profession by itself. We don’t have “syringators” and “hypodermicologists.” Instead, the tool has been adapted for many different uses. The manufacture and use of syringes is regulated and follows standards but the larger professions to which these techniques apply – medicine, research, nursing, etc. –- are not built around injection techniques.

So, taken together and aggregated, what are we in? I believe we are small social, legal, and political innovation that has found its way into the mainstream in a few important areas and not others. The movement brings together a set of ideas and techniques that spring from different origins: labor relations, psychology, social work, communications, systems theory, military science, neuro-biology, and more. As a movement, it has certain roughly shared values with branches extending into many different fields, disciplines, domains, and professions. But the real taproots of our work are not the elaborate and varied convening choreographies we call “mediation” and “facilitation” but a set of more fundamental and dynamic ideas about communication, negotiation, and problem-taming. These are not domains that can be captured by any one group. They are foundational to disciplines as diverse as carpentry, aerodynamic engineering, and social work.

In our work these past few decades we have evolved a bit of focused theory and some specialized diagnostic techniques but none of those are unique to us. We have also shied away from broader certificates, licensure, and regulation except for purposes of particular organizational rosters. We have yet to be seriously incorporated into private and public agendas beyond the world of litigation and have a confusing array of unfederated skill-based organizations. Having a cogent body of theory, a set of serious diagnostic models, certifications or public regulation, and some kind of federated body are the hallmarks of professions. We don’t have those yet. It may happen in a few specialized areas of mediation that are highly legalized or institutionalized, but I suspect we never will have some overarching profession that links us all together.

The great danger at this gathering is that we will continue, mistakenly, to “reify” mediation and pretend it is something we all understand to be the same thing. As a graduate student I remember hearing that word “reify” from my professors and being puzzled by it. It sounded like an important word, something I should know about. Turns out it is an intellectual confusion, a logic trap. To reify something is to treat an abstraction as if it is something concrete. It is like talking about “health” or “beauty” or “culture” or “sustainability” or “justice” and assuming that these things are tangible, empirical, observable, and comparable in some common way we all agree on. All of these are big ideas, inspired ideas, ideas worth debating, studying, and pursuing, but these are also the wellsprings of inspiration for many different professions, fields, trades, and domains.

When we reify mediation we assume that it is something common, concrete, and similar to all of us. When we probe beneath the surface of our work, however, we see that it really isn’t. As our good friend Howard Bellman loves to say, just who is the “we” we all keep talking about?

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Jon ,   Ottawa On	01/24/07
Is mediation a
As a family mediation practicioner I found the articles about the “field” issue interesting and informative. My conclusions after reading them are as follows: 1 Conflict Resolution is the field 2 Mediation is a discipline within the field 3 Within the mediation discipline there are sub-disciplines of which family mediation is one 4 That in today’s world, where “professions” are usually determined by governmental geographical boundaries (e.g states and provinces), some places do have strong recognizable family mediation professions ( self regulating with governmental/legislative recognition e.g Quebec, Canada); others have (quasi)(weak)(self proclaimed?) professions [unenforceable self regulation without government/legislative recognition (e.g Ontario, Canada)]; and some have only practitioners (no self regulation, no government/legislative recognition (wherever). The interesting argument for me is whether the second category above can be truly called a profession where there is no governmental approval. Is what matters the definition or the perception of the persons the discipline serves. I may consider myself a “professional” because I fit into all the criteria listed by the authors of the articles; but if the “family mediator” in the building next door has none of the qualifications but advertises to the public the same services as myself, with impunity, is family mediation really a “profession” in the modern sense of the term? Is the make or break point on being called a profession today governmental licensing or recognition? I suspect in the mind of the general public it probably is. Probably the first step to obtaining that recognition and thus designation, is creating a self regulating organization that meets the definition of “professional” and then lobbying the relevant government for the necessary licensing authority. Add New Comment

Victoria Pynchon,   Beverly Hills CA	vpynchon@settlenow.com      10/30/06
Are We Professionals
Great think piece, raising all of the important interests that underly such on-going debates as the benefits and detriments of pro bono court annexed mediation panels. The fact that we ask this question demonstrates that we are, as a profession, still in our infancy. (a good thing! it means we can still grow in as many directions as possible) Since I'll always have the J.D. and Esq. hovering after my name, I don't much care whether mediation itself is considered a profession or whether the people whose disputes I help resolve consider me to be a "professional." I'm happy to be considered, in this order, a fallible human being among fallible others, all of whom are trying to do good as well as to do well; a better partner to my husband and friend to my friends than I generally manage to actually be; a poet and writer; a mediator, largely of commercial disputes; a community mediator, largely of neighborhood disputes; a perpetual student, particularly of all matters pertaining to conflict, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, religion, international diplomacy, and the like; a peer counselor; a negotiator; and, a lawyer. I happen to be female, but don't much think about it unless it's called to my attention in a negative way. This doesn't mean that I'd trade men's 23 or so cents on the dollar to my gender's average income for the pleasures and benefits of being a woman in 21st Century America. But that's another topic. I don't think we should try to pigeon-hole ourselves into one box or another. I'd rather call mediators artists than anything else since that's as broad a category I can think of. And I don't think anyone will take issue with me that mediation is an art. I believe we should stay as broad as we possibly can as a "profession." The only point I don't agree with is that "professionals" must be REGULATED by the State. Though they often ARE, let's not confuse the government's desire to pigeon-hole, restrict, "reify," dominate, tax, license, and discipline with professionalism. Thanks for the great article and the opportunity to do some additional thinking myself on this important topic. Add New Comment

Dr A	ash.kabi@blueyonder.co.uk      10/29/06
We are not a field and here is why the question matters
COMMENTS ON ‘NO, WE ARE NOT A FIELD AND HERE IS WHY THE QUESTION MATTERS • I read with some interest the paper presented by Dr Adler at the Keystone Conference. I was surprised and disappointed with Dr Adler’s conclusions. Perhaps I should put my cards on the table. I am not a mediator and nor am I a conflict resolution expert. I have an academic interest in mediation. I would start with the word ‘reify’. Chambers dictionary defines it as ‘to materialise’. I think when a dispute or conflict is resolved, a result has materialised. There is nothing abstract about it. The joy in solving the dispute while maintaining a good relationship with one’s adversary, is real and the relief is really felt Mediators have greater commonality within their profession than in many other professions. Similarities unite this profession more than differences divide them. The February 2001 draft of the Uniform Mediation Act (UMA) defines ‘mediator’ as follows: ‘Mediator’ means an individual, of any profession or background, who conducts a mediation. The common feature is that all of them conduct “mediation.” The law-makers in the US have recognised that despite its wide coverage (e.g.family mediation to commercial mediation) it has lot in common to enable it to be recognised as a single profession of mediation. I would acknowledge that there are some doubts about whether mediation is a profession or trade. “A profession is an ‘occupation’ that requires ‘extensive training’ and the study and mastery of ‘specialised knowledge” Is mediation not an occupation? Then what is it? Don’t mediators have specialised skills and knowledge? This question of training and accreditation is certainly being hotly debated in the mediation community now. The profession is characterised by “usually having a professional association, ethical code and process of certification (or licensing).” A quick scan of the literature reveals that mediators all over the world are addressing these issues. This should be done in consultation with all the stake holders and should include inter alia practitioners, the practice and the public. In fact I would suggest that it is in the interest of the profession as well as the public at large that the mediators should form an ‘association’, ‘society’ or perhaps a ‘guild’. This will enable the members to decide on such urgent issues as ethical standards to be followed by the profession (or trade), training & accreditation. I would argue that Mediators are not part of some form of ‘multifaceted social movement’. Please spare me the blushes! Isn’t it somewhat presumptuous of the mediation community to take on the mettle of the reformer who wants to ‘strategically change our societies for the better?’ Whether mediation is a profession or trade certainly needs serious discussion. It is worth examining the way guilds of plumbers and painters and decorators function. Dr Adler argues that mediators professional identities are bound to substantive application areas and less to procedural commonalities. This is not unusual. It happens with medics. I would like to draw your attention to a section of the editorial in the May issue of Mediation in Practice, which read, “Other occupations can draw some support from their national representative organisations. In the UK mediators urgently need a single national representative body to break down the divisions between the different contexts of mediation.” A practitioner wrote in the same issue,“(Scottish Mediation Network) brings together mediators from all branches of the profession in a deliberately, even calculatingly, collaborative way. And it has certainly blown away the cobwebs. For the first time, I found myself sharing information, insight and practice with community mediators, restorative justice practitioners, commercial mediators and others too numerous to mention. How refreshing?” I would agree that the current situation of a confusing array of unfederated skill-based organisation is not good for anyone. Add New Comment

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