Suggestions for a Social Construction Approach to Nonviolent Resistance

Suggestions for a Social Construction Approach to Nonviolent Resistance

(Communicative/Cultural/System/Relational/Holistic Approach??)

By Stellan Vinthagen

1993 Ronald M. McCarthy & Christopher Kruegler, published the monograph: Toward Research and Theory Building in the Study of Nonviolent Action, in which they launch the “technique approach” to nonviolent action. Together with Gene Sharp they both belong to the Albert Einstein Institution, founded in order to “expand the understanding and use of nonviolent sanctions to advance group interests in conflicts world-wide”. The technique approach is founded on the classical work of Gene Sharp 1973, The Politics of Nonviolent Action.

This text argue that despite being a major contribution to the research of nonviolent action the technique approach is seriously misguided and an alternative is needed in order to further our understanding of nonviolent resistance.

Limitations of the Technique Approach

The American sociologist Gene Sharp has written a number of books (1973. 1979.1980) which have become classical works both in the nonviolent research community and nonviolent movement. To Sharp nonviolence is something you will consciously choose, if once you have learned the techniques of nonviolence and realised the force of organised and strategic resistance. His view upon both power and resistance is pragmatic and technical. This has its advantages, as Sharp has presented something of a "smorgasbord" of different ways and techniques of resistance to the nonviolent activist who is prepared to use them.

Sharp defines social power as the ability to control the behaviour of others, directly or indirectly, by handling groups of people, whose actions affect other groups of people (Sharp 1973: 7-8). This is expressed in the strategic struggle of power between actors. The unique in his contribution to the discussion on power lies in his combination and development of the theories from Gandhi and Hanna Arendt. Gandhi stresses the force of disobedience and Arendt speaks of power as a creative human ability to act collectively in consent. To Sharp the counter power of resistance becomes a form of collective disobedience.

In the development of his own concept of power Sharp has reached the opinion that power ultimately is based on the cooperation with the subordinate and that obedience profoundly is a free choice (Sharp 1973: 25-30). All systems of power are built upon hierarchies of chains of obedience where the leaders always stand or fall by the obedience of the pyramid of power. According to Sharp people are obedient for many reasons, for example habit, fear of punishment, sense of duty, self interest because of advantages, psychological identification with the leading group, despondent acceptance or the lack of confidence and recourses.

Sharp differs from Arendt in considering the subordinate's obedience a kind of voluntary cooperation. This voluntariness gives resistance new and unthought-of of possibilities to change the relations of power, possibilities Sharp takes on as his task to investigate. You can't make anyone do something unless they fear the punishment (Sharp 1973: 28). Disobedience is always an option and it is the relationship between the group and the punishment that decides if it dares to defy orders, laws and rules from the leader. From this I realise that the key to successful resistance lies in finding ways of changing the relationship to the punishment.

The revolutionary understanding of power which through Gandhi became part of the nonviolent resistance movements, was described in Gandhi’s understanding that India was not colonialised when the British took the country, but when the Indian people gave the control of the country away through their submission to the British. Irrespective of the level of violent threats or golden promises for those who submit, all social interaction between people involves some degree of cooperation from the participants. A slave that does not cooperate might soon become a dead slave, but then he is also no longer a slave which a master might use! I.e. as long as the slave lives and serves his master, slavery builds on cooperation from the slave. The satyagraha struggle is built on ”the immutable maxim, that government of the people is possible only as long as they consent either consciously or unconsciously to be governed”.[1][1] The goal of the nonviolent struggle was not to take over the existing political power but to empower people, to give them the tools for their own liberation.[2][2]

Sharp continues the gandhian understanding of power but by throwing out the gandhian understanding of truth and morality. Nonviolent resistance in Sharpian terms is simply the functional substitute to war and violence, a substitute which is a more effective tool for combat.[3][3] A basic difference is that Sharp regards nonviolent techniques as effective in conflicts more or less regardless of what kind of truth/goal you fight for.[4][4] Sharp makes a reductionism of nonviolence which turns gandhian “experiments with truth” into a pure matter of effective strategy and tactics, exactly as in military operations during war, with the only difference being the understanding of what tools are truly most effective. Nonviolent struggle is to ”attack the specific aspect which symbolizes the ”evil” they are fighting, which is least defensible by the opponent and which is capable of arousing the greatest strength among the nonviolent actionists and the wider population.”

The problem is that Sharp reduces the tools of the struggle to pure instruments, when they for Gandhi are creative.[5][5] Sharp’s nonviolent tools are instruments to fight for your own and pre-existing understanding of truth/justice/goals. It is a kind of effective social manipulation in order to get things in the way you want it to be. Gandhi’s nonviolent tools are creative means to fight for a kind of truth/justice/goal that the involved conflict parties together will agree on.[6][6] Sharp seeks effective tools of influence on others in service of a give group interest. Gandhi seeks effective tools to explore and reach a deeper understanding of a common truth. With Sharp the victory belongs to the nonviolent conflict fighter, with Gandhi victory belongs to a more inclusive understanding of each others common needs and views. With Sharp the law of nonviolence is mechanic and effective in the short run, with Gandhi it is dialectic and effective in the long run.

Berit Holm describes in her dissertation in Philosophy the nonviolent theory of Sharp as “technical moralism”.[7][7] ”Nonviolence” is initially a social relation but becomes through the theoretical construction a “functional cause” that brings about certain effects. Violence is made one-dimensional – without connections to its social and material context and differing forms. Social development then, becomes something that is possible to steer through that certain cause (means) gives certain effects (ends). Morality then becomes a matter of technical management. The core question within ethics – is there something I ought to (not) do? – is reduced into the technical question of how. The genius connection made by Gandhi between means and ends is turned by Sharp into simply a question of effective means.

To be sure Sharp's perspective is fruitful when trying to understand nonviolence but at the same time it is rather one dimensional (Holm 1978, McGuinness 1994, Burrowes 1999: 83-96). With a simplified concept of power comes a simplified concept of resistance. Sharp lacks an understanding of the forming power. The power that shapes us as people. Our way of thinking, feeling and acting. According to Foucault power not only is prohibiting but also producing and partly incorporated in people's minds, language and behaviour. This makes it difficult to separate people's will to submit or resist from the power we are speaking of.

Still Sharp's theory of power makes way for a new possible understanding of power. It is possible to maintain that power is a matter or subordination. But it is necessary to take one step further from Sharp to see how our understanding of the perspective of the nonviolent movement changes when we have established power as a forming phenomenon. Sharp's reasoning assumes the existence of a conscious and free will not formed by power (Sharp 1973: 25-32). But the idea of the free will is of no consequence for the survival of the theory. The theory ultimately is built upon the fact that subordination is created or changed, not if someone is conscious of how this is done (Sharp 1980: 98, 212, 341). Even if power is forming people's will and actions the fact remains that power arises from the participation of the subordinate in a de facto behaviour.

One could say that Sharp and Foucault complement each other. Both investigate strategies and techniques, Sharp those of resistance and Foucault those of power. Still the theoretical differences are considerable. It is true that they are unanimous in their opinion that power is instable, changeable and spreading – but Sharp contrary to Foucault sees power as a zero-sum-game (McGuinness 1994). When the struggle for power leads to one group gaining power then an other group looses power. Foucault thinks that power can increase without diminishing somewhere else. Sharp's concept of power is characterised by the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of the subject, where individuals with a free will try to govern others against their will. Foucault is more interested in how the different techniques of power form our will and actions.

Sharp actually realize the problem and would like to see more research about how the will is formed by institutions and how it could be liberated (Sharp 1980: 20). Despite this the technique approach school is obviously uninterested to conduct serious such studies.

The forming done by power takes place through different techniques and ways of conversation (discourses) which work irrespectively of what the participating people want or don't want. Power is “not built up out of 'wills' (individual or collective), nor...derivable from interests" (Foucault: 1980: 180), "neither given, nor exchanged, nor recovered, but rather exercised...in action" (1980:89) within ”an unequal and relatively stable relation of forces" (1980: 200). Power is about how actions, independent of the actor's intentions, actually can structure the space of other actions (Foucault according to Beronius 1986: 25). I assume in a similar way that subordination not necessarily depends on the personal will of the participants but rather on the social fact that behaviour is subordinated.

According to Foucault power is a productive act of dominance which is comparatively independent. The acting individual does not control the activity, rather it is the activity that controls the individual and forms her personality. The individual does not exercise power; the power expresses itself through the individual (Foucault 1974: 36-37).

With this you can say that Foucault actually maintains the opposite to Sharp. The nonviolent activist can not be outside the power, make a decision of resistance and then act against the power. The resistance exists as a possibility to be sure, but the fibre threads of power have penetrated in to the thinking, language, methods and culture of the nonviolent activist. It is not those in power that are given power by the subordination of the obedient but a set of techniques that dominate those who exercise these techniques. To Sharp the struggle for power goes on between participants while it to Foucault forms the participants. The question though is whether this must lead to annihilation of the understanding of power as subordination.

It is important that we do not get power and techniques of power mixed up. With Foucault the power has a tendency to appear as force without individuals or actors. (Foucault 1980: 117). This is probably not how to understand Foucault but some of his followers have a tendency to abolish the activist (Cheater 1999: Chapter 1). This creates a risk of mythologizing the power as independent techniques and ways of speaking. But surely, techniques or languages of power have to be practised and therefore also used; otherwise they won't be effective in the creation of power. Techniques and discourses of power are social, not self-acting objects. When we subdue our behaviour to a routine or scheme of techniques we become part of the power forming. If this happens to be what we want to do or we just do it without thinking is of no importance. Power will be at work anyway, as our acting will form a subordination.

Foucault has wrongly been criticised for reducing everything into power (Foucault 1994: b 133). After all there seems to exist a space free of power to Foucault somewhere. The decision of the actor is not completely determinate by power. Foucault speaks of “plebs”, a feature in the social body, in classes, groups and individuals themselves which in some sense escapes relations of power (Foucault 1980: 137-138). It is not a social entity but a plebeian quality or aspect of different entities. While no person or group as a whole can exist outside the power, this plebeian quality does evade power by existing on its borders or under its reach.

This means that research on nonviolent action needs to understand how power infiltrates the nonviolent movement and disturbs the possibilities of resistance to power. Research also need to explore how the social construction of resistance is possible – a kind of resistance that are not simply reproducing power relations.

The need of an alternative to the technique approach

McCharty and Kruegler show in their manifesto the poor quality of existing studies of nonviolent resistance, claiming there is a need for a serious research program. They call for a unification and seriousness in research on nonviolence following this "technique approach". But their approach is problematic in several aspects, and might lead research wrong for a long time in future. Their approach is built on an empiricist epistemology, positivist methodological approach and some kind of essentialist idea of a Strategic Man (movements and people as chess players using resources effectively and researchers assessing the empirical effects of various methods).

The Sharpian-dominance of the field of research on nonviolence is there and is not the real problem. They do serious and valuable research which up to date is the main contribution to our understanding of nonviolence since Gandhi. The problem is if not other kinds of approaches are developed in serious programs being able to produce alternative perspectives.

What we do need is serious scientific discussions between different theoretical perspectives furthering a more nuanced understanding of nonviolent action, not only more of the same kind of technical reductionism.

The technique approach has so far produced a number of books and reports of high quality but at the same time their irrelevance to their main audience of choice have become apparent. The governments and military officers which they have approached since the 1970ies have showed a lack of serious interest. It has not helped that the technique school have adopted a military-strategic-scientific thinking and maintained that the centrally organised and nationally trained version of strategic nonviolent action is stronger than any military means. E.g. the Baltic states that initially showed a strong interest are now new members of NATO.

The state and the military might not be the correct or main movers of nonviolent action. But that is then only the unwise strategic choice of the technique school, the major problem is more fundamental, it is the unwise theoretical foundation of the whole analytical techno-thinking.

There is a need for research emphasising communication, culture, identity, discourse and constructivism - instead of solely empirical technology and effects. That would be nonviolence studies which would be up to date with discussions inside sociology and international relations. The kind of social technique and positivist analysis which Sharp et al do has been under heavy criticism since the 1970ies within other scientific disciplines and new theories have developed since then. The main sociologists of today are people like Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault which never are cited in the technique school. And one of the founding fathers of new social movement research like Alberto Melucci is unheard of within the technique approach.

Basically McCarthy and Kruegler argue like it is only a battle against the personality cult of Gandhi et al, enthusiastic success stories, moral idealism, and religious illusions in earlier literature on nonviolence. An understanding of nonviolent action is truly a battle against unsystematic and simplified analysis of nonviolence, but not only, it is also a battle against other one-dimensional understandings, yet systematic such, like their own theories of pure strategy or technique. Like in many other occasions they have thrown out the baby with the baby water. For them concepts like truth, dialogue, understanding, hermeneutics etc equals with idealistic moralism and religious mythology. Everything which is not "observable" is not part of "science".

The problem is that the technique approach becomes as essentialist as the kind of personality studies they criticise, by replacing the myth of the Holy Man/Liberator/Spirit with the magic of the Effective Technique/Strategy. Technique without the social historical context and complex multidimensional understanding of society turns into just another kind of mythology.

We need to focus on developing key concepts like power, discourse, language, constructivism, relationalism, networks, identity etc. and how they relate to a non-essentialist understanding of nonviolence, and on the spread of nonviolence between social movements across time and space. One of the great battles being fought out inside social movement research is the one between emphasis on collective identity construction or on strategic resource management. We would learn from that discussion that before suggesting what strategy is most effective there needs to be a construction of a collective feeling of a “we” able to act and take a strategic choice of nonviolent action. The complicated and conflict loaded social construction of a “we” is then only one fundamental aspect which is overlooked by the technique approach.

One possibility is to base our insights on works like the one by Mustafa Emirbayer (esp. Manifesto for a Relational Approach and What is Agency?), Jeff Goodwin, Francesca Polletta, Ann Mische, and other social movement scholars who try to find a balance between strategy and identity, reason and emotion, facts and narratives, etc. etc. This framework may be a starting point for a more dynamic and less positivist approach to nonviolence and nonviolent action.

A tentative suggestion of a Social Constructivist Approach to Nonviolent Action

The tentative framework of the social constructivist approach would suggest a different direction of future research. Instead of focusing on the ideals or argumentative logic of nonviolence like the early literature – and instead of focusing on showing the strategic effectiveness of possible fighting techniques like Sharp et al; the social constructivist approach would focus on the construction of nonviolent resistance as a complex and dynamic social process.

One research direction would be to focus on the problematic construction of a “movement culture of nonviolent action”. The proposal would be that the social construction of personal habits into a functional institutional system where nonviolent action is embedded in a movement culture would make nonviolent action sustainable. The movement culture of nonviolent action is a nonviolent society grounded inside a dominating social system, yet moving against it by socially sustaining critical action. It is about a new kind of society opposing the existing one by being situated in the middle of it.

One example would be the environmental activists in Innerdalen in southern Norway who opposed the construction of yet another large water dam. They did not as in the Alta struggle in northern Norway; in big and occasional action events chain themselves to each other with heavy steel chains blockading the construction work. Instead they tried to sustain resistance, they moved down into the valley in Innerdalen and started to live there, toil the land and build a village life. They created an Environmental University during summer time, educating visitors in the construction of alternative energy and old handicraft. The point is that they did not only oppose through a blockade and they did not simply create their alternative eco-friendly living some where else where they could do it without being disturbed by the state. They lived their alternative in the valley and by that became an opposing society blockading the dominating system. As long as they did their work on the land and lived in the village houses the water dam could not be completed – at least not without letting the dam kill the entire alternative society.

In the end the village people in Innerdalen where driven away by the police and they did not succeed to sustain the movement culture of nonviolent action. But that has been possible for others. One other example is the movement of the landless in Brazil, MST. The MST started in the early 1980ies and is today a movement with about 1, 5 million active landless and small-farmers united in making a “land-reform from below” by creating peaceful land occupations of non-used land. They have so far done over 2 000 occupations and made a land distribution possible which is bigger than what the Brazilian state have done. In the MST – encampamentos – people live in plastic tents during sometimes 5-10 years before their persistence gives them their own right of land. The movement is acting without arms but not out of principle, but from pragmatic reasons, like most “nonviolent” movements in history, having learned how their earlier violent uprisings crushed them totally. Today they occasionally use their farming tools to defend themselves but they have not collectively armed themselves despite regularly attacks from organised paramilitary groups.

They create a movement culture of nonviolent action through combining several activities which they make stable by institutionalising them. The first they build up in their tent-society during occupations is “schools” for their children. When the land is finally theirs this schools ensure that the values and experiences of their struggle is transformed to the new generations. With their own rituals and social dramas they enact the events of the struggle and confirm their solidarity. Economic cooperatives generate the livelihood and resources for a more professional and expanding struggle emanating from the settlements that have won their part of land. They recreate traditional forms of protest by institutionalising them as continues parts of life, not as single events of temporary movement acting spontaneous. They mix cultural elements like the Madonna, Che and football – and make a new blend of “MST-Culture” which sustains resistance. They create the social and material foundation of a life of struggle.

This kind of movement culture of nonviolent action is about living the revolution, not simply individually as a life-style as a self-betterment, but collectively as in the constructive program which Gandhi emphasised but which Sharp neglects in his focus on technique. This movement culture is not about alternative living as creating something better for us who are able, but a confrontative society which confronts by living other values on the sites which belongs to the dominating system. This movement culture is not about proposing or protesting in a liberal sense of free speech and opinion making but about enacting and living the proposed life by constructing it. It is the social materialisation of values and ideals of social change. And this process is problematic and multidimensional, a lot of things need to function together as a whole, and it needs to be dynamic in its expansion. Since a lot might get wrong, and lead to the impossibility so sustain nonviolent action during time and reactions of opponents, there is a lot to understand and study.

Basically, what makes the movement culture of nonviolent action possible among the landless movement in Brazil, but not in the environmental movement of Norway? What aspects of social life need to interact creatively in order to make this confrontative society sustainable? This is surely not only a matter of effective resource management, but as well a matter of creating social solidarity and integration in a situation when both tempting offers and frightening reactions of the dominating system risks to tear apart the social solidarity on which any wise strategy builds.

A social constructivist approach would try to understand what makes the unthinkable – nonviolent and persistent resistance against violence and oppression – intellectually thinkable AND social sustainable. What makes nonviolent action to become a part of a movement’s culture, a part of people’s habits?

What makes nonviolent action become natural and integrated into social life, and not an extra ordinary idea of strategic thinkers developed in isolation in a planning centre shouting out their advice/command into a deaf desert.

[4][4] Holm (1978), p. 19-24 och 31. See also Sharp (1980), p. 138.

[6][6] Bondurant (1958/1988), p. 34. See also Sharp (1979), p. 68.

[7][7] Holm (1978), see e.g. p. 30-31, 107, 152.