Source: (2003) In, Kieran McEvoy and Tim Newburn,eds., Criminology, Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK and New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Pp. 208-222.
To discuss communities and conflict resolution, Sandra Walklate relates a key development in a comparative study of two high crime areas in England. The study addressed how people manage their sense of well-being in those areas. While the study began largely within the “fear of crimeâ€? debate, it shifted over the course of its more than two years to the perspective that the concept of trust would be more helpful in understanding the empirical findings. Building on the idea of the importance of trust, Walklate in this chapter considers the relationship between the nature of community dynamics and the way in which conflicts might be resolved at a community level. She contends that an understanding of community dynamics raises a number of questions concerning how the notion of conflict resolution has been understood. This leads to an exploration of whether there are alternative understandings that would yield better, more effective conflict resolution.
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