Chapter 5 Consensus building in communities
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Gilead Levy
Abstract
Consensus building is a collaborative process for managing complex disputes and decision-making in communities, particularly cooperative ones like kibbutzim. Unlike traditional mediation, it involves multiple stakeholders and aims for broad agreement rather than unanimous consensus. The process includes stages of diagnosis, preparation, vision formulation (optional), policy drafting, community feedback, and implementation. Key challenges include composing a representative leading team, balancing community involvement with limited resources, and achieving sufficient support for proposals. Strategies to address these include careful team selection methods, multi-faceted community engagement approaches, and using nuanced voting scales. This approach differs from mediation in several ways: it’s longer, involves more participants, doesn’t require unanimous entry agreement, allows partial veto rights, and aims for an outcome “the maximum number of people can live with” rather than full consensus. The method has been successfully applied in dozens of Israeli rural communities over the past two decades to address issues like changes in way of life, asset allocation, and strategic planning. While new technologies are increasingly incorporated, in-person dialogic interactions remain crucial to the process.
Abstract
Consensus building is a collaborative process for managing complex disputes and decision-making in communities, particularly cooperative ones like kibbutzim. Unlike traditional mediation, it involves multiple stakeholders and aims for broad agreement rather than unanimous consensus. The process includes stages of diagnosis, preparation, vision formulation (optional), policy drafting, community feedback, and implementation. Key challenges include composing a representative leading team, balancing community involvement with limited resources, and achieving sufficient support for proposals. Strategies to address these include careful team selection methods, multi-faceted community engagement approaches, and using nuanced voting scales. This approach differs from mediation in several ways: it’s longer, involves more participants, doesn’t require unanimous entry agreement, allows partial veto rights, and aims for an outcome “the maximum number of people can live with” rather than full consensus. The method has been successfully applied in dozens of Israeli rural communities over the past two decades to address issues like changes in way of life, asset allocation, and strategic planning. While new technologies are increasingly incorporated, in-person dialogic interactions remain crucial to the process.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Foreword V
- Contents VII
- An Overview of the Book and a Short Review of the Theoretical Framework 1
-
Part 1: Theory and research
- Chapter 1 Community Building Meets Conflict Transformation: An Integrated Approach 13
- Chapter 2 Man’s Best Friend? Dogs and Social Conflict in the Israeli Kibbutz 43
- Chapter 3 After all, we are one community: Conflicts between the kibbutz and its new extension neighborhood residents as a reflection of changes in the social field 61
- Chapter 4 Ideological conflicts and their resolution in the kibbutz movement 1948–1956 87
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Part 2: Practical approaches to conflict resolution in intentional communities
- Chapter 5 Consensus building in communities 109
- Chapter 6 Conflict Circles: Practical Experimentation with Derivations of Restorative Circles in U.S. Intentional Communities 125
- Chapter 7 Cultural Context and Conflict in Intentional Communities 139
- Chapter 8 Power-With Instead of Power-Over: Preventing and Addressing Conflict in Communities with Sociocracy 151
- Contributors 165
- Index 167
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Foreword V
- Contents VII
- An Overview of the Book and a Short Review of the Theoretical Framework 1
-
Part 1: Theory and research
- Chapter 1 Community Building Meets Conflict Transformation: An Integrated Approach 13
- Chapter 2 Man’s Best Friend? Dogs and Social Conflict in the Israeli Kibbutz 43
- Chapter 3 After all, we are one community: Conflicts between the kibbutz and its new extension neighborhood residents as a reflection of changes in the social field 61
- Chapter 4 Ideological conflicts and their resolution in the kibbutz movement 1948–1956 87
-
Part 2: Practical approaches to conflict resolution in intentional communities
- Chapter 5 Consensus building in communities 109
- Chapter 6 Conflict Circles: Practical Experimentation with Derivations of Restorative Circles in U.S. Intentional Communities 125
- Chapter 7 Cultural Context and Conflict in Intentional Communities 139
- Chapter 8 Power-With Instead of Power-Over: Preventing and Addressing Conflict in Communities with Sociocracy 151
- Contributors 165
- Index 167
