Working Paper Series
The Centre for Dialogue’s Working Paper Series, established in 2006, is intended to provide scholars, students, policy-makes, journalists, and the broader community with an opportunity to contribute to an on-going and wide-ranging debate.
The series examines the deeper roots of cultural, religious and political conflict and the contribution which the philosophy and method of dialogue can make to the resolution of such deep-seated and intractable problems.
Authors are invited to explore the dynamics of conflict, with a view to identifying ways in which inter-cultural or inter-civilisational dialogue can contribute to coexistence, co-operation and mutual enrichment. Papers may focus on individual case studies, comparative analysis, or more systemic approaches. Works that are entirely theoretical or philosophical in their approach are equally welcome.
Working papers – as the title suggests – should not necessarily be taken as completed works or as final formulations of an argument, but as works in progress. The series will, among other things, provide authors with the opportunity to circulate research before it appears in final form in an academic journal or book. Since much of the research is ongoing, the authors generally welcome comments from readers.
Latest Working Paper 2012/2:
Michael T. Seigel
Consensus Building Revisited: The Experience and Approach of Toshio Kuwako [PDF 508KB]
This paper is a summation of material drawn from 18 papers written by Professor Toshio Kuwako of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The purpose of the paper is to present an overview of Kuwako’s approach to consensus building and make it available to the English-speaking world. The papers written by Professor Kuwako are largely experiential accounts with reflection on and analysis of that experience. The organization given to the present paper is that of the present writer. Given that doubts are sometimes raised about consensus building in regard to intractable issues where no agreement seems possible, and that it is precisely these kinds of issues that are the focus of Kuwako’s work, his contribution would seem important. The paper does not undertake any other discussion regarding the projects Kuwako has worked on. There is a good deal of information about these projects on the internet, but in line with the goal of the paper and the interests of brevity only Kuwako’s own discussion of these projects is presented.
