No name
Originally published in Dissent.
Raises caveats about comparisons with Gandhi, discusses Hazare’s diagnosis and prescriptions for corruption and comments on the nature of the Hazare movement. Argues against claims that it is a pawn of the extreme right RSS and/or CIA, noting the extent of mass protests and the depth of anger about corruption.
This interview is a message that Pinna sent to the conference marking the 40th Anniversary of the legal recognition of the right to conscientious objection held in Florence on 15th-16th December 2012. He narrates his experience during the Second World War and how this shaped his decision to object to military service on the ground of ‘conscience’. He then explains his position on the co-participation of civil society in war-making and arms production and finally touches upon nonviolent civil disobedience.
Available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOz7PFa180A
This wide-ranging collection analyzes the status and progress of women both in a national context and collectively on a global scale, as a powerful social force in a rapidly evolving world. The countries studied―China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Cameroon, South Africa, Italy, France, Brazil, Belize, Mexico, and the United States―represent a cross-section of economic conditions, cultural and religious traditions, political realities, and social contexts that shape women’s lives, challenges, and opportunities. Psychological and human rights perspectives highlight worldwide goals for equality and empowerment, with implications for today’s girls as they become the next generation of women. Women’s lived experience is compared and contrasted in such critical areas as: home and work; physical, medical, and psychological issues; safety and violence; sexual and reproductive concerns; political participation and status under the law; impact of technology and globalism; country-specific topics.
Brings together historical and contemporary approaches to nonviolent struggle and theoretical contributions as well as analyses of particular movements. Section 1 on theory includes writings by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Section 2 covers 'Nonviolence as a Political Strategy' and Section 3 'Nonviolence in Contemporary Movements' including a number of contributions on important recent movements in India: environmental campaigns against the Narmada dams and to preserve forests, Gandhian campaigns after Independence and the role of Jayaprakash Narayan, and the Anna Hazare Movement against corruption. A number of eminent contemporary Indian scholars have contributed.
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.
Biography of Hastings Banda, a central figure in Malawi’s independence struggle who later became his country’s increasingly autocratic president. Banda’s role in the struggle against the Federation is covered pp. 55-172.
Comprehensive analysis of the political fault lines, corruption and repression of Nigerian politics, and the failure to achieve a transition to democracy, including the role of the military, constitutional formulas and electoral administration. Chapters on political parties, the press and ‘associational life’.
Analyses social and political context and mounting opposition up to April 2006.
Celebrated analysis by distinguished Polish journalist of later years of Shah’s regime and meditation on power, the role of fear and the nature of revolution.
See also the article by Ronald Lawson, The Rent Strike in New York City 1904-1980: The End of a Social Movement Strategy, 1984 , pp. 235-258
Account of the revolt against Mubarak by a Guardian journalist, based on first hand contact with activists, but also people in slums and factories and those living outside Cairo, and covering earlier development of the workers' activism and unionism and also village revolts against landowners. It includes wider-ranging historical analysis of Egypt's political and economic relations with the West.
Provides a brief and interactive timeline on the history of abortion in Northern Ireland.
See also https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/public-ethical-issues/sexual-and-reproductive-rights/ and the submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women on mistreatment and violence against women during reproductive healthcare in Ireland and Northern Ireland by the Abortion Rights Campaign in May 2019.
Addresses how photography (using photographs taken in the USA and Australia) can illuminate the unimaginable, namely nuclear catastrophe, in order to fuel the imagination in the search for alternatives that lead to a world free of nuclear weapons.
Collection of essays by academics and activists on condition of women in colonial and independent India, and the challenges to Indian feminism from globalization and the Hindu Right. Indicates a vigorous if uneven women’s movement over several decades.
Largely based on the author’s PhD thesis, this book analyses three historical approaches to civil disobedience, from conservatives and liberal philosophies to the applied theory of disobedience derived from Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
According to available data, Egypt has higher than average rates of sexual harassment for the Middle East and North Africa region and many other countries in the Global South. This article explores how one organization, HarassMap, has mapped sexual harassment using crowd-sourced technology, engaged in anti-sexual harassment activities and sought to change social norms to promote an environment of zero tolerance. The authors highlight the evolving activism since 2010, and the lessons learned, within an environment influenced by restrictive political, religious and socio-cultural spheres. This article shows how anti-sexual harassment activities can occur in challenging contexts, using crowdsourcing mapping, when traditional methods are illegal or could lead to violence. The authors draw on these experiences to reflect on more effective forms of support that external actors can provide within restrictive environments.
See also Bernardi, Chiara (2018) ‘HarassMap: The Silent Revolution for Women’s Rights in Egypt’ in Maestri Elena, Annemarie Profanter (eds.) Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 215-227.
The author analyzes the role played by the independent organization HarassMap, run by Egyptian men and women, with the aim to “put an end to social acceptance of sexual harassment” in the country. HarassMap situates itself at the intersection of activism, digital media and semiotics. It is an interactive map that enables sexual harassment to become visible and “exposed” in a country where bystanders turn a blind eye to instances of harassment and even violence.
Report on an online survey of over 9,000 Algerians, including 4,200 who identified as protesters, and 1,700 who stated they were military personnel. The survey therefore drew out how the military attitudes compare with those of the protesters. The authors found 'very high support' for Boutfileka's resignation and the protest movement, including among those not involved in the protests and among soldiers and junior officers in the military. Senior officers were much more critical of both democracy and popular revolution. But even junior officers and soldiers believed there was a role for the military to 'referee the political arena' and were opposed to investigation of military excesses during the 1990s.
Reprinted by New York, Garland, 1972, pp. 351.
Respected early analysis of satyagraha with emphasis on strategy. Also comments on role of nonviolent action in democratic states in resisting an invasion.
Part 2 is on major miners’ strike organized by the militant Zikist movement. The movement became associated with riots and an assassination attempt and was banned in April 1950.