Nonviolent Action and Its Misconceptions: Insights for Social Scientists

Abstract

Prior to the wave of people power movements that erupted across the globe in the late twentieth century, scholars of social movements and revolution rarely addressed nonviolent action as a strategy for political change in non-democratic contexts. By the beginning of the twenty-first century this changed, as increasingly more social scientists began turning their attention to a topic once addressed primarily by peace studies scholars. The analysis of nonviolent action by social scientists other than peace studies scholars should be welcomed. Yet, since popular and scholarly misconceptions about nonviolence abound, it would be useful to examine some of these in the hope that biases in the social scientific analysis of nonviolent action can be attenuated.