This book re-examines conflict resolution – and partcualry problem-solving conflict resolution – from a new perspective. The book is a critical study of John Burton’s work, and outlines an alternative framework for the study of international conflict. It provides an insight into the problems of conflict and conflict resolution from a social constructionist angle.

Väyrynen argues that culture has a constitutive role in international conflict and conflict resolution. Culture offers a grammar for acting in and interpreting the world, and provides understandings of conflict and its resolution. Theories which deny the importance of cultural failure to understand the ontological conditions of human ‘being’.