Dispute, Harm, Crime, and Conflict: Narrative Positioning in Justice Practice

This dissertation describes the changing discourse surrounding conflict resolution as justice practice. By redefining crime in various ways---as dispute, as harm, and as conflict---conflict resolution and restorative justice practitioners construct alternative narratives of crime. Positioning theory is used as a tool to analyze practitioner narratives of community mediation, victim offender mediation and community conferencing practice. These alternative practices are understood as primarily narrative interventions, providing participants with narrative agency to recreate their identities in the aftermath of wrongdoing. Thus the malignant positioning of offenders and victims inherent in criminal court processing of crime is counteracted.