New Book, Oxford University Press Dealing with Differences Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes

[Craig Zelizer]

Forthcoming from Oxford University Press Dealing with Differences Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes
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Written by one of America’s eminent scholars of progressive planning and dispute resolution in the policy arena.

About the Book:

In public and private settings, dealing with differences often means working in the face of fear and suspicion, anger and distrust. Even so, we find, when mediators and facilitators have worked on passionate public disputes, they have listened carefully to pay respect and to get results; they have moved beyond defensive posturing; they have enabled processes of
joint learning and problem solving—processes of dialogue, debate, and negotiation—to address all parties’ interests.

Dealing with Differences focuses on “hard cases”—disputes appearing insoluble yet yielding to resolution—from Hawaii to Washington State to Canada, from California and Colorado to
Maryland and beyond, cases ranging across environmental, ethnic, religious, and public health issues. We see in actual practice that mediators don’t make agreements any more than
midwives make babies. We see that when our values conflict, we might disagree on doctrine but agree where the stop signs should go. John Forester shows how skillful “facilitative leaders” and mediators have helped parties to settle daunting, apparently intractable disputes, and from their accomplishments he draws useful lessons for community leaders, managers, planners and organizers as well.

About the Author:
John Forester is Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, where he has served as Department Chair and Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Art, and
Planning. His earlier books, informed in part by his 20 years as a community mediator, include The Deliberative Practitioner and Planning in the Face of Power. Using oral histories to reveal the micro-politics of participatory governance, he has lectured recently in Seattle, Chapel Hill, Sydney, Seoul, Tokyo, Helsinki, Palermo, Johannesburg, Sheffield, Milan and Amsterdam.

Pre-Order Online!
www.oup.com/us or http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/AmericanPoli...

John Forester
July 2009
256 pp
Paper: 978-0-19-538590-8
$21.95
Cloth: 978-0-19-538589-2
$99.00

for more information see http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/AmericanPoli... or contact Dr. John Forester at jff1(at)cornell.edu