Before I Built a Wall
Channel: LIVING SOCIOLOGY
Date: 18/12/2019

First Person, Plural on CFUV-fm, Victoria, BC 
Originally aired March 6, 2003

Today we discuss people getting along with each other as neighbours in times of peace and times of conflict. How people get along with each other has been a basic question posed by humans for as long as history can record. In his classic poem, Mending Wall Robert Frost contemplates the question of boundaries and cooperation when he writes:  

Before I built a wall, I'd ask to know 
What I was walling in or walling out, 
And to whom I was like to give offense.

Originally, we planned an episode this week about dispute resolution and the different ways in which people can settle conflicts. With perpetual threats of war and increased tension among people in general, this seemed like a timely topic to address. Unplanned events, however, often converge with the best-laid plans to create something that would have made sense all along. 

Long-time children's television icon, Fred Rogers, of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood died this week at the age of 74. As we contemplated conflict this week, we realized that for many people our age and younger, Mister Rogers was our first teacher in dispute resolution, whose influence we remember fondly as we grow older, even if we sometimes forget the specific lessons.

Catherine Morris, a Canadian lawyer with experience in dispute resolution since 1983, is the director of Peacemakers Trust, an Associate of the Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives and a former Executive Director of the Institute for Dispute Resolution at the University of Victoria. She maintains an extensive website for Peacemakers Trust. We spoke with Catherine this week about how methods of formal dispute resolution have expanded as cultural diversity and postmodern concerns challenge traditional beliefs about interests and rights.

copyright: Carl Wilkerson and Pattie Thomas

http://sociologylegacy.pbworks.com/w/page/93421664/Episode%2037%20Before%20I%20Built%20a%20Wall