Quotes from Kevin Avruch

By the early 1980s, the view that most any conflict—domestic or international, intergroup or interpersonal—could be reframed and negotiated to a satisfying conclusion if only the right technical skills were brought to bear on it had become part of the popular imagination. Books championing such technical approaches regularly appeared on bestseller lists.

Yet even as the possibility that all conflicts might yield to skilled application of technical knowledge assuaged the popular imagination, some scholars and analysts were sounding alarms about the dangers of a culture-free conception of conflict. And we began to push back against the received view that conflicts required only mechanically technical solutions.