Beyond Mediation

This book offers narrative analysis theory as a vehicle to understand indigenous mediation. The conceptual basis for this manuscript is the undisputed urgent need to understand mediation from a conflict transformation perspective highlighting the nexus between indigenous justice, forgiveness and trauma healing. Embracing indigenous approaches, while rejecting/problematizing impractical and impossible western approaches in favor of local and when applicable cross-cultural approaches could provide enduring mediation outcomes. This book is based on the assumptions that local communities have the tools/capabilities that they need to build stable and enduring peaceful co-existence. These capacities have been weakened by the political elite and bankrupt/corrupt leadership approaches that must be rejected through empowerment and rigorous mediation brigades at the local level. The last chapter in the manuscript proposes a research center for indigenous justice, forgiveness and trauma healing in East Africa that will guarantee decades of scholarship and research around this subject in East Africa and beyond.