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Studying the nature of trauma and how it affects individuals, societies, and groups is a complex and challenging undertaking. The majority of research on trauma comes from a psychological approach, although scholars in sociology, social psychology, and anthropology have also begun to explore the issue. In the this paper the author briefly explores the sources and dynamics of trauma as according to several social science disciplines. Then he focuses on the need for conflict resolution theorists and practitioners to address trauma related issues in their work. All too often, conflict resolvers working in deep-rooted conflicts, fail to recognize the severity of trauma that many parties have suffered in the hopes of negotiating a solution to a conflict or rushing to undertake reconciliation. This failure to adequately acknowledge the suffering that parties experience and the effect it has on populations can lead to future conflicts and continued suffering. Moreover the author examines how conflict resolution practitioners can be affected by burnout and secondary trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are no standard formulas, or universal principles for recognizing, let alone forecasting violent conflict. Still, a set of explanatory factors considering background conditions as well as escalatory dynamics helps simplify the task of recognizing critical situations. The topic of this paper concerns constellations and convergences of specific factors that characterize the pre-conflict phase of violent political conflicts. By the use of quantitative analytical methods, it focuses on the direct interaction between structural and dynamic indicators as precursors to crises. A model of indicators is presented that takes into account structurally determined cleavage lines in equal measure as their very mobilization by dynamic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are pursuing a set of cooperative security agendas similar to those implemented by the participant states of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), namely, confidence-building measures (CBMs), preventive diplomacy (PD), conflict resolution and a set of agendas associated with security communities. This 'Europeanization' of ASEAN's cooperative security can be captured by a perspective founded on sociological institutionalism, the main focus of which is the issue of institutional isomorphism. The pursuit of new cooperative security agendas on the part of the ASEAN members should be seen as a set of instances of their mimetic adoption of external norms for the sake of legitimacy. They have mimetically adopted a set of norms associated with the collective management of conflicts, which have been practiced by the OSCE/CSCE participant states. They have done so, with the intention of securing their identities as legitimate members of the community of modern states, and of enhancing the status of ASEAN and ARF as legitimate cooperative security institutions. This finding gives support to the claim that mimetic adoption for the sake of legitimacy is one of the pathways for norm diffusion. Such a claim leads to policy advice. To facilitate the spread of their conflict-management norms, the European policymakers may work toward the strengthening of the social environment which defines the OSCE as a legitimate cooperative security institution. However, the long-term sustainability of their effort to facilitate the spread of their norms is questionable because 'the West' is in general losing its moral appeal today in the global society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]