Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives

Nonviolent Alternatives for Social Change is a component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. This volume gives a comprehensive review on Understanding Nonviolence in Theory and Practice; Ethics and Nonviolence; Countering with Nonviolence; Media Myopia and the power of Nonviolent Social Change; Paths to social change: conventional politics, violence and Non violence; Defending and Reclaiming the Commons Through Nonviolent Struggle; Nonviolent Methods and Effects of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement; Humiliation and Global Terrorism: How to Overcome it Nonviolently. It at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.

"This book will give the reader a perspective into the core theory and practice of data mining and knowledge discovery (DM & KD). Its chapters combine many theoretical foundations for various DM & KD methods, and they present an array of examples - many of which are drawn from real-life applications. Most of the theoretical developments discussed are accompanied by an extensive empirical analysis, which should give the reader both a deep theoretical and practical insight into the subjects covered." "The intended audience for this book includes graduate students studying data mining who have some background in mathematical logic and discrete optimization as well as researchers and practitioners in the same area."--BOOK JACKET.

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

History indicates that there are powerful routes to liberation from oppression that do not involve violence. Mohandas Gandhi called for a science of nonviolent action, one based on satyagraha, or the "insistence on truth." As Gandhi understood, nonviolent resistance is not passive, nor is it weak; rather, such action is an exercise of power. Despite the success of Gandhi's "Quit India" movement, the resources dedicated to the application of rigorous science to nonviolent struggle have been vanishingly small. By contrast, almost unimaginable levels of financial and human resources have been devoted to the science and technologies of killing, war, and collective violence. Mark Mattaini reviews the history and theory of nonviolent struggles against oppression and discusses recent research that indicates the substantial need for and advantage of nonviolent alternatives. He then offers a detailed exploration of principles of behavioral systems science that appear to underlie effective strategic civil resistance and "people power."Strategic Nonviolent Power proposes that the route to what Gandhi described as the "undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries" of nonviolent resistance is the application of rigorous science. Although not a simple science, Mattaini's application of ecological science grounded in the science of behaviour brings exceptional power to the struggle for justice and liberation. At a time when civil resistance is actively reshaping global political realities, the science of nonviolent struggle deserves the attention of the scientific, activist, strategic, military, spiritual, and diplomatic communities, as well as the informed public.