Ranging from the American Revolution to Kosovo in the 1990s, from Egypt under colonial rule to present-day West Papua and Palestine, the authors of Recovering Nonviolent History consider several key questions: What kinds of civilian-based nonviolent strategy and tactics have been used in liberation struggles? What accounts for their successes and failures? Not least, how did nonviolent resistance influence national identities and socioeconomic and political institutions both prior to and after liberation, and why has this history been so often ignored?
"Gregg Barak′s Violence and Nonviolence is a thoughtful, comprehensive examination of violence in the United States. Structurally and conceptually this book works. Barak addresses violence in an interdisciplinary way, addressing history, psychology, biology, cultural studies, and sociology. Moreover, Barak does an excellent job of discussing the intersection of race, class, and gender and those relationships with violence." -- Heather Melton, University of Utah "Clearly, the strength of this book is its comprehensive and reciprocal approach. I found this to be an enjoyable and provocative book... that treats the topic holistically and offers a vision for overcoming current patterns of violence. I am convinced that this is an important work that will ultimately be well-received by undergraduates, graduate students, violence specialists, and general readers." -- Mathew T. Lee, University of Akron "I think that the strengths of this book are twofold: Barak′s approach disaggregates violence into interpersonal, institutional, and structural violence which is very important yet rarely done; the latter part of the book explores the pathways to nonviolence, an underrepresented area in the study of violence." --Charis Kubrin/Sociology, George Washington University "I have devoted close to 20 years studying and teaching about violence and I must say that this is a comprehensive book....I strongly believe that Barak has done an outstanding review of the extant literature and touches upon key issues of central concern to those of us who are social scientific experts on violence." --Walter Dekeseredy, Ohio University Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding is the first book to provide an integrative, systematic approach to the study of violence and nonviolence in one volume. Eminent scholar and award-winning author Gregg Barak examines virtually all forms of violence—from verbal abuse to genocide—and treats all of these expressions of violence as interpersonal, institutional, and structural occurrences. In the context of recovery and nonviolence, Barak addresses peace and conflict studies, legal rights, social justice, and various nonviolent movements. Employing an interdisciplinary framework, Barak emphasizes the importance of culture, media, sexuality, gender, and social structure in developing a comprehensive theory of these two separate, but inseparable phenomena. This innovative and accessible volume includes Figures, tables, and illustrations that reinforce important concepts and relationships Introduces a new, original theory of reciprocal violence and nonviolence Numerous case studies on violence and recovery throughout the book Chapter summaries and review questions to aid student comprehension Models of nonviolence such as "mutuality," "altruistic humanism," "positive peacemaking," and "resiliency" Designed to be a core text for graduate and undergraduate courses on violence in criminology, sociology, criminal justice, and social work departments, Violence and Nonviolence is also an outstanding supplementary text for violence against women and criminal behavior courses. This book will transform the way students and readers think about violence, nonviolence, and the reciprocal relationship between the two.
We see nonviolent resistance all over today’s world, from Egypt’s Tahrir Square to New York Occupy. Although we think of the last century as one marked by wars and violent conflict, in fact it was just as much a century of nonviolence as the achievements of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and peaceful protests like the one that removed Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines clearly demonstrate. But what is nonviolence? What makes a campaign a nonviolent one, and how does it work? What values does it incorporate? In this unique study, Todd May, a philosopher who has himself participated in campaigns of nonviolent resistance, offers the first extended philosophical reflection on the particular and compelling political phenomenon of nonviolence. Drawing on both historical and contemporary examples, he examines the concept and objectives of nonviolence, and considers the different dynamics of nonviolence, from moral jiu-jitsu to nonviolent coercion. May goes on to explore the values that infuse nonviolent activity, especially the respect for dignity and the presupposition of equality, before taking a close-up look at the role of nonviolence in today’s world. Students of politics, peace studies, and philosophy, political activists, and those interested in the shape of current politics will find this book an invaluable source for understanding one of the most prevalent, but least reflected upon, political approaches of our world.
This deeply researched book is the first history of the War Resisters League, an organization that represents the major vehicle of secular radical pacifism in the United States. Besides opposing all U. S. wars and championing conscientious objection to these wars, Scott H. Bennett shows how the WRL—led by its colorful members—functioned as a “movement halfway house,” assisting and influencing a variety of social reform groups and campaigns. He devotes special attention to WWII conscientious objectors (COs) who staged dramatic wartime work and hunger strikes in Civilian Public Service camps and prisons against Jim Crow, censorship, conscription, and other policies. These radical COs moved the postwar WRL in new directions—and transformed radical pacifism. By recovering the important links between the WRL and the peace, civil rights, civil liberties, and antinuclear movements, Bennett demonstrates the social relevance and political effectiveness of radical pacifism. He emphasizes the WRL’s most important legacy: its promotion, legitimization, and Americanization of Gandhian nonviolent direct action, which infused the postwar peace and justice movements.
This book provides a short and accessible introduction to the field of gender history, one that has vastly expanded in scope and substance since the mid 1970s. Paying close attention to both classic texts in the field and the latest literature, the author examines the origins and development of the field and elucidates current debates and controversies. She highlights the significance of race, class and ethnicity for how gender affects society, culture and politics as well as delving into histories of masculinity. The author discusses in a clear and straightforward manner the various methods and approaches used by gender historians. Consideration is given to how the study of gender illuminates the histories of revolution, war and nationalism, industrialization and labor relations, politics and citizenship, colonialism and imperialism using as examples research dealing with the histories of a number of areas across the globe. Written by one of the leading scholars in this vibrant field, What is Gender History? will be the ideal introduction for students of all levels.
"Ranging from Reconstruction to the Black Power period, this thoroughly and creatively researched book effectively challenges long-held beliefs about the Black Freedom Struggle. It should make it abundantly clear that the violence/nonviolence dichotomy is too simple to capture the thinking of Black Southerners about the forms of effective resistance."—Charles M. Payne, University of Chicago The notion that the civil rights movement in the southern United States was a nonviolent movement remains a dominant theme of civil rights memory and representation in popular culture. Yet in dozens of southern communities, Black people picked up arms to defend their leaders, communities, and lives. In particular, Black people relied on armed self-defense in communities where federal government officials failed to safeguard activists and supporters from the violence of racists and segregationists, who were often supported by local law enforcement. In We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, Akinyele Omowale Umoja argues that armed resistance was critical to the efficacy of the southern freedom struggle and the dismantling of segregation and Black disenfranchisement. Intimidation and fear were central to the system of oppression in Mississippi and most of the Deep South. To overcome the system of segregation, Black people had to overcome fear to present a significant challenge to White domination. Armed self-defense was a major tool of survival in allowing some Black southern communities to maintain their integrity and existence in the face of White supremacist terror. By 1965, armed resistance, particularly self-defense, was a significant factor in the challenge of the descendants of enslaved Africans to overturning fear and intimidation and developing different political and social relationships between Black and White Mississippians. This riveting historical narrative relies upon oral history, archival material, and scholarly literature to reconstruct the use of armed resistance by Black activists and supporters in Mississippi to challenge racist terrorism, segregation, and fight for human rights and political empowerment from the early 1950s through the late 1970s. Akinyele Omowale Umoja is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University, where he teaches courses on the history of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and other social movements.
In 2002, we learned that President George Washington had eight (and, later, nine) enslaved Africans in his house while he lived in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797. The house was only one block from Independence Hall and, though torn down in 1832, it housed the enslaved men and women Washington brought to the city as well as serving as the country's first executive office building. Intense controversy erupted over what this newly resurfaced evidence of enslaved people in Philadelphia meant for the site that was next door to the new home for the Liberty Bell. How could slavery best be remembered and memorialized in the birthplace of American freedom? For Marc Howard Ross, this conflict raised a related and troubling question: why and how did slavery in the North fade from public consciousness to such a degree that most Americans have perceived it entirely as a "Southern problem"? Although slavery was institutionalized throughout the Northern as well as the Southern colonies and early states, the existence of slavery in the North and its significance for the region's economic development has rarely received public recognition. In Slavery in the North, Ross not only asks why enslavement disappeared from the North's collective memories but also how the dramatic recovery of these memories in recent decades should be understood. Ross undertakes an exploration of the history of Northern slavery, visiting sites such as the African Burial Ground in New York, Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the ports of Rhode Island, old mansions in Massachusetts, prestigious universities, and rediscovered burying grounds. Inviting the reader to accompany him on his own journey of discovery, Ross recounts the processes by which Northerners had collectively forgotten 250 years of human bondage and the recent—and continuing—struggles over recovering, and commemorating, what it entailed.
In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, nonviolent movements for justice have succeeded where violent campaigns have failed. This book examines fourteen cases—eleven movements that succeeded and three that have, until now, failed—and shows why nonviolent strategies work, drawing on the thought of practitioners and theorists. Later chapters examine violent U.S. interventions abroad and at home, as well as citizen movements for nonviolent conflict resolution. As an introduction to nonviolent movements, this text engages students in recent events from the news as well as the history of modern warfare. Bringing in philosophical and religious texts from a diverse set of traditions, author Michael K. Duffey offers a multifaceted argument for embracing nonviolent solutions to conflict.
The Power of Nonviolence, written by Richard Bartlett Gregg in 1934 and revised in 1944 and 1959, is the most important and influential theory of principled or integral nonviolence published in the twentieth century. Drawing on Gandhi's ideas and practice, Gregg explains in detail how the organized power of nonviolence (power-with) exercised against violent opponents can bring about small and large transformative social change and provide an effective substitute for war. This edition includes a major introduction by political theorist, James Tully, situating the text in its contexts from 1934 to 1959, and showing its great relevance today. The text is the definitive 1959 edition with a foreword by Martin Luther King, Jr. It includes forewords from earlier editions, the chapter on class struggle and nonviolent resistance from 1934, a crucial excerpt from a 1929 preliminary study, a biography and bibliography of Gregg, and a bibliography of recent work on nonviolence.
