| Sumario: | The writer examines the political logic of community mediation practices—the power relations deployed by those alternative dispute resolution programs that tout mediation as more effective than litigation at settling disputes between people with ongoing relationships in the “community.” Drawing on Foucault, he examines mediation as a governmentalization of state dispute resolution that marshals both techniques of discipline and self in a bid to produce peaceful individual selves. In addition, he employs a case study to analyze community mediation as a confessional institution that deploys sociocultural pressures in search of nondisputing self-identities. Finally, he concludes that the search for fixed notions of individual, self, or even community empowerment may entrench, rather than resist, present forms of regulation in dispute resolution arenas.
|
|---|