Marketing as a means to transformative social conflict resolution: lessons from transitioning war economies and the Colombian coffee marketing system

Social conflicts are ubiquitous to the human condition and occur throughout markets, marketing processes, and marketing systems.When unchecked or unmitigated, social conflict can have devastating consequences for consumers, marketers, and societies, especially when conflict escalates to war. In this article, the authors offer a systemic analysis of the Colombian war economy, with its conflicted shadow and coping markets, to show how a growing network of fair-trade coffee actors has played a key role in transitioning the country’s war economy into a peace economy. They particularly draw attention to the sources of conflict in this market and highlight four transition mechanisms — i.e., empowerment, communication, community building and regulation — through which marketers can contribute to peacemaking and thus produce mutually beneficial outcomes for consumers and society. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for marketing theory, practice, and public policy

Meaningful Engagement from the Bottom-Up? Taking Stock of Participation in Transitional Justice Processes

This article surveys the literature on participation in transitional justice (TJ) focusing primarily on victims and bottom-up actors. We argue that often the preoccupation in TJ has been with greater rather than more meaningful participation, and that there needs to be a concerted effort to focus on everyday actors, including their voices, needs and priorities. Consideration also needs to be given as to whether meaningful participation can occur without genuine obligation and commitment to heeding participants' input, and greater consideration is required to measure and build an evidence-base regarding participatory TJ efforts and their outcomes. We advocate for further discussion in theory and in practice about how participation in TJ can be reimagined toward actor oriented, bottom-up led processes that lead to meaningful outcomes. We suggest that TJ specific participation considerations are required and refer to existing theoretical considerations and models from other disciplines and sectors as helpful departure points