A large daffodil grows out of a concrete block. The block is a prison cell with metal bars. The daffodil's stem
Illustration credit: Naomi Ushiyama.|

Transformative Approaches to Conflict Resolution

By ,

The following resources focus on approaches to conflict that seek to transform oppressive dynamics, our relationships to each other, and our communities at large.

Introduction

Practices such as Community Accountability and Generative Conflict are implemented differently within Transformative Justice and Restorative Justice contexts. These differences offer a pathway for extending restorative responses to instances of harm by taking collective responsibility for transforming our approaches to everyday conflicts and the oppressive systems within which we all perpetuate harm. This article focuses on introducing these interconnected concepts and offering resources for further exploration.

Note: Many of the listed resources link to content that includes discussions of violence and abusive behaviours which may have intense connotations or bring up difficult feelings and memories. Please consider ensuring that you are in a safe location and have options for support if needed.

Key Concepts

Transformative Justice

Transformative Justice refers to a set of dynamic practices emerging from integrating theory with the experiential knowledge of structurally marginalised communities. These approaches build skills in taking collective responsibility for conflict, rather than relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing.

Transformative justice is a generative methodology for addressing harm and violence in ways that support survivorsโ€™ healing, harmersโ€™ accountability, and community health and well-being, without relying on existing punishment systems. It seeks to address incidences of harm and violence in ways that meet immediate needs, while transforming the conditions which allow for harm and violence to occur. – SOIL: A Transformative Justice Project, 2020

Transformative justice practices build on conceptual foundations offered by political commitments such as prison abolition, and the interlinked movements for racial, gender, economic, disability, and housing justice. While definitions differ, there are some key characteristics that persist in descriptions of Transformative Justice (TJ) across academic, activist, and community contexts:

  1. An understanding of individual acts of violence as historically embedded and structurally maintained by systems of oppression
  2. Experience with navigating healing and accountability as collective responsibilities
  3. A commitment to building community accountability practices outside of, and in resistance to, systems of incarceration

Transformative justice describes a systems approach to identifying root causes of conflict and responding to these as a community – including developing various harm-reduction processes to interpersonal violence within communities at the grassroots level rather than relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. Beyond Survival, edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2020)

It is essential to situate TJ as an approach that emerges from โ€“ and remains accountable to โ€“ the communities that have been historically most affected by interpersonal and structural violence. Rather than originating within institutional frameworks, TJ was developed through the survival strategies, resistance movements, and transformative efforts of those most impacted by systemic harm. – Jade Lane et al., 2026

While descriptions of transformative justice often focus on taking collective responsibility for the conditions within which harms occur due to abuses of power, these approaches are also relevant to harms that can be experienced due to misunderstandings, mistakes, and everyday conflicts.

For more detail, see What is Transformative Justice? – A video by Barnard Center for Research on Women, featuring Adrienne Maree Brown, Mia Mingus, Stas Schmiedt, Ann Russo, Esteban Kelly, Martina Kartman, Priya Rai, and Shira Hassa (2020)

Restorative Justice

While Transformative Justice (TJ) and Restorative Justice (RT) approaches share some overlapping practices, including supporting community participation in the processes of relational repair and accountability, there are important differences in implementation contexts and scope of political commitments.

RJ and TJ share commitments to accountability, healing, and community participation, but differ in scope and emphasis: RJ is often oriented toward repairing harm between individuals, whereas TJ extends this focus to include the structural causes of violence and the wider communityโ€™s role in accountability – Jade Lane et al., 2026

Restorative justice approaches offer processes that support โ€œparties with a stake in a specific offence [to] collectively resolve how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the futureโ€ (ALRC). For example, restorative justice services are increasingly offered as an adjunct to the legal system processes that follow reporting sexual abuse. These services include support from facilitators who are trained to provide trauma-informed and survivor-orientated invitations to accountability for people responsible for specific instances of harm. These accountability processes often incorporate members of their communities to explore ways to reduce the risk of future harms.

The foundational principles of a restorative approach are to: cause no further harm; work with those involved, and set relations right – Australian Association for Restorative Justice

Restorative justice services can help respond to harms in ways that shift away from punishing individuals and towards building our sense of collective responsibility for responding to the conditions within which individuals cause harm to each other. Transformative justice approaches also seek to restore relationships between people following instances of harm, yet focus on proactively transforming oppressive systemic conditions within which we such harms occur.

Transformative justice is a decolonizing and anti-oppression approach [that] addresses oppression by systems of domination, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, elitism, classism, and ableism within all domestic, interpersonal, global, and community conflicts. In short, transformative justice is restorative justice plus social justice. Transformative justice expands the social justice model, which challenges and identifies injustices, in order to create organized processes of addressing and ending those injustices. Transformative Justice Journal (2020) Vol 1.1 p.2

Another difference is the way in which communities are conceptualised. Restorative justice approaches often frame communities by relevant institutions – such as schools, universities, workplaces, residential communities, faith communities, and legally defined families. In contrast, transformative justice approaches tend to emerge within dynamics of diverse self-directed community contexts that cross across, or exist outside of, formal institutions.

For more examples of restorative justice approaches, see the ADRC History of Restorative Justice in Australia. For more on how these differ from transformative justice practices see the Undercurrent Podcast on Principles and Frameworks for Accountability.

Community Accountability

These alternatives to the punitive justice systems we are subjected to via state institutions draw attention to the many ways we can start participating in processes for taking collective responsibility for how we respond to conflict within our communities.

Community accountability… refers to collective, non-state responses to harm that centre survivor agency, foster accountability, and support both individual and structural transformation – Jade Lane et al., 2026

Community accountability is a strategy for creating environments where it is possible to take collective responsibility for responding to violence within our communities (rather than relying on the police/prison-based punitive system).

Community accountability strategies include:

  • SUPPORTING those who are violently targeted in ways that RESPECT THEIR SELF-DETERMINATION.
  • Establishing VALUES & PRACTICES that resist abuse and oppression and encourage safety, support, and accountability.
  • ADDRESSING ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR through process that support those responsible to account for their actions and transform their behavior.
  • Developing collective processes that TRANSFORM THE POLITICAL CONDITIONS reinforcing oppression and violence.

For more details, see the Community Accountability Fact Sheet prepared by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

A diagram outlining the Community Accountability strategies fully listed in the body of the article. The diagram is made up of four circles surrounding a central oval, like a flower. The oval has the words COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY and arrows to each circle. The left circle reads "Provide SAFETY & SUPPORT to community members who are violently targeted that RESPECTS THEIR SELF-DETERMINATION." The top circle reads: "Create and affirm VALUES & PRACTICES that resist abuse and oppression and encourage safety, support, and accountability." The right circle reads: " Develop sustainable strategies to ADDRESS COMMUNITY MEMBERSโ€™ ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR, creating a process for them to account for their actions and transform their behavior." The bottom circle reads : "Commit to ongoing development of all members of the community, and the community itself, to TRANSFORM THE POLITICAL CONDITIONS that reinforce oppression and violence."

Generative Conflict

Descriptions of restorative and transformative justice approaches emphasise the importance of building the relational repair skills needed to take collective responsibility for harms before we need them. From a transformative justice perspective, these skills can also be used to proactively navigate everyday conflicts in ways that can transform ourselves and the systems we are part of.

…it is critical that TJ is not simply the absence of the state and violence, but the presence of the values, practices, relationships and world that we want. It is not only identifying what we donโ€™t want, but proactively practicing and putting in place things we want, … incorporating healing into our everyday lives. – Mia Mingus, 2019

Using transformative justice and mediation frameworks for addressing conflict and harm between participants can help address immediate crises and build skills for preventing and addressing harm in the future. – Dean Spade, 2020

One pathway for cultivating the relational skills needed for transformative justice is to participate in generative approaches to the inevitable conflicts that emerge when we embrase the discomfit of relating across our differences. The ability to engage in generative conflict is one of the skills cultivate within restorative justice services, as well as broader movements towards collective liberation.

Deeply rooted in transformative justice, generative conflict is a set of actionable principles that seeks to bend the arc of our relationships towards more sustainable connections with each other and ultimately our planet. – Anna-Maria Dโ€™Cruz, 2023

From a decolonial perspective, conflict is not just something to resolve or manage โ€“ it is an opportunity to transform systems and cultures that perpetuate harm and inequality. – Anisha Senaratne and Noura Mansour, 2024

Further Resources

Tools

Books

Podcasts & Videos

Research & Concept Notes

News Clippings

Resource Collections

Organisations & Services

This section focuses on organisations and services available from within Australia, with a few organisations from overseas that share key resources and/or offer remote services.

Note: this resource set was initially published in 2021, with more recent resources and further context added since.

If you have additional materials to add, please contact the Commons Librarians.

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