Civil Resistance
"Civil resistance is a form of collective action that seeks to affect political, social, or economic status quo without using violence or the threat of violence against people to do so. It is organized, public, and explicitly nonviolent in means and ends. This book will introduce you to some of the main takeaways from history about the ways that civil resistance campaigns have formed, strategized, organized, and mobilized. This chapter will introduce you to the impressive history of civil resistance over the millennia, but it will also grapple with some of the key controversies that persist regarding how to define civil resistance and how to understand its impact on the world around us. But before we discuss this technique's development over the centuries, let's define our terms"
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5mentions
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2019–2024years
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If I had to pick one: The rise and fall of American growth: the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War by Robert Gordon. The gains that we have made in the (early) 20th century are unlikely to ever be repeated, and progress in many metrics has measurably slowed or even stalled since ~1970s (likely being asymptotic). And while the Internet (classified under the Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) chapters) gave a bump in the 1990s, it's mostly been flat since 2004.
More economic history with Slouching towards Utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford Delong. More economic ideas stuff in Value(s): building a better world for all by Mark Carney (ran the Banks of Canada and England). Also Waphsott's Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics and Samuelson Friedman: the battle over the free market.
The currency of politics: the political theory of money from Aristotle to Keynes by Sefan Eich, Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Jacob Goldstein, and The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Peter Bernstein (also his Against the Gods on risk). Show how much of a human construct "money" is, how its meaning changes in different times and places/cultures. Should be required reading by all the 'hard money' folks (gold standard, BTC).
The good life: lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness by Waldinger and Schultz (directors of the Harvard study). If there's one 'magic' thing for health and happiness it seems to be having good relationships (family, friends) in your life.
Religion: what it is, how it works, and why it matters by Christian Smith and Strange rites: new religions for a godless world by Tara Burton. While many think that religion is in decline, the non-material/supernatural things that people believe in has actually shifted. And having beliefs in a super-human entity seems to be the basis of most societies and civilizations. Related, The warfare between science and religion : the idea that wouldn't die, a series of essays; the conflict thesis bunk, both historically and presently.
The origins of Canadian and American political differences by Jason Kaufman, two seemingly-the-same neighbouring countries that have had different development paths when it comes to culture and government. (I'm Canadian.)
Speaking of government: Civil resistance: what everyone needs to know by Erica Chenoweth. Seems violence/force is generally a less effective way to affect change in society than non-violence.
The week: a history of the unnatural rhythms that made us who we are by David Henkin. Seems that while seven days has been around for a long while, making it a really 'hard' structure/schedule around it is a more recent phenomenon than you'd expect.
If you have kids, Karen Le Billon's French kids eat everything (and yours can, too) and Getting to YUM: the 7 secrets of raising eager eaters, her husband is French and she lived there for a year and found many things done better there than US/CA. See also The happiest kids in the world: how Dutch parents help their kids and themselves by doing less by Acosta and Hutchison.
Flying blind: the 737 MAX tragedy and the fall of Boeing by Peter Robison is an HN favourite. While we get a lot of engineer vs MBA comments, I think the bigger problem (associated with the MBA-types) is financialization, i.e., returns over everything else. Having non-engineers/MBAs can be 'fine' also long as trying to squeeze blood/money from a stone at the cost of everything else.
Some philosophy with Alasdair C. MacIntyre: After Virtue is a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue
- Untrue. Read (for example) Erica Chenoweth's detailed empirical work on civil resistance. Nonviolent resistance has a considerably higher real-world chance of success than armed uprising. It also has the huge advantage of leaving behind less collective trauma, giving post-revolutionary society a better chance of sustaining peace.
- > While Gandhi's philosophy sounds nice in theory, it may not always be the most practical in real-world scenarios.
In her book Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10056014-why-civil-resis...
Erica Chenoweth has an appendix listing six hundred movements dating from 1900 which are classified in how violent they were. She found that those that used violence (more) succeeded in achieving their goals 25% time, but those that did not use violence (at all, or much less) succeeded over 40% of the time: you almost double your odds by eschewing violence.
Further, movement that were violent and succeeded were more likely to be oppressive/authoritarian (possibly because the movement leaders internalized the possibility that the same methods would be used against them: the overthrown often don't end up in pleasant places in those situations), while non-violent ones were less likely to be (though no guarantee, with 1970s Iran being the main outlier).
So it appears that the general historical record seems to support Gandhi's philosophy.
- The study's description says it makes a comparison against violent campaigns. Ostensibly, violent protesters also suffer from "just disappearing":
> Between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. Erica Chenoweth, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will talk about her research on the impressive historical record of civil resistance in the 20th century and discuss the promise of unarmed struggle in the 21st century. She will focus on the so-called “3.5% rule”—the notion that no government can withstand a challenge of 3.5% of its population without either accommodating the movement or (in extreme cases) disintegrating. In addition to explaining why nonviolent resistance has been so effective, she will also share some lessons learned about why it sometimes fails.
- I skimmed the first 6 pages here: https://web.stanford.edu/group/peacejustice/Gelderloos-Failu...
It seems he's arguing that a diversity of tactics is more effective than nonviolence alone. Chenoweth's methodology if I understand correctly was to divide a lot of civil resistance campaigns into violent and nonviolent, and compare the success of the two groupings.
It's possible that they're both right, that a diversity of tactics wins, but is more likely to win when that diversity is skewed toward nonviolence.
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