Interdisciplinary influences on family mediation

A chronicle of colonisation foretold?

Authors

  • Marian Roberts South East London Family Mediation Bureau

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/mtp.28819

Keywords:

ADR, negotiation, mediation, family mediation, interdisciplinary scholarship, practice

Abstract

This article contrasts the interdisciplinary enrichment of mediation as a subject of scholarly study with the often distorting even damaging interdisciplinary influences on mediation, family mediation in the UK in particular, as a practice intervention. The article identifies four historical phases of disciplinary influence over the evolutionary development of family mediation from the early welfare and therapeutic influences to those more recent pressures arising from legal practice and from the legal system itself. The article raises current concerns about the detrimental impact these pressures are having on the integrity of mediation practice in providing a genuinely alternative dispute resolution process with distinctive process and outcome benefits for the public. The article argues that lacking conceptual clarity and coherence provided by the rich interdisciplinary body of twentieth-century mediation theory and scholarship, mediation practice becomes vulnerable, unable not only to resist distorting, damaging and even destructive pressures but even to recognise them.

Author Biography

  • Marian Roberts, South East London Family Mediation Bureau

    Marian Roberts is qualified as a barrister and a social worker and has been in continuous practice as a family mediator since 1982. She has been involved in the development of the professional regulatory framework for family mediation practice and teaches on the ADR Law Masters at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her publications include Mediation in Family Disputes: Principles of Practice (4th edn, Ashgate, 2014), A–Z of Mediation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Developing the Craft of Mediation: Reflections on Theory and Practice (Jessica Kingsley, 2007) and Access to Agreement: A Consumer Study of Mediation in Family Disputes (with Gwynn Davis, Open University Press, 1988).

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Published

2017-01-16

Issue

Section

Practice Articles

How to Cite

Roberts, M. (2017). Interdisciplinary influences on family mediation: A chronicle of colonisation foretold?. Mediation Theory and Practice, 1(2), 211-231. https://doi.org/10.1558/mtp.28819