Abstract
[Extract]
I read with interest Greg Rooney’s paper on ‘Rebooting Mediation by Detaching from the Illusions of Neutrality, Just Outcomes and Balanced Power’. Rooney is a very experienced practitioner and teacher of mediation. His paper proposes ‘to reboot the profession of mediation by championing the proposition that mediators are not neutrals. They bring their own personal history and professional expertise to the process of assisting parties who are in dispute.’
The reason Rooney gives for rejecting neutrality is that it ‘is physically impossible to attain as a personal attribute for a mediator or a practitioner in any other profession or field.’ This is, of course, not a new point: scholars have been critiquing the notion of neutrality in mediation for some time. However, Rooney builds on his rejection of neutrality to offer some interesting insights about the role of intuition in guiding mediation practice.
I read with interest Greg Rooney’s paper on ‘Rebooting Mediation by Detaching from the Illusions of Neutrality, Just Outcomes and Balanced Power’. Rooney is a very experienced practitioner and teacher of mediation. His paper proposes ‘to reboot the profession of mediation by championing the proposition that mediators are not neutrals. They bring their own personal history and professional expertise to the process of assisting parties who are in dispute.’
The reason Rooney gives for rejecting neutrality is that it ‘is physically impossible to attain as a personal attribute for a mediator or a practitioner in any other profession or field.’ This is, of course, not a new point: scholars have been critiquing the notion of neutrality in mediation for some time. However, Rooney builds on his rejection of neutrality to offer some interesting insights about the role of intuition in guiding mediation practice.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Australian Dispute Resolution Research Network Blog |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Apr 2015 |