"Good enough" isn't so bad: Thinking about success and failure in ethnic conflict management.

Daily headlines demonstrate the importance of increasing our understanding of conflict success in ethnic disputes. Too often, whether in everyday conversations or in scholarly discussion, we communicate despair and find few genuine successes. This article develops a more complex conceptualization of success drawing on psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott's notion of the good-enough mother. Winnicott's work stimulates valuable insights regarding four key aspects of ethnic conflict management: the definition of success, the importance of identity issues, the empowerment of the parties, and the importance of third parties in changing the relationship among opponents. The concept of good-enough conflict management emphasizes that successful ethnic conflict is possible but, at the same time, that normal, inherent tensions will continue to exist in any relationship between actors with independent identities and goals. It draws attention to constructive conflict as a developmental, ...