ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the implications of functional coexistence for purposeful social action and change. Specifically, it proposes a functional coexistence approach to conflict intervention and peacebuilding, defined as an integrated framework of thinking and action designed to enable conflict parties, intervention practitioners, and policymakers to strategically use functional coexistence as both an operational context and an enabling condition for sustained, systematic social change. While cautioning against the frequently observed assumption of phased, linear progression toward resolution, the functional coexistence approach, like an extended, discovery-oriented journey, employs four guideposts for identifying practical ways of thinking and social interaction useful for long-term conflict intervention. The first guidepost is the need to cultivate a broad historical awareness of social change, fostering a decades-long perspective on how systemic change unfolds. This broad historical perspective is essential because it enables conflict parties and intervention practitioners to contextualize the short-term dynamics of social conflict and maintain willful resilience in the face of setbacks and contextual shifts during their extended engagement in the conflict. The second guidepost is a keen awareness of the multi-layered, structural nature of conflict-affected relationships in which mutual non-recognition and conflict non-resolution persist. Those enacting the functional coexistence approach must not only understand the systemic drivers behind resistance to change but also use this understanding to assist conflict parties in identifying practical and strategic ways to influence different levels of hierarchical relations within which the intractable conflict is structured and embedded. The third guidepost is the development of sustainable ways to remain actively engaged in the enduring state of non-resolution, resisting the urge to withdraw. The objective of this sustained constructive engagement is to create and seize emergent opportunities to alter the underlying condition of non-resolution. The fourth and final guidepost is the tenacity and adaptability to tailor each of the short-term (months to a few years) actions and projects as opportunities to foster conditions for realizing longer-term (decades) systemic change.
