{"id":179984,"date":"2021-03-01T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=179984"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:42","slug":"power-as-subordination-and-resistance-as-disobedience-nonviolent-movements-and-the-management-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/power-as-subordination-and-resistance-as-disobedience-nonviolent-movements-and-the-management-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Power as Subordination and Resistance as Disobedience: Nonviolent Movements and the Management of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter Seven<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 Jan 2006 – This text is a summary of chapter 6 in my dissertation in Swedish: <\/em>Nonviolent Action: A Social Practice of Resistance and Construction. A preliminary version has appeared as a conference paper at the IPRA-International Peace Research Association conference in Finland, 2000, and in Gandhi Marg\u00a0Vol. 22, No. 2, July-Sep 2000, Delhi. I am especially thankful for the comments given by the IPRA Nonviolence Commission, Sean Chabot and Senthil Ram.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

On 22nd November 1999, solidarity activists made their way into the military training camp of Fort Benning in the USA. They entered in memory of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, who, on this day ten years earlier, were killed by the military of El Salvador. For the occasion the activists dressed in mourning and entered the camp carrying coffins and crosses. Names of people who had been killed or tortured by regimes in Latin America \u2013 were written on the crosses. Some of the activists wore white death-masks; others painted their faces blood-red. Amongst the activists were Hollywood star Martin Sheen, Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, and a civil rights activist from Guatemala, Adiana Portillo-Bartow.<\/p>\n

During one weekend, 12 000 people of varying backgrounds and nationalities gathered to take part in a protest meeting against the US army\u2019s School of the Americas at Fort Benning. 4 408 of these people took the final step onto the grounds of the military training camp where officers from Latin America are educated in warfare and interrogation techniques. The purpose of the action was to shut down the facility by occupying it. By a persistent and peaceful presence, they hoped to disturb the business-as-usual of the camp.<\/p>\n

Soon the police arrested them. Through discussions and training, they had prepared themselves mentally for arrest. Each solidarity activist risked several months\u2019 imprisonment. Some were taken away singing. Some quarrelled with the police about obedience to a system that violates human rights. In accordance with the guidelines of the action, activists did not use any violence against people when defending their occupation. Some sat down, others \u00a0prayed, or held one another\u2019s arms. They did not run away. They stood their ground, facing the strongest empire in world history \u2013 the USA \u2013 with their undefended bodies.<\/p>\n

The action was public, advertised in advance to the authorities, and those arrested took complete personal responsibility for the \u201coffence\u201d they committed. The following year another 3 000 activists were again arrested. It still goes on. This is one example of a special kind of resistance action, called nonviolent action (sometimes also called e.g. nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience or civil resistance).<\/p>\n

A nonviolent movement is here understood to be a movement where people in their action repertoire let their nonviolent means express their (nonviolent) goals. In a nonviolent movement activists contest \u201cviolence\u201d or \u201coppression\/injustice\u201d, while they themselves avoid using such means (Vinthagen 2005). Nonviolent movements relate to a tradition formulated \u00a0by Mohandas K. Gandhi, the person who created the concept of \u201cnonviolent resistance\u201d or \u201csatyagraha\u201d (Gandhi 1999:Vol. 8:31, 80). My interest lies in political nonviolent movements which make claims to contest a dominant or hegemonic power, and act within a society where organised violence and oppression is legitimised, normalised or de facto accepted by a vast \u00a0population.<\/p>\n

In the anti-colonial liberation movement in India, nonviolent resistance was given \u00a0both a practical and a theoretical content within a certain context and dynamic relations, which furthered a development and diffusion of the nonviolent repertoire (Chabot 2003). Social movements using nonviolence in their efforts to obtain changes in society are not a rare phenomenon in the world. Such movements sometimes made progress even against \u00a0brutal regimes (Ackerman and Kruegler 1994; Zunes 1999:302-322; Sharp 2004). Movements that have followed and developed the Gandhian repertoire, are, for example,<\/p>\n