There are non-governmental organizations that operate transnationally and there are those that operate within the boundaries of a nation. A third use of non-governmental organizations is articulated. We may call this third category an instrumental use of non-governmental organizations to facilitate the transfer of the work of third-party conflict resolution practitioners to the two previously feuding parties. Representative accounts are provided in Part I of this paper. In Part II, the instrumental use of the NGO to transfer knowledge from practitioners (...) to the indigenous and previously feuding parties is depicted as a means to fill a practice gap in the field of conflict resolution, where many praxes do not examine the transfer of knowledge in an experiential and discovery-oriented way. An alternative is presented where the process of appropriation is suggested as an object of study. In Part III, a conceptualization of how one may determine the phenomenology of a sense of ownership of the project by the previously feuding parties is provided. A phenomenological account of the journey from constituting subjectivity to a constituted objectivity is articulated to the point where we see a division of labour between Husserl’s transcendental project, that seeks universal and broader essences, and psychology, which is highly contextualized. Part IV constitutes the implementation of the praxis to answer the specific question, “What is the sense of ownership of the parties in conflict?” - and, derivatively, “What is the fate of the hitherto agonistic relation?” A conflict resolution model is consolidated or reconfigured using the lessons drawn from the results of the study and from a second look at the literature to see where changes in practice and reconceptualization may be required. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006. (shrink)

A journey from cultural memory through recall to transformation of historical grievances is elucidated with the aid of phenomenological thought. The context for this study is a conflict resolution project undertaken by the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction of the University of Virginia. Russians and Estonians of Klooga participated in a group meeting aimed at resolving ethnonational conflict. This meeting is described, and the potential of phenomenology in an interdisciplinary approach to conflict resolution is explored.