Understanding Nonviolence

The use of nonviolent action is on the rise. From the Occupy Movement to the Arab Spring and mass protests on the streets of Brazil, activists across the world are increasingly using unarmed tactics to challenge oppressive, corrupt and unjust systems. But what exactly do we mean by nonviolence? How is it deployed and to what effect? Do nonviolent campaigns with political motivations differ from those driven by primarily economic concerns? What are the limits and opportunities for activists engaging in nonviolent action today? Is the growing number of nonviolence protests indicative of a new type of twenty-first century struggle or is it simply a passing trend?
Understanding Nonviolence: Contours and Contexts is the first book to offer a comprehensive introduction to nonviolence in theory and practice. Combining insightful analysis of key theoretical debates with fresh perspectives on contemporary and historical case studies, it explores the varied approaches, aims, and trajectories of nonviolent campaigns from Gandhi to the present day. With cutting-edge contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this accessible and lively book will be essential reading for activists, students and teachers of contentious politics, international security, and peace and conflict studies.

Cyborg Subjects: Discourses on Digital Culture

This book is an interrogation of humanity's new potentials and threats brought by technology when the question of social change is becoming more crucial than ever. Collected in the course of 2010-2012, the selected essays in this anthology confront questions from a wide-ranging perspective that evoke the postmodern idea of the cyborg to illuminate recent phenomena from global warming, Wikileaks, to the Occupy movements. Multiple disciplines from music to psychoanalysis to journalism to anthropology collaborate to examine the way we shape the world from behind our ubiquitous screens to taking to the streets in mass protests. What does the increasing omnipotence of networked machines ultimately mean? What do social networks do to our sense of self, others and society? Does P2P technology foster new ethics and spiritualities? What potentials does posthumanity have to bring about social change? Featuring essays from Robert Barry, Siri Driessen & Roos van Haaften, Bonni Rambatan, Dustin Cohen, Jacob Johanssen, Michel Bauwens, Aliki Tzatha, Zakary Paget, Stefen Baack, Alessandro Zagato, Peter Nikolaus Funke, Glenn Muschert, and Jung-Hua Liu.

Zur denkmalpolitischen Praxis der Gegenwart - institutionelle Handlungsspielräume und diskursive Prozesse

Die Arbeit behandelt im Rahmen eines induktiven Ansatzes die Problematik aktueller kommunalpolitischer Zielkonflikte im Umgang mit Baudenkmalen in Deutschland. Dabei wird das Politikfeld Denkmalschutz in seiner kulturell-politischen Mehrdimensionalität unter der Ausgangsfrage untersucht, wie Entscheidungsprozesse verlaufen, bei denen entwicklungsbezogene Interessen und Belange des Denkmalschutzes eine besondere Rolle spielen. Vier Beispielfälle bilden den empirischen Kern der Untersuchung: Ein ortsbildprägendes und architektonisch qualitätsvolles Industriedenkmal wandelt sich mittels staatlicher Förderung zu einer Brachfläche; der Umgebungsschutz eines Gartendenkmals von Weltrang muss den Bedürfnissen des kommerzialisierten Fußballsports den Vortritt lassen; ein historisches Lichtspieltheater wird trotz Massenprotesten von Bürgern zu einem Buchladen umgebaut; eine freistehende Gründerzeitvilla wird unter der Maßgabe maximaler Verkaufsflächengröße durch ein Einkaufszentrum eingehaust. Aufbauend auf einer Analyse der jeweiligen Entscheidungsprozesse werden die Spezifika politischer Auseinandersetzungen um Denkmale fallübergreifend herausgearbeitet. Das Untersuchungsprinzip entspricht einem explorativen Verfahren, wobei der argumentative Austausch als empirischer Schlüssel zu sprachlich materialisierten Deutungsangeboten von Akteuren einen Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung bildet. In der Gegenüberstellung diskursiver Prozesse wird untersucht, wie Deutungsangebote im politischen Prozess entstehen, sich verändern und diskursiv vermittelt werden. Im Mittelpunkt steht der Einblick in das Zusammenspiel empirisch bestimmter Einflussgrößen. Dabei kristallisieren sich mehrere Thesen heraus, die das kulturelle Verständnis, die Rolle des institutionellen Kontextes und die politische Aushandlung als Prozess betreffen. Es wird aufgezeigt, weshalb die Kluft zwischen dem elitären Erhaltungsinteresse der Fachwelt und dem Denkmalverständnis des „Durchschnittsbürgers" als notwendige Triebfeder der denkmalpflegerischen Vermittlungsarbeit und für eine kreative Auseinandersetzung mit dem Denkmal ebenso wie der hoheitliche Denkmalschutz unverzichtbar bleibt.

June Journeys in Brazil: from the networks to the streets

This article seeks to analyse the mass protests that ecloded in the main cities in Brazil in June 2013 - the so-called June Journeys -, event which represented an inflection moment in the country's recent political history and inaugurated a new social mobilization cycle in the country. This analysis will begin with the presupposition that the strong digital inclusion that has been going on over recent years was a main element, but not the only one, responsible for the occurrence of protests. Still, although digital inclusion has been a central tool that allowed these demonstrations to happen in the first place, it was not the only responsible for leading over 1 million people to the streets. Factors such as frustrated expectations over the continuity of the social inclusion process that had been ongoing over the last decade, the rising educational level and a political representation crisis contributed to social mobilization, and were amplified due to widening internet access - and, therefore, access to information - across the population

Ukraine and the EU: turning the Association Agreement into a success story1. EPC Policy Brief, 23 April 2014

It is paradoxical and symbolic that it has taken Ukraine two waves of mass protests to conclude a new agreement with the EU. As a result, the political and geopolitical implications of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine are very high. This means that it cannot be regarded merely as one of many trade agreements signed by the EU with its numerous trading partners. More attention needs to be paid to the role and impact of the Association Agreement on Ukraine. This requires screening, prioritising and sequencing of the approximation process at the national, sectoral and regional levels. Implementing the Agreement in a cost-effective way will allow Ukraine to derive benefits in the short-to-medium term, at the very time when Russia is sparing no efforts to inflict harm on the Ukrainian economy to punish the country for its European orientation.

Algeria's Failed Transitions to a Sustainable Polity: Coming to yet another crossroads. MEDPRO Technical Report No. 8/October 2011

Algeria is so far the only country in North Africa not to have experienced sustained mass protests calling for political change. The government in Algiers has by no means remained indifferent to the groundbreaking events in neighbouring countries, but it is responding to this sweeping wave of change at its own pace. This paper argues that, despite its apparent stability, the Algerian polity suffers from underlying currents of instability that risk undermining the long-term sustainability of the state. It identifies the failure of the country’s political and economic transitions and its implications as the most serious challenge confronting the Algerian state today. Unless a) the process of democratic transition that was initiated in 1989 is refined and put back on track, leading to the advent and consolidation of the rule of law, popular enfranchisement and total civilian control of the military; and b) the efforts to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons are intensified and made more coherent, Algeria will remain susceptible to future instability. This is all the more pertinent given that the country is heading towards a crossroads where the issue of generational transition will also become imperative for the current leadership to deal with.

Egypt: Changes and Challenges of Political Transition. MEDPRO Technical Report No. 4/May 2011

Hosni Mubarak’s regime and its power system enjoyed remarkable stability for over 30 years. On 11 February 2011, after 18 days of mass protests, the Egyptian president was forced to step down, revealing the unsustainability of the political and economic system that had ensured his continuity for so long. While the revolution of January 25th led to a major success – the fall of Hosni Mubarak – Egypt’s political future is still opaque and exposed to a number of risks. This paper first highlights the factors underpinning the former stability of Mubarak’s regime; it then assesses the causes of its underlying unsustainability, leading to the anti-government popular mobilisation in January-February 2011 and the removal of Mubarak; finally the paper evaluates the prospects for a genuine democratic transition in Egypt, by looking at the main political and socio-economic challenges facing the country.

The 2008 Tibet riots : perspectives, divided group protests and divergent media narratives

Awareness of the power of the mass media to communicate images of protest to global audiences and, in so doing, to capture space in global media discourses is a central feature of the transnational protest movement. A number of protest movements have formed around opposition to concepts and practices that operate beyond national borders, such as neoliberal globalization or threats to the environment. However, transnational protests also involve more geographically discreet issues such as claims to national independence or greater religious or political freedom by groups within specific national contexts. Appealing to the international community for support is a familiar strategy for communities who feel that they are being discriminated against or ignored by a national government.

Economic impact of political protests (strikes) on manufacturing firms : evidence from Bangladesh

Political protests in the form of strikes, locally known as hartal, remain quite common in the Indian subcontinent countries. Such a form of protests is associated with mass movement, intended to cause a total shutdown of economic activities and often results in coercion, violence, and damage to both public and private properties. Utilizing the World Bank Enterprise survey data of 2007 and 2013 of Bangladesh, this study examines the impacts of hartals on manufacturing firms. We find that political protests significantly increase costs for firms. Using flexible cost function based on factor analysis we see that the factor-neutral effect of strikes is positive and statistically significant, showing evidence of a reduction in firm productivity due to hartals. However, we did not find any evidence for systematic factor re-optimization by firms – in response to political strikes – suggesting that firms do not reallocate factor shares to tackle uncertain and irregular shocks like hartals.

Micropolar flow in a porous channel with high mass transfer

Two dimensional flow of a micropolar fluid in a porous channel is investigated. The flow is driven by suction or injection at the channel walls, and the micropolar model due to Eringen is used to describe the working fluid. An extension of Berman's similarity transform is used to reduce the governing equations to a set of non-linear coupled ordinary differential equations. The latter are solved for large mass transfer via a perturbation analysis where the inverse of the cross-flow Reynolds number is used as the perturbing parameter. Complementary numerical solutions for strong injection are also obtained using a quasilinearisation scheme, and good agreement is observed between the solutions obtained from the perturbation analysis and the computations.

Investigation of RuO2/Ta2O5 thin film evolution by thermogravimetry combined with mass spectrometry

The thermal evolution process of RuO2–Ta2O5/Ti coatings with varying noble metal content has been investigated under in situ conditions by thermogravimetry combined with mass spectrometry. The gel-like films prepared from alcoholic solutions of the precursor salts (RuCl3·3H2O, TaCl5) onto titanium metal support were heated in an atmosphere containing 20% O2 and 80% Ar up to 600 °C. The evolution of the mixed oxide coatings was followed by the mass spectrometric ion intensity curves. The cracking of retained solvent and the combustion of organic surface species formed were also followed by the mass spectrometric curves. The formation of carbonyl- and carboxylate-type surface species connected to the noble metal was identified by Fourier transform infrared emission spectroscopy. These secondary processes–catalyzed by the noble metal–may play an important role in the development of surface morphology and electrochemical properties. The evolution of the two oxide phases does not take place independently, and the effect of the noble metal as a combustion catalyst was proved.