The Force of Nonviolence

The Force of Nonviolence PDF Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788732782
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilised in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how ‘racial phantasms’ inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. The struggle for nonviolence is found in movements for social transformation that reframe the grievability of lives in light of social equality and whose ethical claims follow from an insight into the interdependency of life as the basis of social and political equality.

The Force of Nonviolence

The Force of Nonviolence PDF Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788732782
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilised in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how ‘racial phantasms’ inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. The struggle for nonviolence is found in movements for social transformation that reframe the grievability of lives in light of social equality and whose ethical claims follow from an insight into the interdependency of life as the basis of social and political equality.

This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed

This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed PDF Author: Charles E Cobb Jr.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465080952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend's Montgomery, Alabama home as "an arsenal." Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent" civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to selfprotection -- yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr. describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s. In the Deep South, blacks often safeguarded themselves and their loved ones from white supremacist violence by bearing -- and, when necessary, using -- firearms. In much the same way, Cobb shows, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from black gun owners in the regions where they worked. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these courageous men and women and the weapons they carried were crucial to the movement's success. Giving voice to the World War II veterans, rural activists, volunteer security guards, and self-defense groups who took up arms to defend their lives and liberties, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the Second Amendment. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the civil rights movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb provides a controversial examination of the crucial place of firearms in the fight for American freedom.

Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century

Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century PDF Author: Michael Beer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781943271405
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century belongs on the virtual bookshelf of anyone who is studying or practicing nonviolent action. Scholars: Explore updated categories and tactics that respect and expand on Gene Sharp's landmark work. Teachers & Trainers: Give your participants a brief overview of the whole range of nonviolent tactics used around the world, when and how those tactics work, and how nonviolent tactics differ from, or combine with, other types of civil resistance. Activists: Use this concise guide to expand your toolbox and sharpen your analytical tools for selecting powerful strategies for your campaigns. This book dovetails with two huge online sources (Nonviolence International's Nonviolent Tactics Database and Organizing & Training Archive) so that you can move seamlessly between strategy and implementation.

Nonviolence Before King

Nonviolence Before King PDF Author: Anthony C. Siracusa
Publisher: Justice, Power, and Politics
ISBN: 9781469663005
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In the early 1960s, thousands of Black activists used nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation at lunch counters, movie theaters, skating rinks, public pools, and churches across the United States, battling for, and winning, social change. Organizers against segregation had used litigation and protests for decades but not until the advent of nonviolence did they succeed in transforming ingrained patterns of white supremacy on a massive scale. In this book, Anthony C. Siracusa unearths the deeper lineage of anti-war pacifist activists and thinkers from the early twentieth century who developed nonviolence into a revolutionary force for Black liberation. Telling the story of how this powerful political philosophy came to occupy a central place in the Black freedom movement by 1960, Siracusa challenges the idea that nonviolent freedom practices faded with the rise of the Black Power movement. He asserts nonviolence's staying power, insisting that the indwelling commitment to struggle for freedom collectively in a spirit of nonviolence became, for many, a lifelong commitment. In the end, what was revolutionary about the nonviolent method was its ability to assert the basic humanity of Black Americans, to undermine racism's dehumanization, and to insist on the right to be.

Why Civil Resistance Works

Why Civil Resistance Works PDF Author: Erica Chenoweth
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527489
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

Choosing Peace

Choosing Peace PDF Author: Dennis, Marie
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608337367
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Contributions by leading peacemakers such as Lisa Sowle Cahill, Terrence J. Rynne, John Dear and Ken Utican, Rose Marie Berger, and Maria J. Stephan advance the conversation about the practice of nonviolence in a violent world, Jesus and nonviolence, traditional Catholic teaching on nonviolence, and reflections on the future of Catholic teaching. The book concludes with Pope Francis's historic Message for World Peace Day in 2017.

This Is an Uprising

This Is an Uprising PDF Author: Mark Engler
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568585144
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
There is a craft to uprising -- and this craft can change the world From protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest. With incisive insights from contemporary activists, as well as fresh revelations about the work of groundbreaking figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Gene Sharp, and Frances Fox Piven, the Englers show how people with few resources and little conventional influence are engineering the upheavals that are reshaping contemporary politics. Nonviolence is usually seen simply as a philosophy or moral code. This Is an Uprising shows how it can instead be deployed as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation. It argues that if we are always taken by surprise by dramatic outbreaks of revolt, we pass up the chance to truly understand how social transformation happens.

Contemporary Icons of Nonviolence

Contemporary Icons of Nonviolence PDF Author: Anna Hamling
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527541738
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
2019 marked notable anniversaries for two of the most widely recognised icons of the philosophy of nonviolence, representing seventy years since the birth of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. Both brought significant, constructive, and far-reaching social and political change to the world. This volume offers an innovative perspective, placing them, their beliefs and theories within the chronology of the tradition of nonviolence, beginning with Lev Nikolaevicz Tolstoy and encompassing the likes of Óscar Romero, Nelson Mandela, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan. This collection of essays explores diverse understandings of the concepts of nonviolence in a philosophical and religious context. It also highlights the application of the techniques of nonviolence in the 21st century.

Civil Resistance

Civil Resistance PDF Author: Erica Chenoweth
Publisher: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
ISBN: 0190244399
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Exploring both historical cases of civil resistance and more contemporary examples such as the Arab Awakenings and various ongoing movements in the United States, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know® provides a comprehensive and engaging review of the current field of knowledge.

Non-Violence

Non-Violence PDF Author: Domenico Losurdo
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498502202
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
We know of the blood and tears provoked by the projects of transformation of the world through war or revolution. Starting from the essay published in 1921 by Walter Benjamin, twentieth century philosophy has been committed to the criticism of violence, even when it has claimed to follow noble ends. But what do we know of the dilemmas, of the “betrayals,” of the disappointments and tragedies which the movement of non-violence has suffered? This book tells a fascinating history: from the American Christian organizations in the first decades of the nineteenth century who wanted to eliminate slavery and war in a non-violent way, to the protagonists of movements—Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Capitini, M. L. King, the Dalai Lama—who either for idealism or for political calculation flew the flag of non-violence, up to the leaders of today’s “color revolutions.”