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Exploring the Concept

A flourishing concept of mediation has become a fashionable phenomenon, which is cited in several fields. However, we quite often use the term mediation without properly considering its stakes and foundations. Mediation is not a vague notion; it benefits from a rigorous definition, but it suffers from a sometimes lax use. Generally, mediation can be defined first of all as a way of building and managing social life through an intermediary third party, who is neutral, independent and has no other power than the authority granted to them by the mediated individuals, who will have freely chosen or recognized them (Guillaume-Hofnung 1995).1

The main goal of mediation is the re-establishment or the establishment of communication. We can say, in the words of Michèle Guillaume-Hofnung, that mediation is basically tripartite in its structure and result (Guillaume-Hofnung 1995).

There are multiple symbolic forms and mediations that allow humans to establish relations with other individuals. Any intermediary is a mediator, even if often it is not recognized as such: our body and language are mediators of the world, a habit or speech are mediators, etc. According to the type of mediation, the components will have different shapes, from the singular to the collective and from objects to the virtual dimension, including the human sphere. Contemporary mediation relies on an external third party, otherwise we refer to conciliation. "Mediation is conceived both as the symptom of a societal evolution and as a remedy to its diseases; it is simultaneously a theoretical perspective and a course of action, a way of saying and a way of doing; finally, it refers to both 'micro' (relation between an audience and a work, relation between individuals in conflict) and 'macro' phenomena (relation between cultural groups or worlds of meaning). We can already see that this topic cannot be understood all at once." (Servais 2016, p. 9). This argument, put forward by Christine Servais, reflects accurately the current use of the concept of mediation. This concept, which has been employed in Information and Communication Sciences since the 1990s, ranks among the indispensable foundations of this field. For Jean Caune, mediation is an essential concept that makes it possible to describe and understand the relations among humans and the relations between humans and the groups that they create (Thonon 2003).

1.1. A conceptual approach

We have deliberately chosen a conceptual approach, ruling out in particular a diachronic approach that would juxtapose topics to be researched and their related theoretical frameworks.

Concepts are useful tools for building theories or models and constitute a way of offering a scientific overview of the field. We distinguish between topics to be researched and concepts, as the former pivot on practices, phenomena and human or social products, whereas concepts combine, intensify and can be reused to understand these different topics.

Concepts allow us to describe and understand the topics of our research and the phenomena that characterize them. A concept is an abstract and general idea (Cuvillier 1967). André Comte-Sponville claims that a notion is generally vaguer or broader, whereas a concept is narrower or more precise. A notion can only be understood in context, while a concept is somewhat autonomous; it is understood in a theoretical context, but it can be abstracted and show a form of self-sufficiency (Comte-Sponville 2001). While a notion concerns common ways of thinking, a concept has to do with a specific science or school of thought. Certainly, there are different levels at which the idea of a concept can be grasped. Naming facts and phenomena already constitute a conceptual vision that defines terms, which correspond to the typifications mentioned by Berger and Luckmann (1966).2 However, beyond naming, we can explain, understand and abstract, and it is on this level that we should grasp the idea of a concept such as it is employed in this work. In relation to the concept of mediation, we will have to mention, sometimes rapidly, a certain number of elements that allow us to specify the way in which it is understood (among other things, the idea of third party, relation, subject, institution, organization, device, time in mediation, etc.). The references employed in this work will enable the readers themselves to delve deeper into those elements that according to them have been addressed too cursorily.

1.2. The origins

We may think that mediation has existed since the dawn of time in those cases where third parties have intervened to solve conflicts. However, this type of mediation differs from the kind that we have usually referred to since the end of the 20th Century.

If we consider age-old traditions, we can see that mediation is deeply rooted in Arab, Chinese and African cultures (think of the palaver tree).

In astrology, mediation is the culmination of a celestial body; in music, it is the pause in the middle of a plainchant verse, and, in geometry, the mediator is the set of points that are equidistant from the two endpoints of a segment or, in other words, the perpendicular at the center of this segment.

Observing bonobos or chimpanzees, whose behaviors are thought to be similar to those of the first humans, reveals that frequently there are conciliators, often an old female or an old male not involved in power politics (de Waal 1989).

We can identify the skeleton of mediation in the culture of Ancient Greece, with the philosophical current that started with Plato (428-348 BC). Maieutics aims to allow an individual to express the knowledge inside him and therefore to think and act. According to Plato's words in the fourth book of the Republic, the goal of this practice is to develop personal responsibility by mastering one's passions (Plato 1578). The rhetoricians' teaching is opposed to the sophists', who are mostly interested in the effectiveness of communication techniques with the aim of applying them in trials. The perspective adopted by Platonist philosophers involves helping and accompanying an individual in his introspection, whereas sophists employ these techniques to lead an audience to adopt their point of view by using language often in a manipulative manner.

If mediation first meant division, in the 16th Century the word started to mean intercession bound to reconcile individuals and parties, first in a religious context in a relation between Man and God (1541) and later in a legal and diplomatic context (1878).

The figure of the mediator first appeared in French in Christian theology. According to St Augustine, the divide between Platonism and Christianity involved religious mediation. Like St Paul, St Augustine claimed that the only mediator between God and men is Christ, who is the life mediator opposed to the Devil, i.e. the death mediator (Huisman 2009). The Virgin Mary was called the mediatrix in order to highlight the role she plays in the mystery of Redemption. Then, the word mediator took on the more general meaning of an "individual who intervenes to help people come to an agreement" (1355), especially in international law (1437). Since World War Two, the American government has encouraged the intervention of mediators/conciliators in labor disputes to ward off social instability. In France, the law that institutes a mediator, inspired by the Scandinavian ombudsman, has contributed to the modern meaning of the word since 1973.

The theory of mediation or clinical anthropology, established by Jean Gagnepain, is an analysis model in the humanities. According to this theory, the problems that can be found in language do not always constitute linguistic problems: the human dimension observed from a pathological perspective reveals that the cause is not related to the effects that it produces (Gagnepain 1994).

According to Jacqueline Morineau, the mediation process is not a recent idea, but a very old practice that is emerging in a new shape to meet the actual needs of the modern world. This author draws a parallel between mediation and Greek tragedy, which appeared at a crucial moment in Greek history when two "universes" were meeting, one based on the respect of the power of superior forces, the gods, and the other, newer, founded on the supremacy of law, man and reason (Morineau 1999). The concept was then shaped by linguistics and, according to Jean Caune, it was because of the philosophy of language that the notion could be established in full and in its heuristic dimension (Caune 1999).

1.3. Professional mediation

Among the first authors who formulated a theory of mediation, Jean-François Six put forward the following meaning: "There are four types of mediation: the first two are bound to create or re-establish a link, whereas the other two are bound to avoid a conflict" (Six 1990, p. 164). "Creative mediation" aims to produce new connections among individuals or groups; "renewing mediation" reactivates connections that have been stretched thin; "preventive mediation" avoids the outbreak of a conflict; "remedial mediation" helps the warring parties find a solution. Six's classification is functional.

Michèle Guillaume-Hofnung reduces the model to two categories: mediations outside any kind of conflict and conflictual mediations, which she also calls "mediations of differences" and "mediations of...