The document discusses locales framework and how it can be applied to conflict transformation and collaborative technologies to support peacebuilding. It explains that the locales framework recognizes the different perspectives of entities involved in a specific situation due to their relationships and histories. It also discusses how computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems could be used to nurture peace processes through virtual negotiation of positions, sharing of information, and development of shared solutions. However, it notes that technology alone does not create lasting peace and that meaningful engagement between people is still needed.

1. Locales Framework, CSCW and Conflict
Transformation
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Rotary World Peace Scholar
University of Queensland
Brisbane
Australia

2. Entrée
• Dynamics of Conflict Transformation
• CSCW and peacebuilding
• Info Share – CSCW in a peace process
• One Text
• Final thoughts

3. A framework for conflict

4. What is Conflict Transformation?
• A process of engaging with and transforming relationships,
interests, discourses and, if necessary, the very constitution of
society that supports the continuation of violent conflict.
• CT argues against giving primacy to settlements, stressing the
importance of recognising the transformation of conflicts.
• Central to the understanding of conflict transformation is the
conviction that actors and institutions in a process of conflict
transformation co-exist in a vigorous dynamic of interacting
interests.

5. Full field peacebuilding

6. And yet…
• In Conflict Transformation, the potential for the use of
ICT is augmented after a ceasefire agreement or
peace agreement
• the dynamics on the ground are relatively more
receptive on the need for sharing information &
collaboration to develop shared solutions.

7. Before / After?
Ceasefire
Levels of violence
Peace Agreement
Time after which ICT
interventions can best help
peacebuilding intervention
Time

8. Furthermore…
• Appropriation of CSCW systems for virtual
peace processes must nourish the process
• The process, and not the final agreement, is
the cynosure

9. ICT creates opportunities
Recognition of the
immense potential of ICT
Key parties to
and developing inclusive,
the conflict
participatory long-term
plans to expand existing
access to ICT
External actors /
Internal divisions
Donors / INGOs
interventions can help
ICT those who have
traditionally been excluded
from developmental
processes to take part in
the exercise of nation
Civil Society /
Grassroots
Business
building.

10. Locales Framework
• Complex, dynamic and situation interactional aspects of work to
be accounted for but not in isolation from where and how those
interactions happen
• The definition of locale as an ongoing relationship between
people in a particular social world is of pivotal importance to
conflict transformation, which places an emphasis on
understanding the ongoing process and opposed to a final
settlement or peace agreement.

11. Locales Framework
• The locale framework recognises the different perspectives of
each entity involved in a specific locale, because of their singular
relationship with it on account of their historical associations and
future aspirations.
• The virtual negotiation of positions and the exploration of
interests is a singular design challenge for CSCW systems in
peacebuilding – where issues like virtual determinants of trust,
asynchronicity, the use of swabasha (vernacular languages), the
creation of content, availability etc are of pivotal importance.

12. CSCW in peacebuilding
• While in the existing corpus of CSCW literature treats these problems as
interesting design challenges, the use of CSCW in peace process is not
purely an academic exercise – the cost of inappropriate design may often be
too disastrous to contemplate.
• The advantage, one may argue, of CSCW systems for peacebuilding over
real world negotiations, is that it offers the potential to engender satsficing
solutions by virtue of its ability to present multiple perspectives of the same
locale to each participant. While this alone may not be enough to change
ossified positions, it sensitises participants to acknowledge multiple truths.

13. CSCW in peacebuilding
• Any appropriation of CSCW in a peace process must
directly address complex, multifaceted layers of
emotions and positions in physical and virtual domains
in order to effectively design processes that gradually
address the need to move beyond them.
• Communications and collaboration in peace
processes, even in virtual domains, is a canvass for
the construction and reconstruction of identities and
the loci of mediated differences, debate and struggle
and reconstituting legitimacies.

14. CSCW in peacebuilding: Ways of helping
The point here is that virtual spaces can
• Framing
allow stakeholders to explore options
that their constituencies are not yet
• Power Sharing ready to hear, thereby giving more
flexibility to the negotiations that would
not otherwise be possible.
• Mirror Imaging
• Goal Clarification
• Finding and Borrowing Eloquent Statements of the Common
Core Issues

15. CSCW in peacebuilding: Key tenets
• Communication / cooperation within organizations
• Communication / cooperation between organizations (bilaterally)
• Communication / cooperation among organizations (multilaterally, as in a
networked community)
• Communication / cooperation with local leaders
• Communication / cooperation with and between decision makers
• Communication / cooperation with the media
• Communication / cooperation within & amongst the parties in the conflict

16. The core issues
• Engender sustainable communication within and between stakeholders
• Be sensitive to the changing emotional needs of stakeholders, but not let
stakeholders always take refuge in tired communal hagiography
• The relationships between stakeholders is NOT dealt independently of the
emotional realms which the relationship is rooted to
• The inexhaustible search for mutual interests instead of ossified positions
• The invention of options for mutual gain
• Engender sense of legitimacy and ownership in multi-partisan dialogues

17. Final thoughts on LF
• The ability to apply the locales framework to the
macro, meso and micro levels of peacebuilding, from
Track One to Track Three, within and between
stakeholders, gives it a unique foothold in a broader
range of theoretical frameworks that seek to engage
with the complex problems of designing CSCW
system for peacebuilding.

18. Info Share

19. The Problem

20. Info Share Overview
• Multi-Stakeholder Engagement: helping policy makers and
political stakeholders building an inclusive peace process
• Informed Communication: Getting concrete information to
policy makers on stakeholder concerns and aspirations for the
peace process
• Developing Capacity: Building a sustainable infrastructure for
the exchange of information between stakeholders and policy
makers

21. One Text
• The One-Text procedure is a systematic process to elicit
underlying interests and needs of parties and providing a
mechanism and space to jointly explore and develop many
options and deciding on one. The process is called the ‘One-
Text’ because quite literally there is only one text - drawn on the
texts of each of the stakeholders.
• All the parties' positions - on every issue - are reflected in the
workspace. New positions and proposals are captured daily and
included in a dynamic document through a joint and collaborative
process.

28. Other work
• Screenshots of some of the other areas we are
active in the Sri Lankan peace process

35. Theory vs. People
• At the end of the day, computers and technology don’t
create just and lasing peace.
• Technology can only augment peacebuilding - we
make peace between ourselves and within ourselves.
• CSCW / ICT is at best a powerful catalyst that aids
change.
• People make the difference.

36. Thank you !
sanjana@info-share.org
s4063612@student.uq.edu.au