Non-violent Means Research Articles

Creating Culture of Peace: Non-Violent Conflict Resolution

The history of mankind has been marked by the use of force, which has led many thinkers to seek answers to questions: what are conflict and violence, what is their nature, are they generated externally, by what forces, or are they a product of human aspirations to selfishly satisfy their needs. The answer to these questions is only the beginning of the search because it opens new, undoubtedly equally important questions – whether conflict and violence can be positive values and, in particular, whether conflicts can be resolved or transformed before they generate violence, and if so, what are the processes, mechanisms and strategies. Seeking answers to all these questions requires complex multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and integrating and harmonising their results into a coherent whole. Having this in mind as a limiting, but at the same time motivating research factor, the authors of this paper aim to determine with sequential analysis the way of resolving the conflict by non-violent means through the stages of its development.

Genetics and Brain Transcriptomics of Completed Suicide.

The authors sought to study the transcriptomic and genomic features of completed suicide by parsing the method chosen, to capture molecular correlates of the distinctive frame of mind of individuals who die by suicide, while reducing heterogeneity. The authors analyzed gene expression (RNA sequencing) from postmortem dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of patients who died by suicide with violent compared with nonviolent means, nonsuicide patients with the same psychiatric disorders, and a neurotypical group (total N=329). They then examined genomic risk scores (GRSs) for each psychiatric disorder included, and GRSs for cognition (IQ) and for suicide attempt, testing how they predict diagnosis or traits (total N=888). Patients who died by suicide by violent means showed a transcriptomic pattern remarkably divergent from each of the other patient groups but less from the neurotypical group; consistently, their genomic profile of risk was relatively low for their diagnosed illness as well as for suicide attempt, and relatively high for IQ: they were more similar to the neurotypical group than to other patients. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with patients who died by suicide by violent means pointed to purinergic signaling in microglia, showing similarities to a genome-wide association study of Drosophila aggression. Weighted gene coexpression network analysis revealed that these DEGs were coexpressed in a context of mitochondrial metabolic activation unique to suicide by violent means. These findings suggest that patients who die by suicide by violent means are in part biologically separable from other patients with the same diagnoses, and their behavioral outcome may be less dependent on genetic risk for conventional psychiatric disorders and be associated with an alteration of purinergic signaling and mitochondrial metabolism.

Child Disciplinary Practices versus Child Rights in Zimbabwe: Viewed through Social Work Lenses

Although parents are a vital cog in instilling and maintaining child discipline, very little information exists about the methods they employ. Using a qualitative approach, this paper explored the methods used by parents in Zimbabwe—an African context—to discipline children, elucidating their implications on children’s rights. The findings show that parents in Zimbabwe use both violent and non-violent disciplinary methods such as verbal reprimand, beating, and spanking, which, at times, violates children’s rights in the process. The use of non-violent means has also depicted a violation of children’s rights through deprivation of food, denial of playtime and shelter. Evident from the findings was, again, the existence of multiple-layered contestations on child discipline within the socio-cultural discourse—the most popularized being the debate on corporal punishment versus child rights violations. Through social work lenses, the paper provides a basis to dispel an anachronistic thought, which rationalizes the instrumentalization of punishment to achieve child discipline, underscoring the need for child rights-oriented discipline.

Autonomy à la carte: The creative claiming tactics of the Hungarian minority in Romania

ABSTRACT Through a detailed case-study of the Hungarian minority in Romania, this article better understands the non-secessionist, non-violent claims to autonomy of ethnic minorities and the discursive framework in which claims operate. Analysis of policy documents and elite interviews demonstrates how ‘autonomy’ claiming is not only conducted explicitly. Rather, it also occurs creatively through a discursive word-play technique utilized by different minority actors which substitutes ‘decentralization’, ‘regionalization’ and ‘self-governance’ for ‘autonomy’. However, to elites across political persuasions, and unlike differentiations in the scholarly literature, these terms mean the same thing. Moreover, different minority actors have a preferred discourse for claiming: ‘historic autonomists’ favour strong, explicit and symbolic claims while ‘modern autonomists’ support a strategic and creative claiming tactic. These findings of the creativity of autonomy claiming discourse can be extended to other ethnic minorities seeking institutional recognition via non-violent means.

COVID-19, state capacity, and political violence by non-state actors

The COVID-19 pandemic has constrained the ability of states across the world to govern and control their territories. As the state reduces its activities, space opens for violent non-state actors working for and against the state to fill the vacuum. Highlighting this trend, the present study evaluates the effects of COVID-19 and pandemics more broadly on attacks by non-state actors. Our theory emphasizes the incentives of both rebels and pro-government non-state actors (PGNs) to increase their attack frequency as disease spreads and the state retracts its governance activities to preserve resources needed elsewhere. In the first case, we highlight how the pandemic allows rebels to reduce asymmetries of power with respect to the military and establish themselves as a viable government alternative. In the second case, PGNs, which provide an alternative to militaries, are deployed to these contested spaces to thwart or pre-empt rebellion during the pandemic. Employing daily-level data on the annual change in armed conflict and COVID-19 cases across 127 countries between 1 January 2020 and 15 June 2020, we test both claims using an econometric identification strategy. We do not find clear evidence that COVID-19 led to a higher frequency of rebel attacks, suggesting that these groups prefer to bolster their standing using nonviolent means, or avoid fighting and preserve their resources. In contrast, we find that the frequency of PGN attacks has increased with COVID-19 prevalence compared with last year. Case studies of insurgent and PGN activity in Afghanistan and Nigeria lend additional support to these results, illustrating some underlying mechanisms. Our findings explore overlooked challenges that pandemics and other disasters pose to conflict mitigation and the role PGNs play in these contexts.

Suicide means, timing, intent and behavior characteristics of the suicides with schizophrenia

BackgroundStudies have been reported on suicide and schizophrenic suicide, but few compared certain characteristics of suicides with and without schizophrenia. MethodsA sample of 392 suicides was consecutively recruited from 16 counties in three provinces of China. Psychological autopsy method was applied to collect the information through informants. The questionnaire of characteristics for suicidal behavior, Beck's Suicide Intent Scale (SIS), and the DSM-IV based SCID were applied. ResultsAbout 9.7% of the sampled suicides (n = 38) were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and they were more likely to be female and older in age. No significant differences were found on violent suicide means, but significant differences within non-violent means between two groups. Schizophrenic suicide was more likely to happen in the second quarter of the year (April – June), middle of the month (11th-20th), and in the afternoon (3:01 pm – 6:00 pm). The schizophrenic suicides had higher suicide intent than those without schizophrenia and were more inclined to be isolated, more likely to tell people their suicide intent, and less likely to prepare posthumous papers. ConclusionSchizophrenic suicides have unique characteristics, and targeted preventive measures should be taken to prevent schizophrenic suicides. To accurately identify characteristics of suicide behavior is meaningful to prevent schizophrenic suicides in clinical practice.

Foundations of Theory in PRC History: Mass Communications Research, Political Culture, and the Values Paradigm

AbstractThis article describes the US origins of the field of PRC history. It argues that research on PRC history is widely derived from an approach to knowledge that predates area studies: the theory that societies can be controlled and changed through the transformation of human cognition—referred to as “public opinion,” “values,” “culture,” “political culture,” “tradition,” or “belief”—by nonviolent means. The author calls this approach to knowledge the values paradigm. A separate, but related argument is that this paradigm has proven more important than the availability or content of new sources in determining how PRC history has been written. The aim behind these arguments is twofold: to highlight the intellectual debt (or burden) that links PRC history, via area studies, to policy science; and to elucidate other ways of guiding research in place of the increasingly exhausted values paradigm–based approach. The conclusions they lead to are that historical and social scientific explanations of political change in China have become intellectually dependent on the abstraction of mass consciousness, and that this abstraction has been used to obscure the endemic violence of Maoism.

Violence, Political Strategy and the Turn to Guerrilla Warfare by the Congress Movement in South Africa

The Congress movement in South Africa was transformed in the early 1960s from a movement committed to the exclusive use of non-violent means in the struggle against apartheid to one focused on rural guerrilla warfare as a free-standing and sufficient first step towards ‘all-out war’ and the armed seizure of power. But few, if any, of the participants in the Congress movement’s deliberations in 1960–61 on whether to ‘turn to violence’ had believed that this was the strategy that they were endorsing when they authorised the abandonment of exclusive reliance on non-violence. The choice facing the Congress movement after 1960 was not between mutually exclusive alternatives of ‘non-violence’ on the one hand and ‘violence’ or ‘armed struggle’ on the other. Rather, Congress leaders contemplated a range of different forms of violent action and considered their relationship to various forms of non-violent activity and to the kind of transition from apartheid that these actions could and should be intended to produce. This article analyses the range of strategic options that were canvassed within the Congress leadership in the early 1960s and the decision-making process by which those options were gradually narrowed. That process was shaped by ambiguity, unilateral action, unintended consequences and state repression, with the result that the Congress movement’s ‘turn to violence’ ultimately took a form that few Congress leaders had initially desired or anticipated.

Corporal punishment in the home: Is there a legal duty on the medical doctor to report it?

The infliction of corporal punishment on children (in the home) was found to be unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of South Africa (September 2019). Corporal punishment was historically permitted if exercised within reasonable grounds (moderate or reasonable chastisement). In reaching its judgment, the apex court found that the child's right to human dignity and to be free from all forms of violence was unjustifiably infringed by the exercising of this form of discipline. In addition, the child's best interests was not served. Importantly, there were other non-violent means available to parents to discipline their children. This article examines what this judgment means for medical doctors who reasonably suspect that a child has been the victim of corporal punishment. It is argued that medical doctors have a duty to report such incidents in terms of section 110(1) of the Children's Act 38 of 2005.

The Facets of Transitional Justice and 'Red Terror' Mass Trials of Derg Officials in Post-1991 Ethiopia: Reassessing its Achievements and Pitfalls

At the end of the state perpetrated largescale violence, two important puzzling questions need to be addressed by post-conflict states. The first one chiefly concern how to ensure accountability or fight impunity, and the second is concerned with how to transform a society wrecked by prolonged conflicts into a durable peace in a non-violent means (Jarstad & Sisk, 2008). One such effort to deal with these questions was implementation of a transitional justice measures which evolved to encompass broader themes in addition to criminal accountability and it has shown a considerable relevance and expansion since the end of Cold War. After the demise of Marxist military junta of Derg regime in 1991, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia attempted to respond to the Derg-era atrocities of Red Terror through the establishment of Special Prosecution Office (SPO) in 1992. Ethiopia’s SPO undertook one of the most extensive criminal investigations after Nuremburg trials by its own resources and domestic tribunals and the mass trials lasted for nearly two decades. However, the assessment about its significance for domestic political transformation and its legacy remained largely untold. The aim of this paper is to make a critical review of available works on the ‘red terror trials’ and reconsider its achievements and pitfalls and to interrogate as to whether it can still provide important lessons for today’s reality. By critically reviewing available literatures and official reports, the paper found that the efforts of Red Terror trials partly succeeded in ending impunity, averting tendency of summary executions and revenge killings, and in eliciting some ‘truths. However, the measure was affected by severe limitations including the adopting the narrower model of transitional justice measures chiefly focusing on criminal prosecutions, and also questioned legitimacy of trials amidst human rights violations by the new regime itself. These limitations coupled with other factors constrained the capacity of the Derg’s Red Terror trials so that it remained short of being translated into a lasting legacy in terms of meaningful political transformation.

Football Clubs, Social Changes, and Political Disputes in Interwar Greece

Social changes and political tensions had a great impact on Greek football clubs during the interwar period. Earlier, the establishment of the first sports clubs in Greece was associated with the rise of the middle classes, whose members carried liberal perceptions and a new code of conduct. Football was placed in the ‘civilizing process’, as the process of ‘sportization’ was only possible in societies where political differences were resolved by non-violent means and where groups of citizens obeyed common acceptable rules. In this sense, football was not just a physical activity, but a social process, as well. In the case of Greece, the arrival of refugee populations and the rapid urbanization resulted in the popularization of sports. Throughout Greece, hundreds of sports clubs were founded, which mainly cultivated the new ‘craze’ of football. New collectivities were forged in the neighborhoods of the cities, and a new football culture was cultivated, which was fed by interwar identities that often appeared as opposing couples and interacted with each other, namely: native-refugee, middle class-worker and so on. As a result, in the football fields, along with the new folk heroes, the new phenomena of fanaticism and violence were born.

The Banality of Violence in A. L. Kennedy’s Early Short Stories

The present paper adapts Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil to illustrate the banality of a specific manifestation of evil, which is violence, as it is presented in the early short stories of A. L. Kennedy. Selected stories from Kennedy’s first two collections, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (1990) and Now that You’re Back (1994), are analysed to show that, like Arendt, Kennedy does not dismiss the perpetrators of violent acts as sadistic monsters but rather perceives them in their complexity as human beings who may commit inhuman crimes, yet cannot be explained away easily as less than human. Kennedy’s point about the banality of violence – banality in the sense of commonness or ordinariness, not in the sense of triviality – is reinforced by her preoccupation with ordinary characters leading mundane lives, whose humdrum existence is disrupted by unexpected, though typically unexceptional, circumstances. Lacking the capacity or skill to cope by non-violent means, Kennedy’s characters resort to violence in a perverted attempt to come to terms with the uncertainty of life and to express in a physical manner what they cannot express in language.

Risky decision-making in suicide attempters, and the choice of a violent suicidal means: an updated meta-analysis

BackgroundStudies showed disadvantageous decision-making in suicide attempters. The present meta-analysis aims to examine the stability of these findings and related questions. MethodsEMBASE and Pubmed databases were searched for studies published between 01/01/2000 and 01/01/2020 with an additional search through bibliographical references. English or French articles published in peer-reviewed journals, reporting quantitative task-based measures of decision-making in suicide attempters were included: 3,582 records were identified, 33 full-text articles screened, and 21 articles finally included. ResultsAll studies were conducted in mood disorders; 18 used the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and 3 the Cambridge Gamble Task (CGT). With the IGT, suicide attempters showed riskier choices than patient controls (Hedges’ g=-0.28 95%CI (-0.44 – -0.12)) and healthy controls (g=-0.54 (-0.83 – -0.25)) with no significant difference between control groups. The difference between suicide attempters and patient controls was not related to age group, mood disorder type, author, or research center while an effect of time of publication was found (p=0.006). Poorer performance was also found in suicide attempters compared to patient controls when using the CGT (g=-0.57 95%CI (-0.82 – -0.31)). Suicide attempters who used a violent means showed poorer IGT performance than those who used a non-violent means (3 studies). LimitationLimited number of studies outside mood disorders. No data to calculate a gender effect. ConclusionThe present meta-analysis confirmed riskier decision-making in suicide attempters. Although group differences appear to be of modest effect size in general, they were particularly marked in the subgroup of those who used a violent suicidal means.

Jane Addams, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Promise of Soul Force

Jane Addams (1860–1935) and Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) are rightly regarded as two of the 20th century’s great leaders advancing social justice and peace and through nonviolent means. Although they never met in person, they engaged similar ideas and social issues spanning nearly fifty years. In the decade and a half following World War I, they addressed one another’s work and briefly corresponded. This essay newly examines the admiration and deliberative engagement that developed between Addams and Gandhi, while highlighting their distinctive interpretations of “soul force.” I argue that each rhetorically engaged the others’ ideas and practices in ways that advanced their own approaches to nonviolent social transformation and the challenges of political consent: for Addams, moral suasion and pragmatic consensus‐building, and for Gandhi, absolute nonviolence and physical self‐suffering through acts of noncooperation and civil disobedience. This study acknowledges their shared commitment to the principle of moral goodwill toward opponents, in international and anticolonial contexts, while highlighting ways in which culture, religion, and temperament shaped their divergent nonviolent methods. Addams and Gandhi leave distinctive legacies that offer inspiration and critique for new generations addressing power and injustice.

Communicating Desperation: Palestinians’ Suicide Bombing in Hallaj’s Novel Refugee without Refuge

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one of the thorniest conflicts in the world. The life of the Palestinians in refugee camps under occupation is very difficult. Curfews, checkpoints, detention, and violence permeate all aspects of their daily life. Striving against poverty, their vicious enemy, and the constant struggle to survive are daily nightmares. However, they are often perceived as terrorists and war criminals. Dixiane Hallaj’s Refugee without Refuge: A Novel of One Palestinian Family is an attempt to highlight the problems Palestinians face in the refugee camps in occupied Palestine. The novel engages in establishing the relationship between the horrendous living conditions of the Palestinians and the aggression of the Israeli occupation forces on one hand and the violent reaction of the Palestinians on the other. It demonstrates that suicide bombing committed by the Palestinians is a rebounding of the Israeli violence and atrocities exercised against the Palestinians and that such lethal acts have no relation to religion or politics. They are personal decisions and acts taken after a long tragic suffering under the yoke of occupation. This article argues that Hallaj’s novel challenges the familiar notions and preconceptions of Palestinians as violence agitators, suicide bombers, and terrorists, which are propagated by western media and literature. The article focuses on Hallaj’s depiction of the Palestinian suffering and their final determination to get rid of their persecutors using violence after all nonviolent means become impossible. Psychoanalysis theory is applied to the novel to criticize the protagonist’s motives to attempt suicide bombing.

Monarchism, International Relations, and the Continuing Irish Revolution, 1926–29

ABSTRACT The article deals with how the Irish pro-Treaty elite approached the question of the monarchy, partition, and the state’s place within the British commonwealth of nations and the wider international community. Rejecting the notion that this monarchism was indicative of a counter-revolution, the article contends that it was anti-imperial in nature. In this regard, it breaks new ground in our understanding not only of the philosophy of the pro-Treaty governments, but also in the connection between their vision and that of anti-Treaty groupings. It focuses on how Irish statesmen's ideas about the place of the crown in the commonwealth influenced their behaviour on the international stage, particularly the 1926 Imperial Conference, the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, illustrating that while the youngest dominion was certainly the most obstreperous it was not wholly convincing in its ability to win over the other dominions to its point of view. Ultimately, it contends that the primary motivation behind the state’s diplomatic efforts was the achievement of political independence by non-violent means, and that this should compel historians to reconsider some of the central features of the counter-revolutionary thesis.

Going postal: State capacity and violent dispute resolution

Scholars have long tried to understand the conditions under which actors choose to use violent versus non-violent means to settle disputes, and many argue that violence is more likely in weakly-institutionalized settings. Yet, there is little evidence showing that increases in state capacity lowers the use of violent informal institutions to resolve disputes. Utilizing a novel dataset of violence—specifically, duels—across American states in the 19th century, we use the spread of federal post offices as an identification strategy to investigate the importance of state capacity for the incidence of violent dispute resolution. We find that post office density is a strong, consistent, and negative predictor of dueling behavior. Our evidence contributes to a burgeoning literature on the importance of state capacity for development outcomes.

The Iraqi protest movement: social mobilization amidst violence and instability

ABSTRACT Despite the many constraints it faces, social mobilization has been a relevant yet understudied phenomenon in Iraq after regime-change. Especially since 2011, collective actions such as protests, sit-in and demonstrations have challenged the status quo, amidst cyclical high level of violence and a dysfunctional political system. By identifying a gap at the crossroad of social movement and peace and conflict studies, this article is a preliminary exercise in investigating non-violent means to promote social and political change in violent contexts. It proposes a comparison of episodes of social mobilization in Iraq and analyses them in terms of space, types of grievances, identification of the target and overall goal. The article finds that social mobilization’s main limitations in Iraq are linked to its development in reaction to contextual factors. At the same time, it also shows the potential social mobilization has to become a locus where social and political change may grow.

The Turn to Sabotage by The Congress Movement in South Africa*

Abstract Why did leaders of the Congress movement in South Africa abandon their exclusive reliance on non-violent means in the struggle against apartheid, form an armed unit (Umkhonto we Sizwe), and launch a campaign of spectacular sabotage bombings of symbols of apartheid in 1961? None of the earlier violent struggles from which Congress leaders drew inspiration, and none of the contemporaneous insurgencies against white minority rule elsewhere in southern Africa, involved a similar distinct, preliminary and extended phase of non-lethal symbolic sabotage. Following the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, Congress leaders feared the social and political consequences of increased popular enthusiasm for using violence. Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, and the other founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe did not launch their sabotage campaign because they believed it would prompt a change of heart among white South Africans, nor because they believed urban sabotage bombings were a necessary prelude to the launch of rural guerrilla warfare. Rather, the sabotage campaign was a spectacular placeholder, a stopgap intended to advertise the Congress movement's abandonment of exclusive non-violence and thus to discourage opponents of apartheid, both inside and outside South Africa, from supporting rival groups or initiating ‘uncontrolled violent action themselves.

Freedom of Expression, Secularism and Defamation of Religion: The Case of Charlie Hebdo

I argue that under normal circumstances a state that is liberal and secular should not use its legal apparatus to suppress the publication of cartoons like those that triggered the deadly terrorist attack on the premises of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, if it is determined to abide by its core values. These values, which include religious neutrality, religious freedom, and unhindered freedom of criticism, imply that individual citizens are prima facie legally free to express their disapproval of particular religions or religious faith in general, through any non-violent means they consider appropriate, including parody and ridicule. This idea is open to various objections. Those focusing on the protection of religion as such can be easily dismissed, but the charge that defamation of religion causes offence to believers has to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, I defend the view that we need something stronger than taking offense to justifiably ban harsh religious criticism. In particular, I argue that, if the above sort of criticism prevents its recipients from exercising their basic rights or it incites third parties to engage in criminal activities against the above individuals, it should be subject to legal sanctions. However, this is not the case with the cartoons that appeared in Charlie Hebdo, since, as far as I can tell, no basic rights of French Muslims were violated, and no violent actions were committed against them as a result of their publication.