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Nonviolence and Communication

2003; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0022343303040002619

1460-3578

Brian Martin, Wendy Varney,

War, Ethics, and Justification

Communication is central to the effectiveness of nonviolent action: methods of protest and persuasion are essentially means of communication, while methods of noncooperation and nonviolent intervention have crucial communicative dimensions.As a mode of political communication, nonviolence can be contrasted with rational dialogue, electoral politics and violence, and stands out from them in combining high transformative potential with dialogue and participation.The more well studied dimensions of nonviolence as communication are dialogue with opponents, power equalization to prepare for dialogue, and mobilization of third parties.To these should be added two further dimensions, collective and individual empowerment.Two cases of nonviolent resistance in the Soviet Union -the 1991 coup and the 1953 prison camp strikes at Norilsk and Vorkuta -are used to illustrate the dimensions of nonviolence as communication in practice.These examples reveal the importance of communication in nonviolent action.They also suggest the difficulty in gaining information on empowerment, especially individual empowerment, which may be one reason why these dimensions have been neglected.The five-dimension framework of nonviolence as communication has the limitation that many actions mix two or more dimensions.Examining the communicative dimensions of nonviolence can alert both activists and researchers to the fact that nonviolent actions do not 'speak for themselves'.Nonviolence and Communication 5/16/2006 http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/03jpr.htmlrallies and wearing symbols of resistance, are means of communicating both the activists' concerns and their willingness to express them.Gene Sharp (1973) classifies methods of nonviolence into three categories: nonviolent protest and persuasion; noncooperation; and intervention.All the methods that he categorizes as protest and persuasion can be interpreted as forms of communication.Methods of noncooperation, which include numerous types of strikes and boycotts, also have powerful communicative roles, to both opponents and third parties, by demonstrating willingness to act.Methods of intervention, such as sit-ins and fasts, have similar communicative functions.Considering the importance of communication to nonviolence, it is surprising that nonviolence researchers have so rarely used communication perspectives.Likewise, communication researchers have not examined nonviolent action, at least not with any explicit awareness of nonviolence theory.[1] In this article, we take a preliminary look at how communication perspectives can be used to offer insight into nonviolence theory and practice.We begin by discussing the communicative aspects of the two main nonviolence traditions, namely principled nonviolence epitomized by Gandhi and pragmatic nonviolence epitomized by Sharp.Then we compare nonviolent action with three other modes of political communication -rational discourse, electoral politics and violence -in order to assess the special characteristics of nonviolence as communication.Next we examine several different dimensions of nonviolence as communication: persuasion of opponents, power equalization, dialogue among nonviolent activists, mobilization of third parties, and self-transformation.To illustrate the role of these dimensions in practice, we examine two instances of nonviolent action in the Soviet Union, resistance to the 1991 coup and strikes at Norilsk and Vorkuta prison camps in 1953.