Conflict Studies

Program Methodology

        A big chunk of the critical reasoning skills practiced in conflict studies is learning how to strike a balance between learning about different approaches toward understanding conflict and learning about our particular cases studies and how to engage their sets of data. This balance often becomes a mutually reinforcing process, in which thinking about conflict theory helps us to think about our case studies in new ways, while our case studies guide us in how we think about the phenomena of conflict. Indeed, conflict studies places high demands on our critical reasoning skills. We are asked to learn theory, learn cases studies, think about the cases studies using the theory learned, and then develop analysis and interpretations about the cases studies and conflict theory. These steps actually constitute the method behind conflict studies. It is what we do.

Within this method, however, there are specific steps for doing conflict analysis that we apply every time we consider a conflict scenario. There are four basic steps.