For you who wants to know more Nonviolence & Conflict Management
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Swedish prominent figuresAgda Östlund, 1870 – 1942 Agda Östlund is one of the women who became a Member of Parliament for the Social Democrats when women got the vote in Sweden. She trained to become a dressmaker and in due course opened her own business. Her mother had been very careful to see that Agda´s brothers did as much housework as Agda and she encouraged her daughter to take an interest in politics. Agda became involved in working for votes for women and travelled around the country on campaign trips. Many working women identified themselves with her. When they asked how she dared to speak publicly and be involved in politics she answered that “When you really want something then courage comes to you”. Like many other suffragettes Agda Östlund worked against men’s sexualised violence. She also worked for the right to pensions for women and for better health care for women and children. Agda became the first woman to be elected to the Legislation Committee and was the first woman to speak in the “Swedish Lower House”. Alva Myrdal, 1902 – 1986 Alva Myrdal received The Nobel Peace Prize in 1982 and wrote in 1976 the book The Game of Disarmament. Alva involved herself in the debates on women’s liberation. She wished to create a society in which women could take part on equal conditions in working life and where men could take part in housework. An example of her contributions in the debate on equality is Women’s Two Roles 1957
Author journalist and member of The Swedish Academy from 1944. Elin was a founder member of Rädda Barnen in 1919. Her literature was about women’s rights and the right to vote, peace, environment and social issues. Elin was a member of the so called Fogelstads group. (for more information see Elisabeth Tamm). Fredrika Bremer, 1801 – 1865 Author, peace activist and a prominent feministic figure. Fredrika introduced the realistic novel in Sweden. Her novel, Hertha, (1856) influenced opinion to the extent that after a lively public debate and a bill passed by Parliament, women won their rights. She was also the author of “An Invitation to Peace” (1854) which started an international debate as to women’s role in public debates. Elisabeth Tamm, 1880 – 1958 Elisabeth Tamm played an active role in securing votes for women and became a Member of Parliament. In association with other suffragettes Elisabeth took the initiative of starting a weekly newspaper Tidevarvet 1923. They also stated a Citizens School for Women in Fogelstad. The idea with the school was now women had won their rights and could vote they needed to realise what possibilities these new rights gave them. The Fogelstad group was political but did not engage in party politics. Elisabeth was even a front figure within ecological cultivation. Together with Elin Wägner, Elisabeth Tamm wrote the book Fred med jorden (1940) For more information see www.kvinnofronten.nu and Kristna Fredsrörelsens pamphlet Ickevåld och genus. International Prominent FiguresAung San Suu Kyi, (1945 - ) A Burmese politician who, in her absence received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.Aung is struggling for democracy in her country and has since 1989 be placed in house arrest. In 1990 the military junta held a general election in which Aung San Suu Kyi´s party won a convincing victory. The junta refused to acknowledge the result and Aung San Suu Kyi as prime minister, an still do not accept the election result. Berit Ås, (1928 - ) Norwegian Professor of Social Psychology, politician and the first female party leader in Norway. She has developed the theory of Domination Techniques. Dorothy Day, (1897 – 1980) Journalist and a founder member of the newspaper and later the movement Catholic Worker. In the newspaper she wrote on the importance of taking a personal responsibility for ones fellow human beings an analysed the causes in society injustice. It is not sufficient to help the needy; it is all about resisting the structures that create injustice and oppression. Today, there are over a hundred Catholic Worker Communities around the world. Emma Goldman, (1869 – 1940) Emma Goldman is a leading figure within the American radical and feminist movement. An anarchist who advocated freedom of speech, equality for women and women’s independence. Her criticism of the compulsory recruitment of young men to the First World War lead to a two year prison sentence and thereafter, deportation. Ellen Key, (1849 – 1926) Author, debater and speaker. Author of Barnets Århundrade (1900). Helen Keller, (1880 - !968) American author and lecturer, completely blind and deaf from the age of two. The first deaf/blind person to graduate from an American university. Helen Keller worked for workers and women’s rights. Mary Wollstonecraft, (1759 – 1797) Mary Wollstonecraft lived in England. When she was 19 years old, her mother died, and Mary, together with her sister started a school. Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for two things; that she wrote the book “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, (1792) and that she bore a daughter Mary Shelley who wrote the book “Frankenstein’s Monster”. In Vindication Mary was scornful of the idea that women should be helpless ornaments in the home and demanded that women should be educated. She also demanded that women have the right to ownership, to manage a business and to get a divorce. Rigobertha Menchú, (1959 - ) Guatemalan activist for peace who works for the indigenous populations rights and who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. Rosa Parks, (1913 – 2005) I was in the town of Montgomery, Alabama, USA that one evening, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was on her way home from work and her action was no planned. It was only that Rosa was not sitting at the back of the bus where black people were supposed to sit according to the race laws. Rosa Parks got thrown off the bus. This lead to the non-white population boycotting the bus company. They refused to use the buses until the apartheid system was removed. Rosa Parks was put in jail. The bus company was eventually forced to change the system of different seating for whites and non-whites. This started a series of different civil disobedience actions and a new wave of civil rights movement emerged in the USA. Wangari Maathai, (1940 - ) Nobel Peace Prize in winner 2004, Kenyan doctor and environmental activist. Through The National Council of Women of Kenya, Wangari started the non-violence Green Belt Movement in 1977. Today this movement exists in more than 30 African countries. The goal is to protect the natural habitat and environment and encourage feminine leadership. Wangari Maathai´s struggle has not always been easy. She has, among other things, been arrested for leading a civil disobedience action with the goal of saving Uhuru Park in central Nairobi. Wangari has been beaten and the police closed her office. The History of ideas period of nonviolence36 To live in this world or to attempt to change it by neither using nor supporting violence is an old attitude, perhaps as old as we humans are.37Methods against “violence” or “oppression” – “evil” or “tyranny” as radical Christians chose to name it earlier, where one attempted to avoid using violence or oppression is documented since ancient times. Nonviolence is often mixed up with “protests” and non-military opposition. This is a result of insufficient knowledge of non-violence traditions and about the movement’s nonviolence actions. In contrast to this confusion, Stellan Vinthagen asserts a distinct difference. To distinguish nonviolence in the history of the movement is to show that this form of political activity has its own tradition.38 Common for both the critics of violence and nonviolence traditions is (the will), to avoid self-use of violence. The difference is the attitude towards resistance against violence. Nonviolence distinguishes itself in two ways. Firstly because there is a greater optimism in the possibility of change here and now with the help of organised actions. Secondly by emphasizing the necessity - or duty – of active intervention on the part of society, to bring about peace and justice.39 The history of ideas development can be summarized in two separate traditions generation relationship – pacifism and nonviolence – where “non-resistance as resistance” is the birth of nonviolence coming from the source of pacifism in non-resistance. Four rough idea historical periods can easily be perceived.
Table 2: Idea historical ages of nonviolence (central conception) 1. Resist not Evil and Non-resistance To begin with some world religions come into existence around 500 BC which place a love of fellow human being centrally and are critical of violence. This general criticism of violence becomes clear during the Resist not Evil period (which in effect means ”without-violence”) or “You shall not kill” which in the Middle East is the basis of pacifism. Predecessors for this school are initially the Gospels Jesus (especially The Sermon on the Mount) and the early Christian Church. Thereafter in history it is the Christian minority groups which represent this movement foremost in Europe and later in the USA. In this tradition, the importance of avoiding violence, (Christian) belief in a life without “evil”, testimony, prophecy, the power of example in Christian conversion, not confronting violence with violence but with kindness, creating institutions of nonviolence ( such as associations, utopian communities, collective and cloisters). During the 18th century terminology such as “non-resistance” is used by movements. Terms such as “love”, “peace”, “cleanliness”, “kindness”, “non-killing”, “non-injuring”, “non-action”, and justice became central. 2. Non resistance as Resistance During the second period of non-resistance as Resistance to Evil (without evil) when the nonviolence movement is born in 1830´s north eastern USA, there is a re-orientation from without violence to nonviolence during the struggle against slavery. Representatives are especially Garrison, Ballou, Thoreau and at the end of the period Tolstoy in Russia. Non-Resistance was given a new meaning of non-injury resistance against evil/violence and tyranny/oppression. Civil Disobedience was formulated and tested during the struggle against slavery 3. Satyagraha and Non-violent resistance The nonviolence movement develops from 1905 through the Indians people’s movement struggle against racism in South Africa and is established in the struggle against colonialism in India. Here the Leader is Gandhi. Ahimsa/ Nonviolence was politicized and became Non-violent Resistance, Satyagraha was formulated civil disobedience established and nonviolence preparations through the communal village life (in ashrams, a form of community of belief, or “Hindu cloister” and work with the constructive program was introduced as the central element of non-violent resistance. 4. Non-violent Direct Action (NVDA) and Civil Disobedience Finally we have the fourth period of tarns-national spreading of Non-violent Direct Action (NVDA) to other movements, to begin with USA´s Civil Rights Movement and the 1950´s “defiance campaign”, later Great Britain’s Anti Nuclear Weapons movement. Here, nonviolence spread to so many different movements (students rebellion, anti nuclear reactors, the peace movement and so on), and in so many cultures and with so many different names, for example “positive action” (Ghana) “peoples power” (Philippines) or “civil resistance” (Easter Europe) – that it is in itself a research activity to show how it has developed and what is a part of the nonviolence tradition or not. In Sweden a network DIVA – Direkt Ickevåld Aktion was created through Svenska Freds och Skiljedomsföreningen .40 During the post modern period of nonviolence it seems that ”action” is central but certain activities for a cultural institutionalising exist, among other things their explosive development of nonviolence training since the citizens rights days and in the form of a former collective life. Catholic Workers Communities in USA´s poor housing areas, the 1980´s different peace camps outside of military bases, and Lanzo del Vasto´s Ashram movement in France are examples of such collectives. More now established terms are friend group, consensus (alternative decision making and meeting techniques and forms) and direct action. If one were to take one central movement text for nonviolence it is Jesus Sermon on the Mount in The New Testament.41 Bur its importance lessens the more secularised the nonviolence movement becomes during the second half of the 20th century. It is in the meeting of religious and political radicalism above all Christian pacifism ( The Law of Love, Resist not Evil, non-resistance), Gandhian Hinduism(ahimsa, satygraha) and state critical politics (civil disobedience, direct action) – that one can say that the nonviolence movement takes on a stabile form and ideology as a peoples movement. It is with Gandhi this meeting of ideas happens. Fragments of non-violence show themselves during radical and revolutionary periods for example in England during the decades in the middle of the 17th century, USA at the beginning of the 19th century but did not take fast form until the 1830´s in north eastern USA and the struggle against slavery. Each of these periods lead to a war and revolution and prevented growth of the movement beginnings. It is first in India’s liberation that a national revolution is achieved in organised nonviolence. Since then it has happened many times in the world.42 The Nonviolence movement The nonviolence movement cannot be said to belong to a certain type of movement but is rather a movement among movements. That is to say an organisation which expresses itself among other organisations that have to do with peace, workers, women’s, solidarity, environmental and other organisations. This is possible as it is not only a question or society one wishes to change which is emphasized , it is just as much, if not mot a question of one own form of work, actions, relations. As nonviolence can be turned both outwards towards the other part and inwards towards ones organisation can non-violence be understood as both broader and narrower than these other organisations. The nonviolence movement is broader in such a way as not to limit itself to a struggle just for a group’s particular interest or specialised point of issue. No, it can be used in a variety of ways. It attempts to manage violence and oppression, in both daily life and in the society – something which involves it in a very broad sense in a both public and private context, that is to say in several other movements contexts. At the same time it’s advocates seldom achieve a leading position for a whole peoples movement as in India, and do not therefore usually actuate broad social themes in the same way other movements do, such as socialism, nationalism or globalisering. The nonviolence movement has a characteristic trait – unity between nonviolence as a goal and nonviolence as a means.43 The ideological contribution from the nonviolence movement that the goal of a peaceful society craves peaceful methods. The way one manages conflicts in daily life is what makes history, or “as you sow shall you reap”. A thought which characterizes world religions. For some it is the thought that this overall conformity between the goal and the means creates the belief in nonviolence.
Historical examples of nonviolence There are many that have thought and practised nonviolence. A way of showing what nonviolence can be is to describe some examples where it has been used. Directory: downloads downloads -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations downloads -> Dynatest 3031 lwd light Weight Deflectometer downloads -> Forth coming competitive exams downloads -> Brush High School Morning Announcements Friday, September 05, 2014 all school downloads -> Year 9 The Arts — Music downloads -> Years 7 and 8 standard elaborations — Australian Curriculum: Music draft downloads -> Chris Young sets 2016 “I’m Comin’ Over” Tour headlining dates downloads -> Slavery and Abolition: the Plymouth Connection Introduction downloads -> Summer Assignment Download 0.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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