The Effectiveness of Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in Localized Contexts

Abstract

The professionalization of addressing conflict creates a field filled with specialists highly trained to apply modularized and manualized, often evidence-based solutions. But how effective are these professionalized conflict management strategies in Indigenous and localized cultural contexts compared to homegrown Indigenous approaches? While instances of these Indigenous peacebuilding and conflict management strategies are routine throughout the world, to date, no one has attempted to test which conflict management approaches are most effective empirically, nor has the literature sufficiently addressed the contexts in which strategies are most helpful. Using multi-dimensional scaling and chi-square tests of independence applied to a similarity matrix of co-occurrences from select Outline of Cultural Materials subjects from the Human Relations Area Files cultural database, this study tests the hypothesis: Indigenous conflict management strategies are more effective (i.e., less associated conflict) than non-Indigenous conflict management strategies in Indigenous contexts. We show that Indigenous conflict management approaches co-occur with conflict less often than non-Indigenous strategies. From an applied perspective, when we break conflict into four discreet types—sociocultural/interpersonal, political, legal/judicial, and economic—Indigenous conflict management strategies co-occur most often with socio-cultural types of conflicts. The results suggest that Indigenous approaches are more effective in Indigenous contexts overall, while they are most often applied to socio-cultural and interpersonal conflicts. Based on our findings, homegrown solutions effectively manage, resolve, and transform localized conflicts.

Keywords

eHRAF indigenous conflict management conflict types cultural context multi-dimensional scaling (MDS)

Introduction

In the small west African community where the first author has conducted ethnographic research off-and-on over the last 14 years, it is commonplace for the local secret society (i.e., Simo) to intervene in community affairs to promote continuity, harmony, and an adherence to long-established and cultivated customs. The society’s initiates maintain order through spiritual sanctions that act as chief magistrate to the local community; sacred groves serve as places of residence in the forest for these spiritual judges as well as ceremonial sites where infractions are adjudicated and atoned for with gifts handed over in a ritual fashion for the spirits and community to work toward reconciliation (Caillié, 1830; Lundy, 2016; see also Lundy et al., 2018). Adultery, theft, property disputes, and other conflicts are aired publicly, a decision and punishment meted, and harmony restored through these mechanisms of social control and spiritual sanction. Belief, public airing of grievances, and exerted social pressures are typically enough to resolve disputes, but harsher actions including fines, beatings, and ostracism can be enacted, if necessary, to restore peace. These forms of “restorative justice” (i.e., encounters between the victim, offender, and wider community to share experiences to create consensus toward repair from harm) and “alternative dispute resolution” (i.e., settling disputes outside of a courtroom through the use of neutrals, negotiation, conciliation, mediation, and arbitration) have been adopted, mobilized, and professionalized to varying degrees and levels of success in many settings (Blake et al., 2016; Barrett & Barrett 2004; Johnstone, 2013; Johnstone & Van Ness, 2013; Van Ness & Strong, 2014). But Indigenous peacebuilding (Lundy et al., in press) and Indigenous conflict management strategies (Adebayo et al., 2014; Adebayo et al., 2015) remain core tenets of justice in many local, Indigenous contexts.

It was the work of anthropologists recognizing alternative forms of governance (Fortes & Evans-Pritchard, 1940) and dispute resolution (e.g., Chagnon, 2009; Dentan, 1968; Nader & Metzger, 1963) that established “conflict” and its management, resolution, and transformation as an object of study (Bohannan, 1968; Gluckman, 1955; Lowie, 1925; Nader, 1997; Otterbein, 2009; Turner, 1957; Wolfe & Yang, 1994). Ethnographic cases illuminate local strategies for conflict management that resonated beyond the “field” eventually being built upon, codified, modeled, professionalized, and exported by sociologists, historians, legal scholars, political scientists, and others (Aall & Chester, 2017; Adebayo et al., 2014, 2015; Avruch, 1998; Avruch, 2015; Mac Ginty, 2011; Millar, 2014; Tuso & Flaherty, 2016; Zartman, 2000). These two forms of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (i.e., localized and professionalized) share many common characteristics except one—context. Indigenous conflict management strategies are applied within the settings for which they were often organically, but sometimes intentionally, developed. More mainstream, professional iterations typically employ similar methods, but their broad application is seen as an alternative to judicial-legal standards of the courtroom.

This comparative study evaluates the overall effectiveness and applicability of approaches to managing, resolving, and transforming conflicts. We hypothesize that Indigenous conflict management strategies are more effective than non-Indigenous conflict management strategies in Indigenous contexts. This study supports the idea that homegrown solutions are an effective way to manage, resolve, and transform localized conflicts over imported and professionalized strategies. The remainder of this article conceptualizes and operationalizes Indigenous versus non-Indigenous conflict management strategies, explains the methodological techniques used to test the hypothesis, presents the analysis and results, and concludes by exploring what these findings mean for the study of conflict and the practice of its peaceful resolution.

Indigenous Conflict Management Approaches versus Professional Strategies for Conflict Management and Resolution

Indigenous methods of dispute resolution have long been the subject of study by anthropologists and political and legal social scientists. For example, scholars such as Lowie (1925) and Gibbs (1963) documented and analyzed the Kpelle moot, an institution for the informal settlement of disputes in Liberia. They found these informal airings of disputes among Kpelle kinship groups and communities to be more effective than courtroom settings in situations where parties needed to reconcile with one another. Success stemmed from the familiarity with the dispute resolution settings (typically a home in the community), the thorough airing of grievances and discussion of the issues and contextual basis (as opposed to the incompleteness of admissible courtroom testimony and evidence), and the conduct of the hearing residing in the hands of the afflicted parties (rather than in the hands of third-party judges and lawyers). Kpelle moots were found to result in longer lasting consensual solutions. Building on scholars like Lowie and Gibbs, Nader and Sursock (1986) discussed the contextual aspects of justice and the cultural differences in people’s conceptions of it. They highlighted the differences between Western approaches to justice and those found in Indigenous societies across the world, emphasizing the individual versus the community nature, variances in the pursuit of truth, and the universal versus contextual application of laws. In doing so, their work demonstrated that, “the meaning of justice will vary with different social and cultural settings; and different forms of justice may exist within one sociocultural setting” (Nader & Sursock, 1986, 205). In other words, justice and conflict management are culturally constituted.

While not referring strictly to Indigenous conflict management, Avruch (1998) critiqued the dominant forms of conflict resolution (i.e., juridical, negotiation, mediation, problem-solving workshops) of the 1990s and argued that culture plays an important and significant role in the success or failure of conflict resolution. Avruch (2009, 45–46) later expounded,

Conflict is competition by groups or individuals over incompatible goals, scarce resources, or the sources of power needed to acquire them. This competition is also determined by individuals’ perceptions of goals, resources, and power, and such perceptions may differ greatly among individuals. One determinant of perception is culture, the socially inherited, shared and learned ways of living possessed by individuals in virtue of their membership in social groups. … culture affects many of the communicational or interlocutory processes that lie at the heart of most conflict resolution techniques.

Avruch’s definition of conflict as culture bound (i.e., context matters) speaks to the heart of our argument: “Every conflict is local inasmuch as the local environment sets the stage and the local people endure the consequences” (Lundy & Adjei, 2015, 1). This article demonstrates that the reverse also holds, that conflict management strategies are also “culture bound” and “local,” suggesting that those approaches to conflict management that better account for and align with local contexts should be shown to be more effective at managing, resolving, and transforming conflict into both negative (i.e., the absence of violence) and positive peace (i.e., restoration of relationships and the development of social systems that serve the needs of the larger population) (Galtung, 1969).

Many scholars continue to examine context-based aspects of peace and conflict within Indigenous societies. Fry (2006), for example, contends that Western academics and culture perpetuate the idea of violence and war being tied to human nature while overlooking the “human potential for peace.” Sponsel (2017) argues that the existence of a “non-killing society” is possible, citing the Semai in Malaysia (see Dentan, 1968), the Waorani in Ecuador, and Yanomami in Brazil and Venezuela (see Chagnon, 2009). Zartman, 2000, in examining local approaches to conflict management in Africa, emphasizes the importance of individuals’ integration into the community, the connection between the personal and the communal, and the restoration of harmony between parties in overcoming conflict; with justice being an important part of the process, “but as a compensation for loss, not as a retribution for offense” (222).

The formalized practices of “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) and “restorative justice” are built, in part, out of these localized approaches to Indigenous conflict management. However, as largely decontextualized and professionalized versions of Indigenous conflict management approaches, they may be less effective when removed from their intended localized contexts or when they are scaled up to meet national demands. These attempts to rescale Indigenous approaches include the now popularized and heavily critiqued practices of Jirga (Afghanistan and Pakistan), Gacaca (Rwanda), and Mato Oput (Uganda) (Adebayo et al. 2014, 2015; Mac Ginty, 2008). Lieberman & Henry, 1986, 426) define ADR as “a set of practices and techniques that aim (1) to permit legal disputes to be resolved outside the courts for the benefit of all disputants; (2) to reduce the cost of conventional litigation and the delays to which it is ordinarily subject; or (3) to prevent legal disputes that would otherwise likely be brought to the courts.” These practices and techniques include processes like mediation, arbitration, and negotiation. Mediators mediate family disputes; negotiators negotiate deals between business competitors; arbiters arbitrate fights over resource access; litigants litigate civil and criminal cases in a court of law; and sanctions, treaties, and peacebuilding efforts follow outbreaks of warfare.

Whatever the process, ADR operates on the assumption that it is beneficial to stakeholders to reduce the cost of resolving disputes and in improving the acceptance of agreements reached between parties. Paul (2015, 100) defines restorative justice as “a theory of justice that emphasizes the restoration of individuals, relationships, and communities following behavior perceived as harmful, offensive, or problematic.” The process of restorative justice “enable[s] those responsible for a harm-done to work through their twisted logic and excuses … [and] be able to acknowledge to the community and perhaps to the person(s) they harmed what they did and in some way make amends” (Sullivan & Tifft, 2008, 1; see also Lundy et al., in press). Both ADR and restorative justice coalesced into new formal approaches to justice in the West during the 1970s, drawing heavily from strategies used within human groups throughout time and documented by anthropologists around the world to achieve peace.

While ADR and restorative justice overlap with aspects of Indigenous conflict management, they do not adequately address issues directly relevant to Indigenous communities. Scholars such as Benjamin & Lundy, 2014; Tuso, 2016 argue that ADR was created to address the needs of Western societies and suffers from the marginalization and lack of representation of Indigenous voices in the field of conflict resolution, which includes ADR and restorative justice. To illustrate, Zion and Yazzie (2008) outline an emergent peacemaking process among the Navajo Nation in New Mexico that they call “Navajo restorative justice.” According to the authors, this approach is a revival of the traditional Navajo form of problem-solving. According to Zion and Yazzie (2008, 160),

Modern adjudication did not satisfy lingering Navajo expectations about the right way to solve problems by utilizing relationships, and the forces that prompted modern “reform” caused new problems of social disruption, violence, and crime ... It is not simply another kind of dispute resolution mechanism or ADR—it is a life way and a way of life that reflects centuries of Navajo customs and values.

Navajo peacemaking focuses on a “relation-based and affective process rather than the application of rules by a neutral third party” (Zion & Yazzie, 2008, 153; see also Lundy et al., in press; Yazzie, 2005). Intended outcomes deemphasize judgement of the individual and focus instead on the relationships and needs of those impacted by conflict. The Navajo worldview makes Navajo restorative justice a more effective conflict management strategy when compared to Western models. The Western legal system, for example, operates on the basis that any crime committed in a society is a crime against the state. When conflict arises between two individuals or groups in society, the state plays the central role in judging the criminality of acts and imposing legally defined punishments, operating on the assumption that justice is carried out at the conclusion of this process (Tuso and Flaherty, 2016). The tools for establishing key actors, developing principles of justice, and disciplining deviance from norms are hardwired into the Western-style judicial system (Mac Ginty, 2008). Navajo peacemaking illustrates the contextual relevance of Indigenous conflict management approaches. For example, a youth in New York who robs a convenience store will not necessarily listen to their elders, be swayed by public/social control, nor defer to their cultural norms. In this way, Indigenous approaches to conflict cannot always be scaled up or moved across cultural boundaries.

Similarly, mainstream conflict management approaches are not always effective in Indigenous settings where the local “rules of the game” are different and expectations of justice, truth, and action differ from those of Western society. The structural impediments of historical and contemporary power relationships foment barriers to uniform treatment and consideration when applying these rules. Benjamin & Lundy, 2014, 1–2) explain,

Due to the global nature of Western capitalist expansion across the entire world after the 16th century, and the accompanying centuries of colonization, conquest and absorption of peoples across the world, “original” or First Nations peoples around the globe share certain common experiences of disruption, erasure, displacement, trauma, struggle, and reclamation. These indigenous peoples also find themselves enmeshed in a world of nation-states largely formed without their input, in which citizenship and citizens’ rights are apportioned within nations, leaving the whole world divided into contiguous nation-states that rarely account for original peoples and communities, let alone their rights.

As described above for the Navajo, Western perspectives of conflict management often fail to account for or include issues of relevance to Indigenous communities when resolving disagreements among folks who are more interested in reconciliation and reintegration over retribution and punishment.

Indigenous conflict management then refers to the institutions and methods that seek to resolve conflict and restore balance between members and groups within Indigenous communities. While Indigenous groups are not a homogenous category of people across the world, one can observe general similarities in subsistence, social organization, and historical trajectories that apply to many cases. These commonalities include “connections to the land and the subsistence it provides, some form of communing with and/or respect for nature and the natural world, respect for ancestors, and social institutions that work on behalf of the whole community” (Benjamin & Lundy, 2014, 3). When it comes to the practice of conflict management, several scholars provide a basis for understanding the Indigenous approach.

Benjamin & Lundy, 2014, 4) suggest that Indigenous conflict management lacks the concept of “the individual” as an isolated entity apart from society and instead centers on “communal identity, healing, and resolution.” Lee (2005) outlines characteristics found in First Nations’ practices of conflict management in Canada, which include elders taking on leadership roles in dealing with conflicts; family members first attempting to deal with disputes, followed by the community, if they are unable to find a resolution; the family remaining involved in the process of reaching an agreeable outcome, even after the dispute goes to the community as a whole; the offenders admitting wrongdoing as essential to the peacemaking process; forgiving the offender as an expected norm; ritualizing the healing processes; and reaching a binding agreement among the offending parties and the community.

Tuso (2016b, 522) builds on these characteristics and suggests that “indigenous processes of peacemaking” possess 12 common features: (1) mandatory, (2) truth-finding, (3) collective responsibility, (4) involvement of elders, (5) storytelling, (6) spirituality, (7) sacred relations, (8) common goals and identity of the community, (9) fairness across statuses, (10) admission of wrongdoing and forgiveness, (11) reparation of damaged relations, not exactment of punishments, and (12) rituals. Other scholars (Adebayo et al., 2014; Adebayo et al., 2015; Kemp and Douglas, 2004; Mac Ginty, 2008) have developed similar lists that outline similar characteristics found in Indigenous conflict management strategies such as the approaches being experiential, cooperative/egalitarian, dialogic/public, low cost, context-sensitive/localized/flexible, and conciliatory. “Collectively, these works point to the valuing of empathetic and communal mechanisms to facilitate reconciliation, reintegration, and the restoration of relationships to the satisfaction of primary and secondary stakeholders” (Lundy & Njonguo, 2019). Given the differences between these descriptions of Indigenous conflict management and mainstream non-Indigenous conflict management, it is expected that Indigenous approaches are more effective in Indigenous contexts. With this theoretical framework in mind, we tested whether Indigenous conflict management approaches were more effective in resolving conflicts in Indigenous contexts. Furthermore, we asked which types of conflicts Indigenous strategies were mobilized for most often.

Methodology

This study utilizes the comprehensive ethnographic data warehoused and indexed in the full-text and online cultural database eHRAF World Cultures (eHRAF, 2021a). According to (Saldaña, 2016), 296), eHRAF’s exhaustive Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM), is “an extensive numbered index of cultural topics developed by anthropologists for the classification of fieldwork data from ethnographic studies.” To test the hypothesis, Indigenous conflict management approaches are more effective than non-Indigenous conflict management approaches in Indigenous contexts, eHRAF was identified as an appropriate and comprehensive data source containing global research about primarily Indigenous contexts already indexed at the paragraph-level based on the OCM.

At the time of writing, the eHRAF database is a collection of 6,542 ethnographic texts. These studies of localized, Indigenous contexts come from 352 distinct cultural groups from around the world. Overlayed onto the ethnographic texts is the OCM indexing system, a classification system of ethnographic materials, including human behavior, social life and customs, material culture, and human-environment relationships, developed, refined, and implemented by teams of analysts since the 1940s. At the time of the study, the OCM contains 742 distinct subjects. This study uses aggregated subsets of OCM subjects to represent key variables (Table 1).

Table 1.

OCM Subjects Selected to Proxy Indigenous Conflict Management Approaches (ICM), Non-Indigenous Conflict Management Approaches (Non-ICM), and Conflict.

ICM OCM Subjects	Non-ICM OCM Subjects	Conflict OCM Subjects	Types of Conflict
208 public opinion	624 local officials	310 exploitative activities	Economic
431 gift giving	625 police	--Land use (311)	Economic
474 cooperative organization	642 forms and rules of government	--Water supply (312)	Economic
476 mutual aid	648 external relations	--Lumbering (313)	Economic
571 social relationships and groups	671 legal norms	--Forest products (314)	Economic
572 friendships	691 litigation	--Oil and gas wells (315)	Economic
576 etiquette	692 judicial authority	--Mining and quarrying (316)	Economic
577 ethics	693 legal and judicial personnel	--Special deposits (317)	Economic
593 family relationships	694 initiation of judicial proceedings	--Environmental quality (318)	Economic
602 Kin relationships	695 trial procedure	578 ingroup antagonism	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
622 community heads	696 execution of justice	579 brawls, riots, and banditry	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
623 community councils	697 prisons and jails	661 exploitation	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
626 social control	722 wartime adjustments	669 revolution	Political
627 informal in-group justice	728 peacemaking	674 crime	Legal/Judicial
628 inter-community relations		680 offences and sanctions	Legal/Judicial
629 inter-ethnic relations		--Sanctions (681)	Legal/Judicial
769 cult of dead		--Offenses against life (682)	Legal/Judicial
783 purification and atonement		--Offenses against the person (683)	Legal/Judicial
784 avoidance and taboo		--Sex and marital offenses (684)	Legal/Judicial
867 transmission of cultural norms		--Property offenses (685)	Legal/Judicial
		--Nonfulfillment of obligations (686)	Legal/Judicial
		--Offenses against the state (687)	Legal/Judicial
		--Religious offenses (688)	Legal/Judicial
		--Social offenses (689)	Legal/Judicial
		721 instigation of war	Political
		726 warfare	Political
		730 social problems	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Disasters (731)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Disabilities (732)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Alcoholism and drug addiction (733)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Invalidism (734)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Poverty (735)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Dependency (736)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Old age dependency (737)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal
		--Delinquency (738)	Socio-cultural/Interpersonal

The ethnographic, qualitative data in eHRAF are indexed by country, culture, and document. The full-text documents are then further divided at the paragraph level, with each paragraph being classified using the OCM subject thesaurus. Specific OCM subjects were purposefully selected based on the judgement of the first author according to those subjects and their associated definitions that most closely aligned with the characteristics outlined in the theoretical framework for Indigenous conflict management strategies, non-Indigenous conflict management strategies, and conflict (Table 1). All selected subjects from the OCM were then placed into a similarity matrix to map relationships between the variables based on concurrence (Supplement 2). Therefore, units of analysis are co-occurrences of two selected subjects within the same eHRAF paragraph. Utilized OCM subjects aggregated into predictor and outcome variables were validated through multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) (discussed below).

Based on previous research on Indigenous and non-Indigenous conflict management strategies (Adebayo et al., 2014; Adebayo et al., 2015; Kemp and Douglas, 2004; Mac Ginty, 2008; Tuso, 2016b), 20 OCM subjects were selected by the authors to best represent, or proxy, identified aspects of the predictor variable “Indigenous conflict management approaches” (ICM). They represent important attributes of Indigenous conflict-reducing strategies identified in the literature reviewed above. Furthermore, 14 OCM subjects were selected to represent aspects of the predictor variable “non-Indigenous conflict management approaches” (non-ICM). Non-ICM OCM subjects were chosen to represent attributes of non-Indigenous conflict-reducing strategies including specialized expertise, competitive, formal, professionalized, and retributive (Table 1, Supplement 1).

For our “conflict” variable, we chose 10 parent and 25 child subjects (Table 1; see Supplement 1 for a more thorough list of the selected OCM subjects, their conceptual and operational definitions, with qualitative examples). The selected subjects were chosen to represent a wide range of conflict types mentioned in the associated literature (Avruch, 2009; Gluckman, 1955; Lundy & Njonguo, 2019; Otterbein, 2009; Wolfe & Yang, 1994): intra- and interpersonal, intra- and intergroup, intercultural, social, political, environmental, intergenerational, and international.

When indexing the eHRAF database using OCM, analysts note the presence of general topics, not the valence or other attributes of the topic. While we recognize this potentiality as a limitation of our approach, we feel confident that the OCM indexing is more likely to describe the presence of something, rather than its absence. Because this study works with such a large dataset, it was impractical to hand re-code the dataset; therefore, we relied on the OCM indexing system without modifications in our analysis. We, however, did spot check a small sample of data to verify the presence or absence of our subjects. Some of this sample is highlighted below while an additional sample is provided in Supplement 1 under the “Exemplar” column for each selected OCM subject in the analysis.

In our analysis, “effectiveness” of a conflict-reducing mechanism is measured as a predictor variable (ICM or non-ICM) occurring without a conflict variable within a given paragraph, while "ineffectiveness" is measured by a predictor variable co-occurring with a conflict variable. We interpret the existence or absence of conflict within a qualitative textual chunk or unit of data (i.e., eHRAF paragraphs, N = 423,664) as representing the effectiveness or not of the conflict management strategy that it co-occurred with. In other words, if Public Opinion (208) or Gift Giving (431) was coded for as present in a paragraph, but no conflict variables were coded for in that same paragraph, then that observation would indicate to us an “effective” strategy for managing, resolving, or transforming conflict (because conflict is not present). The inverse is, if conflict was present, then the conflict was not resolved, and therefore, the predictor variable (either ICM or non-ICM) did not have the desired effect of finding a resolution and eliminating the conflict from the text.

While this definition of “effectiveness” is a limitation to the study, since the conflict could be resolved in subsequent paragraphs within the document and therefore not captured in the data and analysis, or because the absence of a conflict subject likely can be interpreted as the complete absence of a conflict in need of resolution, we still felt justified in our approach and results since both ICM and non-ICM were (or should have been) equally affected by these limitations. To explain further, both ICM and non-ICM are likely conflated since many instances of these subjects have nothing to do with conflict. Furthermore, the fact that paragraphs are not discreet and relate to other paragraphs and documents as a whole is also a limiting factor that affects both ICM and non-ICM subjects. Since our analysis captures all paragraphs containing selected subjects, however, subsequent paragraphs in a document, if treating the same topic, will eventually be captured in our analysis.

Additionally, the frequency of subjects is also highly variable with anthropologists more likely to research certain topics over others. These frequencies are controlled for in the analysis through the proposed chi-square test of independence. Which, while overly sensitive with large sample sizes, evaluates associations through proportionate differences in expected frequencies as compared to observed frequencies. By accounting for the proportion of occurrences and non-occurrences in the same model, even if one conflict management strategy is overrepresented in overall numbers based on eHRAF paragraphs, we are ultimately accounting for the strategy with respect to its expected frequency and not simple differences between overall numbers.

The following is an example of an “effective” ICM intervention reflected in a paragraph excerpted from eHRAF describing the San peoples of the Kalahari Desert:

Exchange is self-perpetuating in that a gift or service not only discharges a previous obligation but also creates a new one. A man gave a spear blade in return for a mortar and pestle, which he had asked another to make for him. This returned the favor of making the mortar and pestle, but, at the same time, the spear blade was regarded as a gift for which a return would eventually have to be made — and so it would go on, ad infinitum. Apart from this type of specified obligation to reciprocate, there are also social zones of generalized reciprocity, comparable with the generality of lending rights referred to previously. Initiation-school mates are required to help one another and to give gifts of food or artifacts when in a position to do so. There is no expectation of specific reciprocation; one mate helps another and expects that a third will help him when his own need arises. Joking relatives are obliged to grant each others' requests for goods and services and to give these priority over normal (i.e., other) exchange obligations. In theory this could unbalance cycles of individual reciprocation, but in practice conflict between the two sets of obligations never occurred and I did not hear of anybody having to refuse to give a gift because it had been reserved for another, that is, joking partners were neither deprived by normal exchange obligations nor did they make burdensome demands. A man is obliged to give periodic gifts to some of his avoidance relatives (e.g., his wife’s parents and his sisters) without expectation of direct reciprocation. The return is more or less circuitous; females do not reciprocate, but their husbands make return on their behalf and parents reciprocate favors done for their dependent children. (Silberbauer, 1981, 238)

This paragraph was classified from the OCM subjects as gift giving (431), mutual aid (476), age stratification (561), gender status (562), social relationships and groups (571), family relationships (593), and kin relationships (602), several of which are considered key attributes of ICM strategies (bolded). Because these ICM strategies did not co-occur with conflict subjects, this entry would be considered an “effective” form of Indigenous conflict management based on our analysis.

Laura Nader’s (1990) work among the Zapotec of Oaxaca, Mexico provides an exemplar of “ineffective” non-ICM strategies two OCM subjects representing non-ICM [Litigation (691); Initiation of judicial proceedings (694)] co-occur with a conflict OCM subject [Ingroup antagonisms (578)]. In our analysis, the following paragraph would be determined to represent “ineffective” conflict management because conflict is present:

Taken at face value, this case is best understood as a subsistence issue: access to water needed for survival. But there is also an indication of a nonmaterialistic basis for the dispute, revolving around the individualistic character of Western property law, which is not to be mediated by traditional conceptions of need and equity—a conflict of laws. In addition, there is raw power: “You work for me, and I will make water and washing space available.” In the domain of power, the dispute may be explained as a metaphor of social relationships in which the dispute over water is incidental to the dynamic of social relations. In this light, the dispute becomes a code in which power relations are being thrashed out or ceremonially reinforced. It was reference to God-given substances (water) and recognition that water was federally controlled that enabled the presidente to persuade the accused to give access to the water. But that was as far as he was able to move Zenon. The accused refused to open access to the land for washing clothes. What had to be resolved was the reason for this action, the motive: Was he refusing access as a way to defend his individual ownership rights, or was he using his rights to the land as a way to force his opponents to work for him? Or both? (Nader, 1990, 253)

These two examples typify the thousands of ethnographic materials that this analysis was based on.

Methods and Analysis

Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) is a “useful graph-theoretic technique that is based on similarity matrices. … For a set of observed similarities (or distances or proximities) between N pairs of items” ((Namey et al., 2008, 150). Once the MDS plot is created, a measure of “stress” (ranging from 0–1) is used to evaluate the amount of distortion between the actual numerical values in the proximity matrix (Supplement 2, eHRAF 2021b) and the representation of those values in the plot. Zero stress indicates a perfect fit of the data, so the closer the “stress” is to zero, the better the “fit.” In addition to stress, Tucker’s coefficient of congruence (r_c), dispersion accounted for (DAF) (both measures of variance explained), and scree plots of normalized raw stress are often used to evaluate the adequacy of the proposed model at a constrained number of dimensions. In an ideal MDS, direct distances can translate to clearly defined dimensions. Often, in social research utilizing the technique, a heavier reliance on clusters and patterns is necessary to draw conclusions from. This is because MDS utilizes a non-parametric transformation into distances that can then be mapped, in this case on a two-dimensional plane. This means that, while we are limited in our interpretation of dimensions, we can rely on the distances between variables (and relative clusters) to provide useful information. The current analysis tested models to assess the best dimensional fit based on standard indices. Both models presented in this article are constrained to two dimensions based on fit indices. A traditional rule of thumb is that stress below 0.15 indicates a suitable fit between the actual proximities and their representation in the plot when r_c and DAF are closer to 1 (Dugard et al., 2010, 275). The distance of a particular variable from all other variables as it relates to the aggregate variance (distance) is what is being examined through MDS; in other words, it is looking for concurrence. For both models, stress assessed in the one-dimensional model was above .5 with r_c and DAF ranging from .42 to .65. MDS was used to evaluate the appropriateness and observable clustering of selected OCM subjects used to develop the predictor and outcomes variables, which were then employed to test the hypothesis.

Pearson’s chi-squared test is used to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories of a contingency table. In this context, it is used to determine whether or not co-occurrences of conflict are associated with the type of conflict management strategy. The observations are classified into mutually exclusive classes, in our case, an ICM strategy co-occurring with a conflict variable, ICM without conflict, non-ICM with conflict, and non-ICM without conflict. Given a null hypothesis that there are no differences between the classes in the population, the test statistic computed from the observations therefore follows a chi-squared frequency distribution. The purpose of the test is to evaluate how likely the observed frequencies would be assuming this null hypothesis. Results are based on a chi-squared analysis of co-occurrences between the outcome variables “conflict” and “types of conflict” presence or absence and the predictor variables ICM and non-ICM.

Results

To summarize, for the present study, MDS was used to confirm a statistically related grouping of and the difference between the predictor variables: “ICM” and “non-ICM”: 434,091 units or co-occurrences were observed and visualized (Figure 1). MDS was also used to confirm statistically significant groupings of and differences within the “conflict” variable resulting in four additional outcome variables: “types of conflict” (Sociocultural/Interpersonal, Legal/Judicial, Political, Economic); 170,006 units or co-occurrences were observed and visualized in this analysis (Figure 2). For hypothesis testing, chi-square test of independence was used to confirm a statistically significant association between conflict prevalence for ICM versus non-ICM; 423,664 units or co-occurrences were observed and analyzed (Tables 2 and 3).

Figure 1.

Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) of predictor variables (Select OCM Subjects): Indigenous conflict management (Yellow Xs) and non-indigenous conflict management (Black Stars).”

Figure 2.

Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) of outcome variable “conflict” (Based on select OCM Subjects: further classified into Four “Types of Conflicts” based on observed groupings.”

Table 2.

Co-Occurrences Between Conflict/No-Conflict and Conflict Management Styles (ICM vs. non-ICM).

	Non-ICM	ICM			Risk	Odds
With	33451 (8%)	41043 (10%)	74,494	Non-ICM	0.25	0.82
W/O	102764 (24%)	246406 (58%)	349,170	ICM	0.14	0.42
	136,215	287,449		RiskRatio=	1.72	1.95
X2=	6738.49	p < .001
Phi =	0.126			Cohens D=	0.39

Table 3.

Co-Occurrences Between Types of Conflict and Conflict Management Styles.

	Sociocultural/Interpersonal	Economic	Legal/Judicial	Political
Non-ICM	6806	1812	13,300	11,533
ICM	18,308	2489	15,331	4915
Observed	25,114	4301	28,631	16,448
Expected	12,557	2150.5	14,315.5	8224
	2633.91	53.28	72.04	1331.41
	2633.91	53.28	72.04	1331.41
X2=	5267.82	106.56	144.07	2662.81
Phi=	0.46	0.16	0.07	0.40
RiskICM=	0.73	0.58	0.54	0.30
RiskNon-ICM=	0.27	0.42	0.46	0.70
RiskRatio=	2.69	1.37	1.15	0.43

Note. Each column represents a separate χ² analysis.

We began our analysis by quantitatively visualizing our two predictor variables through MDS to demonstrate that we had selected appropriate proxies from the OCM subjects to represent these qualitatively different approaches to conflict management (i.e., Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous) (Figure 1). Visualized in two dimensions (stress = .132; r_c = .931; DAF = .861), the MDS statistical analysis of the chosen conflict management strategy proxies shows that the OCM subjects for each predictor variable tend to group together along Dimension 1 (Figure 1, ICM – Yellow; non-ICM – Black; N = 434,091) except for one outlier (i.e., Peacemaking), which is often associated with formal restorative or transformative justice. As mentioned above, restorative justice techniques share many attributes with ICM, hence its likely defection in the plot (Figure 1). This provides quantitative support for perspectives represented in the literature that Indigenous conflict management approaches are distinct enough from non-Indigenous conflict management approaches to be testable, and that our choices of subjects as proxies for these conflict-reducing mechanisms are also justified (Adebayo et al., 2014; Adebayo et al., 2015; Kemp & Douglas, 2004; Mac Ginty, 2008; Tuso, 2016b; Zartman, 2017). Once the predictor variables were corroborated, we proceeded to do the same for the outcome variable, “conflict.”

Based on the MDS analysis of the conflict variables selected from appropriate OCM subjects based on our literature review (Avruch, 2009; Gluckman, 1955; Lundy & Njonguo, 2019; Otterbein, 2009; Wolfe & Yang, 1994) to represent various aspects of conflict (Table 1), we inductively identified four clusters, which we refer to as “types of conflicts” (Figure 2, stress = .074; r_c = .962; DAF = .926; N=170,006). These outcome variables are “Sociocultural/Interpersonal conflicts,” “Political conflicts,” “Legal/Judicial conflicts,” and “Economic conflicts.” Again, the resulting classification through the MDS help justify our choices of OCM conflict-related subjects.

In total, based on the selected OCM subjects (Tables 1 and 2), 423,664 units were analyzed based on coded co-occurrences arranged in a similarity matrix (Supplement 2), which represented the presence or absence of the predictor and outcome variables through a chi-square test of independence. ICM subjects were coded for 287,449 times, co-occurring with conflict variables 41,043 times, and observed without conflict variables 246,406 times. Non-ICM subjects were coded for 136,215 times, co-occurring with conflict variables 33,451 times, and observed without conflict variables 102,764 times (Table 2).

The chi-squared analysis demonstrates that non-ICM was 95.43% times more likely to occur with conflict than ICM. Furthermore, in calculating the risk ratio (see Schmidt & Kohlmann, 2008), the risk of conflict was 71.99% times higher when non-ICM was deployed. This means there was a small but significant association between the conflict management style (i.e., ICM vs. non-ICM) and co-occurrence of conflict (φ = .126).

For each of the composite conflict variables, p is < .001, which we expect with this large of a sample, but phi varies. The largest effects are among the Political and Sociocultural/Interpersonal composites (Table 3). Also, while overall conflict is more likely to occur with non-ICM when evaluating test of independence by conflict category (χ² = 7485.28, φ = .317), ICM co-occurs more frequently with Sociocultural/Interpersonal types of conflicts. ICM were 168% times more likely to co-occur with Sociocultural/Interpersonal types of conflicts than non-ICM strategies. The opposite is true for Political types of conflicts, which co-occur most frequently with non-ICM conflict management approaches at roughly 134.65% times the rate of ICM strategies (or .42 times the rate, i.e., 57% less likely).

Our analysis shows that when ICM approaches do co-occur with conflict, they tend to be Sociocultural/Interpersonal types of conflicts while non-ICM approaches co-occur statistically significantly more often with Political types of conflicts. These two further examples help illustrate this finding. First, Joel Sherzer (1983, 135) documented the following among the Guna, an Indigenous people of Panama and Colombia, which demonstrates the first co-occurrence between an ICM approach and a Sociocultural/Interpersonal type of conflict:

These differences can lead to conflict, especially when the principal exponents of the different approaches live in the same village. Just such a situation occurred in 1970 in Mulatuppu, when the village gave a scholarship to a respected curing specialist, Olowitinappi, to permit him to study snake-bite medicine with a renowned expert in a distant village (see chapters 2, 3, and 8). Just after his departure, a man was bitten by a snake on his evening hunting trip to the jungle. The victim was placed in the care of another curing specialist, who insisted on the village-wide measures described above. When the patient did not get better, there was considerable tension on the island. Evening ‘gatherings’ heatedly (though in a whisper) debated whether the methods were effective. Some men argued that, when Olowitinappi returned, he would be able to handle such cases without all the village-wide fuss. Finally, the man’s family decided to take him to a missionary-run hospital in another village, 6 hours away by motorboat.

This excerpt was coded as Ingroup antagonisms (578); Bodily injuries (752); Magical and mental therapy (755); Medical personnel (759); and Avoidance and taboo (784). This illustration shows a form of ICM, Avoidance and taboo (784), co-occurring with a type of Sociocultural/Interpersonal conflict, Ingroup antagonisms (578). Here, the conflict escalated between healers and approaches to healing because the community was debating which and whether the snake-bite remedies being used were effective.

The second example is indicative of a non-ICM approach co-occurring with a Political conflict, which is the most common form of conflict associated with this approach to conflict management. Writing about the Zulu of southern Africa, Ferdinand Krauss (1969, 203) wrote,

He [Chaka] initiated his blood reign by murdering all those chiefs who had stood by his brother, and of whom he was not quite certain. After the death of Tingaswao he marched against the Umtetwa, who had given him sanctuary and defended him during his exile. Chaka massacred many of them and the rest had to submit. Similarly, he fought all neighbouring tribes, and soon he was master of the country between the Umzumvubu and Delagoa Bay, a country of 100 German miles. It was only fear of the white man which prevented him carrying war to the Border kaffirs, the Pondo and Xhosa, who were under the protection of the English Government. Chaka’s reign was marked by inhuman cruelty and oppressive despotism. By constant and numerous executions he knew how to keep his people in slavelike obedience. He pretended to be in touch with his ancestors, and that it was they who ordered him to do everything that he did. For a long time he got away with all the unheard-of cruelties which his unfortunate people had to suffer. A nod of the head or lifting of a finger was the sign for execution; there was no investigation whether the poor wretch in question was guilty or not. A father was forced to murder his innocent child, a brother to murder his brother and a husband to murder his wife; whoever vacillated or showed compassion was dealt with likewise. After such atrocities, festivities followed to pacify and amuse the living. Cattle were slaughtered and the property of the murdered was distributed amongst the executors of the king’s orders.

This excerpt was coded as Chief executive (643), Revolution (669), Sanctions (681), Execution of justice (696), Instigation of war (721), and Cult of the dead (769). These codes show the intricate overlaps in the analysis between the select categories, a particular challenge when working with complex ethnographic cultural materials. This particular excerpt represents both “ineffective” ICM and non-ICM approaches as the ICM subject Cult of the dead (769) co-occurs with the conflict variables Revolution (669) and Instigation of war (721) (i.e., Political conflicts) as well as the OCM subject Sanctions (681) representing a Legal/Judicial type of conflict (Figure 2). Similarly, the non-ICM subject Execution of justice (696) also co-occurs with the various types of conflict, including the two forms of Political conflict identified. Based on our coding and analysis schema, for this one excerpt, this paragraph accounts for six of the total 423,664 co-occurrences between conflict/no-conflict (outcome variables) and conflict management styles (predictor variables: ICM, non-ICM) (Table 2).

As this paragraph clearly demonstrates alongside our preceding discussion of ADR and restorative justice techniques migrating into the professional conflict managers’ repertoires, and the non-ICM subject “Peacebuilding” finding itself in closer proximity to ICM subjects in the MDS plot (Figure 1), the handling of real-life conflict is messy, often with many strategies being used concurrently to try and mitigate conflict-ridden situations. However, we have been able to demonstrate that there is an observable, statistically significant difference between the two identified conflict management styles. Furthermore, in the analyzed Indigenous contexts provided by anthropologists fashioned over decades of work and housed in the eHRAF database, ICM approaches to managing, resolving, and transforming conflict co-occur with conflict at a statistically significant lower rate as compared with non-ICM strategies, in our interpretation, making them more effective.

Discussion and Conclusion

These findings support our hypothesis that Indigenous conflict management strategies are more effective than non-Indigenous conflict management strategies in Indigenous contexts. Our analysis shows that Indigenous conflict management approaches co-occur with conflict less often than non-Indigenous strategies (i.e., are “more effective”). After validating our choice of variables through MDS, we support our hypothesis through a chi-squared analysis of co-occurrences between the predictor variables ICM and non-ICM as well as the outcome variables conflict and types of conflict.

This study inductively identifies four conflict types and matches them to the established Indigenous or non-Indigenous strategies for managing conflict. We further find that Indigenous conflict management strategies co-occur most frequently with socio-cultural/interpersonal types of conflicts at a statistically significant higher rate than other forms of conflict. These results show that in Indigenous contexts such as those studied by anthropologists based on the ethnographic texts housed and indexed in the eHRAF cultural database, Indigenous approaches are both more effective overall (i.e., less co-occurrences with conflict variables), and are most often applied to socio-cultural and interpersonal types of conflicts (when co-occurrences do happen in the same text).

While significant limitations to the study remain such as using co-occurrences at the paragraph-level as our units of analysis and relying on the omission of conflict-related subjects in these paragraphs to represent the absence of conflict, no alternative research design at this scale was feasible. Furthermore, because this study is comparative between ICM and non-ICM, each variable is subject to the same limitations, and yet, theoretically supportable statistical patterns still emerged in the data, hence rejecting the null hypothesis. Therefore, we are confident that further research will continue to support our conclusions.

The successes of these Indigenous conflict-reducing mechanisms, however, are constrained. Scholars like Mac Ginty (2008) and Tuso (2016b) discuss the drawbacks related to the implementation of Indigenous conflict management approaches within Western legal systems, while others (Cordova, 2014; Zion & Yazzie, 2008) point toward successful cases of the blending of both approaches. This suggests that the success of blended approaches is also contextual, which is not surprising given the importance of context to Indigenous conflict management. Adding this third category of a blended approach (i.e., both ICM and non-ICM strategies co-occurring together either with or without conflict) would make for a valuable next step in the research to see if there is an added impact (i.e., more effectiveness) in applying multiple styles of conflict management as proposed by Cordova (2014) and Zion and Yazzie (2008).

Maybe unsurprisingly, but now empirically supported, homegrown solutions to local problems must continue to be marshaled and nurtured within local contexts. In their conclusion to Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in Africa, (Benjamin & Adebayo (2015), 325–327) summarize seven characteristics of Indigenous conflict management strategies pulled from their diverse contributors: Indigenous conflict management strategies are (1) experiential, (2) gerontocratic, (3) reconciliatory, (4) ritualized, (5) inexpensive and expedited (not permitted to fester), (6) contextually diverse, and (7) localized and communal. These seven characteristics are reflected in our OCM subject proxies and continue to reflect effective conflict management systems found by anthropologists and others in operation around the globe. Mats Utas (2012, 1) reminds us, “Informal networks of political or economic character are present in any society, whether in Africa, Europe, North America or elsewhere. The politics of intimacy … is part of the everyday life” (see also Herzfeld, 1997). As previously noted, “all conflict is local,” so the solutions must be as well.

Supplemental Material

sj-xlsx-1-ccr-10.1177_10693971211051534 – Supplemental Material for The Effectiveness of Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in Localized Contexts

Supplemental Material, sj-xlsx-1-ccr-10.1177_10693971211051534 for The Effectiveness of Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in Localized Contexts by Brandon D. Lundy, Tyler L. Collette and J. Taylor Downs in Cross-Cultural Research

Supplemental Material

sj-xlsx-2-ccr-10.1177_10693971211051534 – Supplemental Material for The Effectiveness of Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in Localized Contexts

Supplemental Material, sj-xlsx-2-ccr-10.1177_10693971211051534 for The Effectiveness of Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in Localized Contexts by Brandon D. Lundy, Tyler L. Collette and J. Taylor Downs in Cross-Cultural Research

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Brandon D. Lundy

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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