Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Laos: Perspective for Today's World.

• Author: Sims, Kearrin
• Position: Book review

Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Laos: Perspective for Today's World. By Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2015. Hardcover: 157pp.

Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Laos offers an ethnographically rich portrayal of Lao cultural ceremonies and rituals that stresses the importance of grassroots practices to conflict resolution. Authored by Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe, a former Lao refugee and now an academic at Menno Simons College in Canada, the book includes insightful and descriptive personal vignettes of Lao cultural practices. It is unfortunate, however, that poor academic rigour and notable methodological flaws weaken the book.

The central aim of Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Laos is to consider how grassroots level conflict resolution processes promote justice and maintain relationships in contexts where formal legal systems are underdeveloped. Stobbe argues that an appreciation of cultural value systems is key to conflict resolution--particularly when conflict arises between different cultural groups--and that "Western" practices of "mediator neutrality and professional third parties in dispute resolution" have often been incorrectly assumed as superior to other models (p. 4). Indeed, with respect to Laos, she argues that "grassroots systems are far more capable of providing justice than the professional systems espoused by Western developed countries" (p. 7).

For scholars of Laos, the most valuable chapters are undoubtedly Chapters 2, 3 and 4, in which Stobbe provides a detailed analysis of cultural ceremonies and conflict resolution practices such as op-lom, which are aimed at maintaining social harmony and restoring "face" or "one's respect and status in a communal relationship" (p. 35). Through a thorough examination of what the author describes as the Lao Conflict Resolution Spectrum, these three chapters convincingly argue the importance of personal relationships in Lao conflict resolution practices, and that the avoidance of public confrontation has led many Laotians to consider formal legal trials as unconducive "to rebuilding positive relationships" (p. 57).

For those interested in conflict resolution more broadly, Stobbe's claim that dispute resolution processes of formal, rule-of-law-type legal systems are impractical and incapable of providing social justice for much of the world's population is perhaps her most important intellectual contribution. Significantly, while the...