Conflicts and Cooperation in the Shifting Social Environment: The Case of Lithuania

The paper gives insight into one of the most dynamic aspects of social reality – how social conflicts are interconnected with cooperation and how this influences a quality of social environment. The processes have been observed at the times of Lithuania’s society postsocialist transition and many-sided transformations. Radical changes of a political system and economy model in the state, its technological modernization, entrance into global cyber networking, and turbulence of social values, cultural and ethical norms – all of this created the state of fragile stability, which has been undermined by competition and struggle, social clashes and conflicts. The main question we are going to discuss is – how it was treated in a constructive course of reforms, what methods of conflict management were effective in preserving social stability and maintaining social dialogue, and negotiating unity. To describe the presented vector of changes we use such categories as: legal, organizational, cultural, and educational environment, in which social interactions take place, attempts to adopt western methods of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), namely - negotiations and mediation, and limitation of such adoption. Three links have been defined in the chain of conflict solving culture in the process of post-socialist transition – manifestation of conflict, conflict institutionalisation, and conflict management. This outlines the progress of conflict solution and management in society and suggests positive changes in the quality of social interactions.