Biblio

This article examines the important question of how far nonviolent resistance promotes peaceful and democratic political outcomes after the overthrow of  a dictatorial or authoritarian regime, as claimed in the nonviolence literature. The authors develop hypotheses about the likelihood of more egalitarian and peaceful relations at a governmental and party political level, and a greater political role for civil society, as a result of use of nonviolent resistance. These hypotheses are examined by comparing post-transition politics in Benin (an impressive example of successful nonviolent resistance) and Namibia (where in 1966 the South West African People's Organization began an armed struggle for independence from apartheid South Africa).

Mariana Prandini examines how Brazilian feminists mobilized against the criminalization of abortion in August 2018, when people from different countries in Latin America gathered for a week for the Festival for Women’s Lives. Brazilian, Uruguayan and Argentinian activists exchanged information about their own struggles for abortion rights. Prandini also analyses the criminalization of the abortion pill and its effect on abortion activism in Brazil.

This article discusses the response of young Lithuanians to their government's 2015 decision to reintroduce compulsory military service of nine months men aged between 19-26. The conscripts are randomly selected each year from all those eligible, defined to include Lithuanians living abroad. The author notes that most try to avoid military service, and may prefer to pay fines or risk imprisonment, which has led to the government looking for new means of enforcing compliance.

This book by a landscape architect explores how local solutions to particular environmental problems, often adopted in remote parts of the planet by indigenous peoples, have a much wider relevance today, and might be alternatives to western technological solutions that can have their own destructive implications. (TEK here means traditional ecological knowledge.) Watson has compiled 18 case studies, split into the separate categories of mountains, forests, deserts and wetlands, based on 10 years of travelling and interviewing anthropologists and scientists as well as indigenous peoples. She records, for example, how traditional methods of rice growing on hill slopes in Bali have proved more lastingly productive than the 1970s 'Green Revolution' based on pesticides and fertiliser, which in a few seasons led to declining yield, a degraded soil and return of the pests.

Compilation of historic documents recording the negotiations during the 1960s published by the Royal United Services Institute on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The documents can be found in pdf at the link provided.

This study of China’s #MeToo draws upon the theory of connective actions to investigate how digital technologies influence the way in which feminist activism takes place. The author analysed over 36,000 online articles related to the campaign, and found 48 cases of sexual violence and harassment allegations. Time series analysis show that China's #MeToo campaign first emerged within educational institutions before gradually spreading to other sectors of society. Studying the ten most controversial cases, this paper identifies a series of counter-censorship strategies. The study of how the #MeToo movement in China evolved within an authoritarian context shows how connective actions traverse various platforms and cultural contexts. Methodologically, this study demonstrates how both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used to study connective actions on social media in China.

This book explores misogyny across the media, from political and editorial cartoons to news and sport. It also covers film, television, social media (especially Twitter), and journalistic organizations that address gender inequities. The authors argue that the conservative populism ushered in by President Donald Trump and the Republicans create the social-cultural and political environment that have prompted the #MeToo Movement and Fourth Wave Feminism in the US as a response. They argue, therefore, that the ‘social contract’ should be reinterpreted to create a just, gender- and race-equitable society.

Provides an overview of the Sudanese revolution and developments in 2020, but also illustrates the great variety of women involved in the protests and their different styles of politics (political parties, unionism, resistance committees, climate activism) through brief biographical sketches. The authors also interviewed a Nubian woman who had sent evidence of war crimes to Amnesty International and the International Criminal Court and a mechanic who finds protection in wearing men’s clothing.

This articles provides a systematic mapping of resistance movements against both fossil fuel (FF) and also against low carbon energy (LCE) projects. Hydropower projects dominate in the LCE category, causing both social and environmental damage.  The authors find that over a quarter of the projects encountering social resistance have been suspended or delayed, that low carbon renewable energy projects cause conflict as much as fossil fuel projects, and that both disproportionally impact socially vulnerable groups such as rural communities and indigenous peoples. The authors also find that repression and violence against protesters and land defenders was widespread, and that assassination of activists occurred in 10 per cent of all the cases analyzed. 

Xiye Bastida, an 18 y-ear old Mexican-Indigenous climate activist recounts her own experiences and stresses the need to recognize the diversity of the climate justice movement in order to achieve a more equitable and sustainable future.

Records a 40-minute conversation with respected theorist of contemporary capitalism, Naomi Klein, about the impact of Covid-19. She argues that it has encouraged greater empathy and solidarity with the BLM movement, but that it also creates the potential for powerful corporations to exploit the pandemic. 

The authors look back to 2011 and the varied outcomes in four different contexts which shaped the possibility of and the reactions to mass protest. These are: the Maghreb (Tunisia and Morocco); Egypt; the Levant (Syria and Iraq) - states created out of  the Ottoman Empire and then dominated by the colonial powers Britain and France; and the Gulf Arab monarchies. They then discuss 'whither the second wave?' in relation to Sudan, Algeria, Labanon and Iraq and draw some provisional conclusions.

This article, which is part of an issue on 'Youth Politics in Urban Areas', focuses on the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill movement to explore the role of young people in steering this movement. Ku examines how they drew on local and international resources to direct the movement, and 'the path-breaking strategies and results that have emerged'.  

Provides a close examination of the development of the anti-SARS protests, especially between 8-15 October 2020. See also:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54508781

This blog highlights the activism of the Feminist Coalition, a group of young feminists who were  at the forefront of the youth  movement against police brutality. They helped initiate the public protests and provided food, security, mobile toilets and ambulances, as well as hospital services and bail arrangements for protesters.

This article looks at the claims on social media by Nigerian youth of police abuse, which is well documented in the three-year online EndSARS campaign. The authors examine the limitations of the campaign, which lasted three years with little success.  They explore the main themes of the campaign and consider4 how Nigeria's political environment can hinder successful movement activism.

Aung reports on the protests that erupted in Nigeria on 2 October 2020, after a video circulated showing a man killed by police. The protests broke out three years after the online campaign #EndSARS was launched, demanding an end to the squad's indiscriminate violence against young people. She notes the role of two Afro-Pop musicians and feminists in promoting protests, and the rapid extension of demands to encompass misuse of public funds, the unemployment crisis. poor economic infrastructure and bad government.

Six brief commentaries on key issues relating to the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in both the US and Britain. Philip V. McHarris, 'Property damage is not real violence'; Malaika Jaball, 'Police brutality is ingrained in America'; Jericho Brown, 'We need the rage that abolished slavery'; Kojo Koram, 'Systemic racism is a British problem too'; David Olusoga, 'Toppling a slave trader's statue is history being  made'; Patricia J. Williams, 'The corrupt language used to describe black pain'. See also: ‘The Big Story: Black Lives Matter: Do Look Now’, Guardian Weekly, 19 June, pp. 7-14. Covers protests in the UK against statues honouring slave traders and imperialists; anti-racist demonstrations in Belgium and a petition to remove all statues of King Leopold, who presided over a particularly brutal colonial rule in the Congo; protests against police violence and racism against indigenous and black citizes in Canada; and demonstrations in the Dominican Republic about racist discrimination against those of Haitian descent. There is also an article reflecting on lessons to be learned from how Germany has confronted its Nazi past. 

Carpenter draws on participant observation and extensive interviews to examine protests in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and also the Great March of Return in Gaza, in 2017-18, and to gauge wider Palestinian views of the strategy.  He also considers the discourse of 'rights and global justice' which underpins Jewish Israeli and international support for Palestinian resistance.  Carpenter argues for unarmed struggle as an alternative to the apparent failure of both armed struggle and negotiations.    See also: Rigby, Andrew, 'Reflections on Researching Palestinian Resistance', Journal of Resistance Studies, vol. 5 no. 2, pp.222-28. Rigby reviews three books on Palestine, including Carpenter's, and raises critical questions about Carpenter's stress on ongoing popular Palestinian resistance, at a time when often Israeli citizens and international sympathizers were more prominent in demonstrations in the West Bank, and the willingness to take part among many Palestinians had waned.

The authors argue that whilst Sudanese women were at the forefront of the uprising under the banner 'freedom, peace and justice', they were only marginally represented in the negotiations after Bashir's fall. They have also been sidelined in the process of creating a transitional government, though continuing to claim their right to be represented.  This report focuses on the 'patriarchal mentality behind and composition of the negotiations' and Sudanese women's demands.

The author notes that Covid brought a halt in March 2020 to the weekly Friday demonstrations since February 2019, and the parallel student protests every Tuesday. She notes the Hirak's achievements: forcing the Military High Command to distance itself from Boutifleka's political power centre and preventing presidential elections in both April and July 2019, because they were seen as a means to provide legitimacy for military control. The article also comments on the very broad social base of the movement, primarily led by the young, but including 'the working poor', independent trade unions, professional bodies and a prominent role for women.  It then assesses the 'counter-revolution' involving repression of the media and arrests of activists.

Reports on wave of rail blockades across Canada in February/March 2020 in solidarity with the Wet-suwet-en indigenous nation in British Columbia, who had been obstructing work on the 670 kilometre Coastal Gaslink project. A military style police raid in British Columbia sparked solidarity from Mohawks in Ontario and Quebec, and other indigenous and non-indigenous people. Greenpeace gave their support. There were also street marches in towns and cities. See also: Rizvi, Husna, 'Wet"suwet'en Gas Pipeline Battle', New Internationalist, May-June 2020, p. 10.

In this SIPRI policy paper the authors discuss the recurring issues raised by the 2019 wave of protests in the context of  state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa, general trends and the role of external actors. It also considers the probable impact of  Covid-19.

The authors comment on the impressive revival of Black LivesMatter in May/June 2020, reforms to policing already agreed in some cities and the new prominence of the demand to ‘defund the police’. They also discuss the importance of  combining a range of approaches and tactics to complement direct action: doing research; making the ‘invisible visible’; using symbolic ritual (for example turning the fence around the White House into a shrine); and encouraging artistic creativity to promote joy and healing.

Golkar examiines the November 2019 upsurge of protests, comparing it with 2017-18.  He also analyzes the regime responses, its investment in new technologies for its security forces, but also attempts in 2020 to improve welfare for the poor.