I regret that I cannot attend the symposium in person, which itself suggests an area for fruitful research – how do parents of young children sustain their activism? (Fortunately, it seems that we have now found a personal solution that will permit me to attend such events in future.)
The suggestions that follow are, I’m afraid, somewhat random – certainly not comprehensive and not grouped according to priorities. My general orientation is that research into nonviolent action needs to take its lead from the experience of nonviolent activists and organisers of nonviolent action – or would-be organisers. The research then aims to illuminate experience and also transmit an understanding of how things were done that can be useful in other situations.
I think there are
a variety of research topics in this area, including everything that might go
under the rubric of “nonviolence and social empowerment”.
2. Leadership: Nonviolent struggles often will bring out the
leadership qualities of individuals.
However, the media coverage tends to simplify and personalise
leadership. Leaders such as Gandhi,
King and Wałesa did not just emerge but were also constructed, and not
just by the media but by forces operating within or in alliance with the
movements concerned. Research into
nonviolent movements needs to take a critical look at the erection of
figureheads, speaking plainly about the interests involved and analysing the
weaknesses as well as the strengths the movements incurred through such
identification with a figurehead. But
also research is needed into forms of leadership that are both collective and
transparent, and methods of organisation that encourage active participation
and initiative rather than discipleship.
In general, I think, case studies of nonviolent action need to pay attention to methods of organisation because it is organisation that enables a movement to carry out the strategic choices it makes.
3. Social movements and organisations: What some considered “new social movements” a few years ago tended to be characterised by identity and a sub-culture, whereas case studies of nonviolent struggle tend to concentrate on organisations and campaigns with defined and limited goals or on episodes. This focus on objectives or even on particular types of activities and methodologies is restricting and fails to respond adequately to phenomena such as feminism or ecology.
4. The interactions between mass protest and small group militancy: Many nonviolent movements can be analysed in terms of the image of the “bell jar”, with a minority of highly-committed activists willing to take high-risk action, a much wider base of less active support, and the largest body being of passive sympathisers. Research into nonviolent needs look at the interaction between efforts to mobilise different constituencies, and in particular on the impact one form of action has on another.
5. Political ju-jitsu: Gregg’s concept of “moral ju-jitsu” and Sharp’s development of it into “political ju-jitsu” suggest an engagement with the opponent. One quite telling experience was at a seminar of researchers and activists where Peter Ackerman tried to introduce a session on strategy by analysing the opponent. The activists rebelled and there followed a very good session with people talking about methods of empowerment and mobilisation, but at the end Ackerman asked us what had been missing from this strategic discussion – and, of course, it was his original focus, the analysis of the opponent. Activists in nonviolent struggle begin by thinking about our own empowerment and how we can mobilise but at some point need to develop a strategy apropos a particular antagonist – an antagonist with strengths, weaknesses, and also with needs.
6. Nonviolence and identity, especially nationalism: In general, there is an ambivalence about group identity. As torturers recognise, social and political identity are what make an activist risk personal security for a social struggle. (The main aim of torture is less to extract information than to force someone to “betray” this identity.) Yet the same identity might itself also be the basis for prejudice against other groups or, later, the basis for domination. The case is particularly clear with nationalism.
Nonviolence has been an appropriate mode of struggle for many peoples denied self-determination. While Gandhi and others involved in anti-colonial struggle have argued that constructing a national identity is not necessarily exclusive, but can be a step towards a wider identity, in practice the nonviolent mobilisation of national feeling has often been a vehicle for a self-interested nationalism that discriminates against other groups. What are the implications for this for nonviolence as a form of struggle for human rights that wishes to avert an escalation to war?
Even something as apparently innocent as recovering “hidden history” involves some ambiguities. James C. Scott (Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, 1990) has coined the suggestive term “hidden transcript” to indicate interpretations of reality that exist among the people, for instance in families and their stories, and that refute the official version. Yet, while I would like to see more research into the subversive potential of hidden transcripts, I would also urge the need to recognise the partial and ethnicised character of some of these – as for instance with the “hidden transcripts” that existed throughout Tito’s Yugoslavia and provided fuel for the resurgent nationalisms of the late 1980s.
7. Nonviolence and transition: In view of the centrality of the means-ends continuum in the nonviolent critique of armed struggle, it is a weakness of nonviolence theory that there has not been more reflection on social transitions after a “successful” nonviolent struggle. The two main areas for work are post-colonial societies and the so-called “Communist” bloc.
8. Consumer boycotts: As a “conscious consumer”, I suppose I am participating in several boycotts, however rather half-heartedly and therefore ineffectually – what we English used to call “conscience-salving”. Certain boycotts have been an effective instrument putting pressure on a corporation or even an industry to change its policies.
More research is needed on how to make boycotts effective – both in terms of educating a wider public and in terms of influencing corporate policies – in order for there to be more informed debate about the boycott as a strategy. I think this could be especially relevant in the context of the current movement against capitalist globalisation.
9. The role of states as third parties: Much nonviolent strategy, and especially much of the work of movements’ high-profile leaders, is directed towards engaging international third parties, especially states, on the side of the nonviolent movement. From the resistance to the Kapp Putsch to Kosovo, I think this has had problematic consequences. Foreign states have their own interests – that are rarely those of the people appealing to them for support – their own methods and their own view of what constitutes a desirable outcome. The movement often has unrealistic expectations and its leadership often skews the strategy to make it more acceptable to these “supportive” states. Most case studies of discrete episodes bring out this problem, yet I don’t think the pattern has itself been studied in a comparative way, across experiences.
10. Nonviolence
and social defence: I am not sure that there is
much new work being done on civil resistance as a strategy for national
defence. In the present global context,
perhaps it is clearer than ever that for citizens of NATO countries the gravest
attacks on society now come not from other states but from the state itself,
from international institutions and corporations, and from the military
alliance to which their states belong. In this, I think that it is worth
looking to develop a range of workshops on how people in their everyday
situations can resist the state’s usurpation of more powers to itself: the
workshop by Schweik Action Wollongong with a community radio station could be
an inspiration here.
11. Schweik Action Gollongong and Brian Martin: Having mention Schweik Action Wollongong, let me go on to say that one of my big regrets about not coming is missing the chance to see Brian Martin again. I think some of the lines of work that he and Schweik Action Wollongong have initiated are very creative. For instance, Brian’s discussion of the Fiji coup in terms of what could have been an alternative international response or the book he was proposing with lines of analysis of “what were the obstacles to a nonviolent response?”
12. Meta-research, ie Research on the impact of research on nonviolent action: Many people who come to research nonviolent action have themselves first gained experience as nonviolent activists. This has been the case since the earliest research on nonviolent action (by people such as Richard Gregg and Bart de Ligt), and remains so today. Some of the best recent research - for instance the research on nonviolent intervention coordinated by Christine Schweitzer for the Nonviolent Peace Force - arises directly from the needs of projects of nonviolent action. Some – such as Liam Mahoney and Enrique Eguren’s Unarmed Bodyguards (Kumarian 1997) on Peace Brigades International or Barbara Müller and Christian Buttner’s evaluation of the Balkan Peace Team – on the need for self-evaluation and reflection.
I think research is best carried out in a transparent interactive process with activists. You might think it is redundant to say “transparent” but a former Greenham woman who included interviews with Greenham in her (unpublished) Ph D on the psychology of nonviolent action was suspected of having analysed her former comrades as “social deviants”. The interactive process can lead to a project refining its activities in the light of the research – as did the Balkan Peace Team during the course of Müller and Buttner’s study.
At the outset of any research project, it is important to consider how the results will be communicated. I was impressed by the process adopted by the Uppsala Life and Peace Institute, some 10 years ago, where they commissioned some research on nonviolent intervention, and then invited both those interviewed for the research and some people considering a new project of nonviolent intervention to take part in a seminar going through the research findings. On each major topic, people representing the poles of debate were invited to discuss what the researcher presented, and then the group went on to discuss the implications of this point for the project under consideration.
Recently has emerged a book edited by Michael Randle – Challenge to Nonviolence (Bradford Peace Studies, 2002) – that documents the work of a small group which existed for five years in the 1990s and of which I was a member. We did not decide early enough how to transmit what we were learning by our process of presentation and group discussion, but fortunately Michael recorded all the discussions and has spent a lot of time working them up into a book accessible to all. It largely takes the form of the presentations to the group (by members of the group, by outside researchers, or by outside activists) followed by summaries of the group discussion. I think it works. We also initiated a series of meetings for British activists from various nonviolent movements, Gathering Visions, Gathering Strengths.
A question related to “how do researchers transmit their findings?” is “how does research relate to training for nonviolent action?” Researchers sometimes look down on the over-simplification of nonviolence training workshops, while trainers sometimes see researchers as retired activists who have become like the theologians who argue how many angels can stand on a pinhead. For me, both research and training not only can but should be mutually enriching.
The first time I was involved in devising a strategy for a nonviolent campaign – when I was a 19-year-old student – I found myself drawing heavily from Joan Bondurant’s research on Gandhi (Conquest of Violence) and in particular the schema she drew up showing the steps in a Gandhian campaign. I found this very helpful (as I later found some revisions of it), and think that attempts to draw out guidelines and themes have much to offer activists.
Sometimes people refer to research as a lonely activity, and at times it can be. But I think that the participatory methodologies developed in training have a lot to offer, bringing the insight of a whole group to bear on an issue. I remember an activist/researcher on torture showed me a computer flow chart he had done: his print-out took up the full width of the room. In the centre was a prisoner in a cell with a potential torturer. Where on the chart were the points where particular people could bring pressure to bear to prevent the torture? His analysis was impressive and thorough piece of analysis, including everybody from the prisoner’s family to the United Nations. But above all it reminded me of the low-tech web charts used in nonviolence training workshops, where each participant can add bubbles to a chart showing how one effect or cause linked with others. I am sure that more researchers would benefit from sitting down with others for a simple exercise like that, although probably after the group exercise, we then need to return to our computers and refine the group activity.
Now let me conclude by wishing the symposium and the new institute at Tromso well. I look forward to visiting some day, but in the meantime will be very content if this symposium initiates some new forms of communication by internet or email about research into nonviolent action.
Howard Clark, Madrid – 24 November 2002