Accommodation

Toleration. The parties do not resolve or compromise anything; they simply agree, expressly or tacitly, to permit each other's differing practice and to coexist. Treated in the next chapter.

Conversion. One party abandons its position and accepts the other's. Unlike compromise, one side wins the argument.

Sublimation. The substitution of non-conflicting for conflicting attitudes and objectives, so that the energy of the conflict is redirected to some other end.

Rationalisation. A party justifies its position or its withdrawal to itself by a plausible explanation, so that accepting the arrangement does not feel like defeat. Its function is to preserve self-respect, which is often what makes an accommodation acceptable.

Superordination and subordination. The parties settle into an accepted ranking, with one above the other. Treated in its own chapter.

Truce. A suspension of conflict for a defined period, with nothing settled.

Displacement. Conflict is ended by removing its object, or by directing the hostility elsewhere.

Institutional avoidance. The parties arrange their affairs so as not to meet: separate timings, separate spaces, separate spheres.

Why accommodation matters so much to law

Almost the whole of dispute resolution is accommodation in one of its forms, and setting the two vocabularies side by side is the most useful thing in this chapter.

Two propositions follow, and both are worth writing. First, a court judgment is a form of accommodation, not of assimilation: it ends the conflict and does not make the parties agree. Second, the growth of arbitration, conciliation and mediation is the growth of forms of accommodation that leave the parties' relationship intact, which is exactly why they are preferred where the parties must continue dealing with each other, as in commercial and family matters.

A worked example

Two households dispute two feet of land between their houses.

Conflict: an argument, a wall pulled down, a complaint at the police station.

Coercion would settle it if one were far stronger, and the settlement would last only as long as the strength.

Compromise: they split the difference at one foot each. Requires roughly equal strength, and neither is satisfied.

Conciliation: an elder or a mediator helps them agree, and the agreement holds because it is theirs.

Arbitration or adjudication: a third party decides. The dispute ends; the resentment does not.

Toleration: they leave the strip unused and stop speaking of it.

Institutional avoidance: one household builds its gate on the other side.

Note what none of these does. None of them makes either household think the other was right. That is accommodation working exactly as it should, and a student who expects a settlement to produce agreement has confused it with assimilation.

Criticism

1. It may register injustice. An accommodation reached between unequal parties records the inequality and calls it peace, which is the standing objection to celebrating settlement as such.
2. It is unstable where it is unequal, because the weaker party accepts it only while it must.
3. It suppresses rather than resolves. The difference remains and may resurface, which is the criticism made of arrangements that keep communities apart without addressing what divides them.
4. The language of harmony conceals power, which is [The Conflict Perspective] applied to this process.

Quick revision

1. Accommodation ends conflict without removing the differences. Arrangement, not fusion.
2. Park and Burgess: the natural sequel to conflict; a modus vivendi.
3. Characteristics: follows conflict, universal, conscious or unconscious, differences persist, restores functioning, often unequal, not necessarily permanent.
4. Forms: coercion, compromise, arbitration, conciliation and mediation, adjudication, toleration, conversion, sublimation, rationalisation, superordination and subordination, truce, displacement, institutional avoidance.
5. Arbitration decides; conciliation and mediation help the parties decide.
6. Almost all dispute resolution is accommodation: settlement, arbitration, mediation, Lok Adalat, judgment, interim orders.
7. A judgment is accommodation, not assimilation: it ends the conflict and does not produce agreement.
8. Criticism: it can register injustice as peace, is unstable when unequal, suppresses rather than resolves, and its language of harmony can conceal power.

Test yourself

1. Define accommodation and distinguish it from assimilation. Accommodation is the process by which parties in conflict adjust to one another so that the conflict ends and working relations resume, without the underlying differences being removed. Assimilation goes further and removes the differences themselves, fusing the parties culturally. Accommodation is an arrangement and can be reached quickly; assimilation is a fusion and takes generations. Parties who have accommodated still hold their different beliefs and may still dislike one another.

2. Name and explain six forms of accommodation. Coercion, in which the stronger party imposes an end to the conflict by force or its threat. Compromise, in which each party surrenders part of its claim, which requires roughly equal strength. Arbitration, in which a third party decides and binds them, and conciliation or mediation, in which a third party helps them reach their own agreement. Toleration, in which they simply permit each other's differing practice without resolving anything. And conversion, in which one party abandons its position and adopts the other's.

3. How does accommodation relate to legal dispute resolution? Almost every legal mode of ending a dispute is a form of accommodation: settlement and compounding correspond to compromise; arbitration and conciliation under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 and court-annexed mediation and Lok Adalat correspond to those forms; trial and judgment correspond to adjudication; interim and status quo orders correspond to a truce; and constitutional protection of religious freedom and of personal laws corresponds to toleration.

4. Why is it said that a judgment is accommodation and not assimilation? Because a judgment ends the conflict without producing agreement. The losing party is bound and is not persuaded; both parties retain the views with which they began; and what has changed is only that there is now an authoritative arrangement under which they must live. Expecting a decision to produce reconciliation confuses accommodation with assimilation, and it explains why processes that leave the relationship intact are preferred where the parties must continue dealing with each other.

5. Give the principal criticism of accommodation. That it may register injustice as peace. An accommodation reached between parties of unequal strength records the inequality and calls the result harmony, and the weaker party accepts it only for so long as it must, which makes such arrangements unstable as well as unjust. The language of adjustment and harmony can therefore conceal a settled distribution of power, and an accommodation that suppresses a grievance without addressing it leaves the conflict available to resurface.