Nonviolent Action Research Articles

Moderasi Beragama di Indonesia: Perspektif Filsafat Chuang Tzu

This article employs an expository-critical approach to Chuang Tzu‟s philosophical concept of equality of things and opinions. Its main purpose is to offer an alternative paradigm for religious moderation in Indonesia. The question that this article addressed is: “What is the relevance of Chuang Tzu‟s concept of the equality of objects and opinions for religious moderation in Indonesia?” This article finds that Chuang Tzu‟s philosophy provides an epistemological and metaphysical basis for religious moderation in Indonesia. Epistemologically, religions are the result of limited human contemplation, construction, and conception dealing with the Infinite Reality. Metaphysically, religions are equal because they originate from one and the same Infinite Reality. This epistemological-metaphysical frame guides different religions in Indonesia to maintain legal-formal commitments regarding the rights and freedoms of every citizen, accept differences and be flexible in religious insights, provide non-violent actions, and respect local wisdom. Finally, this article proposes that all problems that still hinder religious moderation in Indonesia can be solved through a humanist approach to radical religious groups, inter- and intra-religious dialogue, and dialogue between religion and local culture

A strange texture of non-violent activism: the Nasarawa women peace leadership emerging from the 2023 Nigeria elections

A strange texture of non-violent activism: the Nasarawa women peace leadership emerging from the 2023 Nigeria elections

Inhabiting the Kingdom: Theologies of Nonviolence in the Catholic Worker Movement

This article considers understandings of nonviolence within the Catholic Worker movement and their embodiment. The aim is to make the Worker's position theologically understandable, demonstrating how this drives their methods for action. The article argues that a particular ethic of nonviolence can be found within the movement, grounded within the aims of its founders and the current practices of the movement today, drawing on the example of the Jubilee Ploughshares 2000 from which the London Catholic Worker was founded to illustrate this. By exploring the movement's theological foundations for the practice of grassroots, active nonviolence, it will seek to present an important example of Catholic nonviolent practice questioning how this may challenge contemporary Catholic thinking on war and peace.

Renewing the Challenge of Peace through the Promise of Active Nonviolence

In 1983 the US bishops issued a deeply influential pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, which addressed moral questions of warfare, particularly in the context of the Cold War. Four decades later, it is clear that the challenge to build just and peaceful societies is still with us in the US and throughout the world. This article supports the development of new documents—whether episcopal or papal—to center nonviolence in Catholic teaching, to demonstrate the value and efficacy of active nonviolence in working toward a just peace, and to clarify the relationship between nonviolence and the just war tradition. It makes suggestions as to how such a document might be rooted in the Christian tradition and discipleship, and what issues must urgently be addressed.

Fight, or flee, the future: Affect in contrasting responses against future collective death

Sociologies of the future offer insights into how the future is apprehended by social actors and motivates their actions. Contemporary narratives of crises in the Anthropocene portray an increasingly likely future: one of future collective death. This article conceptualises collective death as a future that possesses both imaginary and material dimensions. I argue that future collective death generates various affective responses that prompt social coalitions to resist its realisation, and I exemplify it with two cases: Extinction Rebellion and Space Colonisation. I explore how futurelessness and grief motivate Extinction Rebellion's direct non-violent actions to fight against future collective death, while death anxiety and terminality drive Space Colonisation's attempts to flee from it. In doing so, I illustrate the role of imagination, affect and material means in configuring future-oriented socio-political action.

Avoiding the ‘Backfire Problem’: How Martin Luther King Jr. came to Ground his Nonviolent Activism in Personalism

Abstract Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appears to have preferred nonviolent tactics for social justice that sidestepped the backfire problem. Given that he deployed approximately twenty-five nonviolent tactics, the number of options he chose not to deploy greatly outnumbers those he did deploy. Why? Both his circumstances and his philosophy shaped his preferences for nonviolent tactics. First, I explore how his preferred tactics embodied the praxis of his nonviolent personalism. Second, I explore the early introduction of King to pacifism and how this evolved during his graduate studies at Boston University. Third, I suggest that King drew upon his commitment to personalism to develop pragmatically his own approach to nonviolent activism, and that when King visited India, he was seeking practical support for his praxis of nonviolent activism. Finally, I reflect on how King’s praxis of nonviolent activism aimed to avoid the backfire problem.

Between 'flight' and 'fight': does civilian resistance against rebels work?

Understanding the dynamics of nonviolent action in situations of armed conflict has been labelled as the 'new frontier' in resistance studies. This paper assesses the growing body of literature on civilian resistance against rebel groups. Drawn from a systematic review of academic articles, book chapters, and policy documents, examples of civilian resistance are ordered in three distinct categories of unarmed action: deception; dissent; and defiance. This classification provides the conceptual framework to tackle the main research question: does civilian resistance against rebels work to protect unarmed populations from violence and harm? By scrutinising the effectiveness of civilian resistance, the paper seeks to provide a necessary corrective to the dominant view expressed in the literature, which, as argued, is overly optimistic regarding the prospects of wringing substantial concessions from armed groups via nonviolent action. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications, focusing on normative challenges facing external actors eager to support civilian resisters.

Inserted Religious Life as a Path to Authentic Consecrated Chastity—The Witness of Non-Violent Solidarity of Alice Domon and José Aldunate Lyon in Latin America 1967–1983

The reception of the Decree Perfectae caritatis in Latin America can be understood in connection with the emergence of the preferential option for the poor and the call for consecrated religious life to the insertion since the 1960s. As part of the existing link between conciliar texts and renewal movements, it is worth highlighting the testimony of religious life lived in solidarity with the poor as a way of practicing chastity and incorporating sexuality. This topic is explored through the life stories of two individuals, Alice Domon in Argentina (1937–1977) and José Aldunate Lyon in Chile (1917–2019), within the framework of related studies on ethnographic ecclesiology and the theology of renewed religious life. Amidst military governments, institutional violence, abuses of power, and human rights violations, the lives of these two consecrated individuals showcase an alternative path marked by self-emptying, unwavering fidelity, non-violent action, and prophetic denunciation. The pursuit of integration between contemplative and apostolic aspects in the love for God and the poor, along with the defense of human rights in solidarity with the victims and their families, are some of the keys that define an adapted understanding of religious life in the Latin American context.

Association Between Harsh Disciplinary Methods and Child Functioning in Children Aged 7-14 Years in Punjab, Pakistan.

Despite having adverse physical and mental health outcomes, harsh disciplinary methods are commonly practiced all over the world. This study aims to measure the harsh disciplinary actions taken by parents and their association with child functioning in children, aged 7 to 14 years in Punjab, Pakistan. This study is based on secondary data obtained from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF's) Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, conducted in the Punjab province from 2017 to 2018. Parents/caregivers of 19,721 children were included in the analysis. Questionnaire-based interviews were conducted, and the data collection form included sociodemographic information, questions on different "Methods of Child Discipline" and the "Child functioning module." The data was analyzed using STATA 15.0. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to calculate the adjusted odds ratio and 95% CI exploring the association between harsh disciplinary methods and child functioning. More than 50% of children were exposed to severe physical, psychological, and emotional disciplinary methods. Exposure to severe physical aggression was associated with increased difficulty in learning (2.60 [1.27, 5.31]), remembering (2.83 [1.47, 5.44]), controlling behavior (1.63 [1.21, 2.18]), anxiety (1.98 [1.25, 3.13]), depression (2.57 [1.57, 4.22]) and making friends (1.94 [1.01, 3.79]). Whereas moderate physical aggression and psychological aggression were associated with (1.48 [1.19, 1.84]) and 1.5 times (1.20, 1.84) increase in difficulty in controlling behavior, respectively. Nonviolent actions were associated with protective odds for self-care (0.33 [0.17, 0.65]), communication (0.51 [0.27, 0.96]), learning (0.56 [0.33, 0.95]), remembering (0.62 [0.39, 0.90]), concentration (0.50 [0.31, 0.80]), anxiety (0.60 [0.46, 0.79]) and depression (0.67 [0.49, 0.92]). Severe disciplinary methods are detrimental to the child's personal care, mental, social, emotional, and psychological well-being, whereas nonviolent actions are associated with positive child functioning. In a third-world country such as Pakistan, this topic is widely undiscovered and understudied, thus emphasizing the need for awareness and education of parents and healthcare providers.

Beyond nonviolent regime change: Anarchist insights

AbstractIn recent years, a major focus of research and campaigning on strategic nonviolent action has been on movements to oust authoritarian rulers. However, these “nonviolent revolutions” usually do not transform systems of economic and social domination. To motivate appreciation of what might be involved in a more far‐reaching social transformation, selected anarchist themes offer useful guides. The relevance of four principles of anarchist theory and practice—non‐hierarchy, self‐management, direct action, and prefiguration—is illustrated in the South African struggle against apartheid. Activists should consider how to use nonviolent strategies to move beyond systems of domination based on states and capitalism.

Civil Resistance in Ukraine: Exploring the Dynamics and Impacts of Social Emancipation Forces to Counter the 2022 Russian Invasion

This essay examines the role of nonviolent civil resistance in Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion. Drawing from the notions of nonviolence strategy, resilience and people’s power, it illustrates how nonviolence can undermine an aggressor’s military and political objectives while strengthening the social emancipation forces. The essay is based on the analysis of 235 varied nonviolent actions from February to June 2022, seeking to understand key drivers, dynamics, and their influence in the Ukrainian context. It also emphasizes the impact of non-cooperation in occupied territories to prevent the institutionalization of repression and the importance of culture in safeguarding the value system of Ukrainians. The paper concludes that nonviolent strategies have significantly impeded Russian military objectives during the first phase of the invasion, contributing to the liberation of Kherson and strengthening Ukrainian social cohesion and national identity, thus contributing to the democratic state- and nation-building process.

Who Gains from Nonviolent Action? Unpacking the Logics of Civil Resistance

Who Gains from Nonviolent Action? Unpacking the Logics of Civil Resistance

A Next-Gen Real-Time Video Alert System with Machine Learning Sensitivity

Traditional methods of violence detection in public spaces often struggle with low accuracy, limited real-time capabilities, and an inability to handle complex spatiotemporal patterns. They lack the sophistication needed to accurately distinguish between violent and non-violent activities, and their reliance on rule-based systems hinders adaptability to diverse scenarios. Moreover, their communication channels for alerts might be slow and inefficient. Mitigating the pervasive issue of violence within public spaces demands a technologically advanced approach. Addressing this imperative, we present a novel solution encompassing a profound neural network architecture. Our method harmoniously integrates a pre-trained Darknet19 model with both Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models, collectively orchestrated to achieve unprecedented efficacy in violence detection and prevention. Our approach commences with the extraction of spatial intricacies, meticulously executed by leveraging the potent capabilities of the Darknet19 model. Subsequently, these extracted spatial features serve as the foundational dataset for training the CNN, which in turn captures and distills essential temporal attributes inherent to the video sequences. These temporal features are then seamlessly channeled into the LSTM component of our architecture, which adeptly discerns and categorizes video-based activities into two distinct classes: manifestations of violence and non-violent behaviors. Validation and verification of our proposed model transpire upon the Fight dataset, resulting in a suite of commendable experimental outcomes. The integration of multi-modal alert dissemination mechanisms further enhances our system's efficacy. Notably, pertinent alerts are expeditiously communicated to relevant law enforcement entities through the synergistic utilization of WhatsApp, Telegram, and e-mail applications. This technologically fortified paradigm promises a transformative leap in curbing violence within public domains, empowering law enforcement agencies with real-time, actionable insights. Moreover, the proposed systems have achieved high accuracy rates of 96%, which is higher than the accuracy achieved by other state-of-the-art models.

Living Synodality

Many Catholics living in violent conflict zones or in situations of structural injustice, along with Pax Christi International, Maryknoll, Pope Francis, and others, have been cultivating a tectonic shift toward centering active nonviolence in Catholic social ethics and approaches to conflict. This essay will illuminate how Catholic community organizing and strategic campaigns can both contribute to this shift and be enhanced by such a shift. The first part will describe salient features of this shift in Catholic theology and social ethics. The second part will assess components of Catholic community organizing and strategic campaigns that distinctly contribute to this shift. The third part will offer some initial suggestions for how centering nonviolence can enhance Catholic community organizing and strategic campaigns. In turn, these dynamics between centering nonviolence and Catholic community organizing can better illuminate the way of Jesus and the love of Christ in both the Church and societies.

Булінг і мобінг (цькування) як різновиди насильницьких посягань на фізичну особу

The article analyzes theoretical provisions, existing legal acts that regulate relations related to the application of administrative responsibility for committing bullying or mobbing (harassment). In particular, it was found out that a broad list of violent acts, which manifest themselves in the form of bullying and mobbing (harassment), is enshrined in Articles 173-4, 173-5 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses. Among various manifestations of violence, the aggressive behavior of a person who commits violent acts against another person is noted. Taking into account the relevance of the protection of administrative and legal relations, which are violated in the form of bullying or mobbing, the characteristics of these terms are considered and their types are distinguished. In addition, the signs that characterize administrative responsibility for committing harassment have been determined. It is noted that police officers have the authority to draw up a report on bullying (Art. 255 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses), the case is reviewed and a decision is made by the court (Art. 221 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses). Protocols about the fact of committing mobbing according to Art. 230-1 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses, officials authorized by the head of the central executive authority, which implements state policy on the supervision and control of compliance with labor legislation, as well as sub-departmental review of mobbing cases, have the right to make and make decisions on them court (Art. 221 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses). It is emphasized that subjects who commit violent acts or inaction in the form of bullying or mobbing can be conditionally systematized into certain groups. It is noted that distinguishing between violent and non-violent actions, which are carried out in the form of harassment during their legal qualification, is a rather difficult task. Harmful consequences must occur in order to qualify as illegal acts that are committed through harassment. Designation of non-violent actions should indicate not only the existence of relevant actions, but also the subjective attitude of the person who commits them to such actions. The relationship between types of administrative fines and sanctions for committing bullying/mobbing was analyzed.

Social and digital media monitoring for nonviolence: a distributed cognition perspective of the precariousness of peace work

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the technologization of peace work through “remote support monitors” that use social and digital media technologies like social media to alert local violence prevention actors to potentially violent situations during demonstrations.Design/methodology/approachUsing a distributed cognition lens, the authors explore the information processing of monitors within peace organizations. The authors adopt a qualitative thematic analysis methodology composed of interviews with monitors and documents from their shared communication and discussion channels. The authors’ analysis seeks to highlight how information is transformed between social and technical actors through the process of monitoring.FindingsThe authors’ analysis identifies that the technologization of monitoring for violence prevention to assist nonviolent activists produces two principal and related forms of transformation: appropriation and hidden attributes. Monitors “appropriate” information from sources to fit new ends and modes of representation throughout the process of detection, verification and dissemination. The verification and dissemination processes likewise render latent supporting informational elements, hiding the aggregative nature of information flow in monitoring. The authors connect the ideas of appropriation and hidden attributes to broader discourses in surveillance and trust that challenge monitoring and its place in peace work going forward.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on the communicative and information processes of remote support monitors. The authors demonstrate that adoption of social and digital media information of incipient violence and response processes for its mitigation suggests both a social and technical precarity for the role of monitoring.

Silenced voices: unravelling India’s dissent crisis through historical and contemporary analysis of free speech and suppression

ABSTRACT In India, the world’s largest democracy, the right to express dissenting opinions has come under increasing pressure due to governmental reactions to violent and non-violent activities and opposition. As well as direct suppression, a concerning trend has arisen whereby individuals and groups may choose to self-censor rather than risk the consequences of speaking out. These outcomes are related in this paper to the treatment of social media, where official policies and laws regulate and censor content on social media on the dubious basis that it is ‘offensive’ or ‘objectionable’. These restraints often lack clear guidelines and are applied arbitrarily, leading to a chilling effect on free speech and the expression of dissenting views. Furthermore, India lacks a comprehensive legal framework to address hate speech, resulting in a patchwork of provisions within the Indian Penal Code that inadequately define and circumscribe hate speech. This article contends that the ‘freedom to criticise’ should be legally better protected to ensure that diverse opinions can be safely held and expressed in order to maintain and reflect the pluralistic nature of Indian democracy.

Ideology, organisation, and path dependency: The use of violence among Egyptian Islamist movements

Does ideology prevent social movements from resorting to violence? Structuralist, organisational, or political economy theories are widely agnostic on the relationship between ideology and the use of violence. In contrast, this article argues that founding ideologies indirectly shape social movements’ long-run decisions regarding the use violence, primarily by influencing the kind of individuals who join the movement to begin with. A path dependency develops as new members reinforce the initial ideology, as individuals who might tip the ideological-organisational equilibrium towards utilising new tactics join other organisations instead. Over time, ideology morphes from being initially an endogenous factor into an exogenous constraint how the group can behave. The article compares the mainstream Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya (IG) and the Jihad Organisation (JO), studying individual biographies, the groups’ recruitment patterns and their corresponding ideologies. The article thereby explains why the MB, with some minor exceptions, remained committed to non-violent activism, in contrast with the JO that resorted to violent means only and the IG that applied both violent and non-violent means. In the conclusion, the article addresses cases in Algeria and Madagascar to indicate the relevance of this argument beyond Egyptian Islamist movements to future comparative work.

The Cross and/as Civil Resistance

We need a nonviolent soteriology that honors scriptural and theological traditions about enemy-love, suffering, sacrifice, and satisfaction and refuses to further harm victims of violence and oppression. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Bernard Lonergan’s way of understanding Christ’s satisfaction by analogy with the sacrament of reconciliation disclose one way suffering can be redemptive: When nonviolent activists “present their very bodies,” they expose the violence latent in unjust situations. Similarly, when Christ presents his body, he exposes the violence at the heart of sin. Like Christ, activists “become sin” (1 Cor 5:21)—not because they take responsibility for the sin, but because sin becomes visible in the wounds it leaves on innocent bodies. Once visible, healing can begin. Further, both men argue for a proper unfolding of the extension of love to enemies, lest victims be further harmed and injustice ignored.

Local non-violent strategies amid Guatemala’s post-accord violence: understanding the potential and limitations in poor urban neighbourhoods

ABSTRACT The impact residents of violence-affected communities can have on addressing insecurity is underexplored, particularly amid criminal violence. In non-conflict contexts, can non-violent actions by committed individuals transform their violent environments given criminal groups’ social control and capacity to exert violence? Investigating two urban neighbourhoods in post-accord Guatemala, the article evidences how residents engage in violence disruption, breaking generalised self-protection strategies – silence, avoidance and displacement – to proactively address local violence. In doing so, residents can attain tangible security improvements and foster cohesion, social capital and informal leadership – facilitating further collective action. The article draws on 47 interviews, triangulated with police data and documentary evidence. The article contributes novel empirical evidence on the underexplored phenomenon of non-violent engagement with criminal groups. Conceptually, the article advances the emerging concept of violence disruption as a distinct form of agency and a useful framework to neither overlook nor overstate the impact of grassroots strategies.