ABSTRACT
For most people, including many mediators, theory is a word that very quickly stops them from reading on. If you are one of these people, it is important that you read this chapter. I want to put across a view of theory as something that must concern us all. My concern here is to argue that we cannot divide theory and practice as simply as people often do. I will use the word theory to mean the mass of values, assumptions, beliefs and systematic arguments about the social world and politics that all of us hold, more or less consciously, and more or less coherently. These thoughts and ways of thinking guide us in our everyday lives in an implicit way. They are not some kind of rulebook that we consult for every action. But they do give us frameworks to interpret the world, and help us decide what is possible and desirable to do. We are moral creatures and we are reasoning creatures, and in almost everything that we choose to do or not do, we base our actions on our personal social, political and ethical theories. And these theories are also affected by the way that we live our lives; we incorporate this into our theories, justified and explained after the fact.
