Kenneth H. (Ken) Fox
Kenneth (Ken) Fox is University Professor of critical thinking and conflict management and the founding university director of conflict studies at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Dispute Resolution Institute at the Mitchell | Hamline School of Law. His academic interests relate to the different ways that individuals, groups, communities and societies experience, seek to understand, and work constructively through conflict. His writings focus primarily on mediation, negotiation and conflict theory. He has taught, trained, and/or consulted throughout the United States and in nineteen countries on four continents. He is a Fulbright senior specialist grant recipient through which he taught law, peace and conflict resolution studies at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia. Between 2001 and 2015, he was also part of a series of multi-year U.S. State Department-funded civic education, civil society, and conflict transformation (peacebuilding) projects, working in-region and directly with Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and Lebanese educators, business and civic leaders. Since 2006, he has taught annually at the Institute of Training in Mediation and Negotiation (IFOMENE) at the Catholic University of Paris, France and has also taught on multiple occasions at other universitys in Italy, Hong Kong, Spain and the UK.
Phone: 651 523-2411
Address: Hamline University
1536 Hewitt Ave
Saint Paul, Minnesota
55104
United States
Phone: 651 523-2411
Address: Hamline University
1536 Hewitt Ave
Saint Paul, Minnesota
55104
United States
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Papers by Kenneth H. (Ken) Fox
As cooperative private international dispute resolution practices become increasingly common, it is tempting for conflict practitioners to assume that the human relations insights, skills, and practices that worked well for them at home will be equally effective (and appropriate) in an international, cross-cultural environment. However, exporting the ways we understand and interact with others in conflict form a domestic environment into new and different legal, political, economic, cultural, and social environments can be problematic. At best, exporting our set ideas and practices can lead to missed insights and lost opportunities for better solutions to the disputes at hand. At worst, this practice can exacerbate disputes, causing greater confusion, more deeply entrenched conflict, and less likelihood of resolution. As a result, attending to the human dimension of conflict and interaction should be a central part of global negotiation and dispute resolution practice. That is the focus of this essay.
Working in the global dispute resolution environment puts into clear relief the need for conflict practitioners to be attuned to themselves and to their counterparts in ways that might not have been apparent in local practice. As mentioned above, this attunement goes beyond technical legal knowledge and skills. It also includes being attuned to the subtle and complex human, cultural, linguistic, and other relational dimensions of working across social worlds. One way to be so attuned is to develop reflective and reflexive practice - intentionally seeking to learn and grow from one's past experience ("reflection-on-action") and developing multiple dimensions of awareness as the conflict interaction actually unfolds ("reflection-in-action").
This essay focuses on these two dimensions of reflective and reflexive practice, In the next part, the author discusses the nature of reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action from a modernist ("reflective") and postmodern ("reflexive") perspective. These modern and postmodern concepts of reflective and reflexive practice parallel a growing trend in the conflict literature from a "modernist" to a postmodern or "social constructionist" orientation to understanding conflict itself.
In the final part, the author examines how engaging with practice reflexively reveals additional dimensions of awareness about ourselves, other parties, and the conflict context. I then bring together the elements of reflective and reflexive practice to articulate a more holistic conception of "awareness" that can help conflict practitioners more purposefully learn from past experience and develop greater awareness as conflict interactions unfold.