Conceptualising Nonviolent Revolution
Start Date
10-2-2021 3:15 PM
End Date
10-2-2021 4:30 PM
Proposal Type
Presentation
Proposal Description
Amidst an increasingly splintered and polarised world, it may seem logical for those concerned with peace and justice to tread carefully, pursuing only minimalist or reformist goals which do not threaten an already shaky socio-political foundation. In this paper, I explore an alternative approach to peaceful social change – prefigurative action – highlighting it as an approach which refuses to turn its back on the potential or importance of revolutionary change, but which works to reconfigure what this revolutionary change might be, as well as the process through which it might occur.
Whilst much scholarship on revolution, both violent and nonviolent, assumes revolution to be the concrete achievement of a clear goal – often the overthrow of a particular regime and/or the capturing and control of state power – the prefigurative approach, with its focus on process, suggests that the potential for radical social change is better understood and guided by a set of principles. Building from this, I seek to sketch out a framework of inter-connecting principles which might be thought of as constituting nonviolent revolutionary struggle. To do this, I use Burrowes’ (1996) notion of a social cosmology which consists “of four mutually reinforcing components: the society’s specific pattern of matter-energy use, its particular set of social relations, its prevailing philosophy about the nature of society (which includes a conception of human nature), and its strategies for dealing with conflict”. By considering each of these components, I suggest that a range of principles can be identified which not only articulate a resistance to neoliberal domination, but which can be locally and contextually applied by a diversity of groups.
Conceptualising Nonviolent Revolution
Amidst an increasingly splintered and polarised world, it may seem logical for those concerned with peace and justice to tread carefully, pursuing only minimalist or reformist goals which do not threaten an already shaky socio-political foundation. In this paper, I explore an alternative approach to peaceful social change – prefigurative action – highlighting it as an approach which refuses to turn its back on the potential or importance of revolutionary change, but which works to reconfigure what this revolutionary change might be, as well as the process through which it might occur.
Whilst much scholarship on revolution, both violent and nonviolent, assumes revolution to be the concrete achievement of a clear goal – often the overthrow of a particular regime and/or the capturing and control of state power – the prefigurative approach, with its focus on process, suggests that the potential for radical social change is better understood and guided by a set of principles. Building from this, I seek to sketch out a framework of inter-connecting principles which might be thought of as constituting nonviolent revolutionary struggle. To do this, I use Burrowes’ (1996) notion of a social cosmology which consists “of four mutually reinforcing components: the society’s specific pattern of matter-energy use, its particular set of social relations, its prevailing philosophy about the nature of society (which includes a conception of human nature), and its strategies for dealing with conflict”. By considering each of these components, I suggest that a range of principles can be identified which not only articulate a resistance to neoliberal domination, but which can be locally and contextually applied by a diversity of groups.