‘Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century’ by Sharon Erickson Nepstad

The latest book in the ‘Nonviolence and the Struggle for Peace’ collection (published by ICIP and Pagès Editors) seeks to study the methodology and effectiveness of the nonviolent political movements of the last third of the 20th century. To do so, the author, Sharon Erickson Nepstad, has selected six types of nonviolent political mobilizations, which aimed to democratically transform authoritarian regimes. Of these six case studies, three were successful in the sense of leading to the removal of the political regime (East Germany, Chile and the Philippines), and three failed (the insurrection in China in the setting of the Tiananmen tragedy, the struggle of nonviolent groups in Kenya against the dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi, and the nonviolent pro-democracy mobilizations of the late 1980s in Panama, during the dictatorship of Manuel Antonio Noruega). The book focuses on the strategies and dynamics of the nonviolent movements, and on the different reactions of the dictatorial regimes in their efforts to counter the insurgencies. The author defines nonviolence as a form of grassroots civil resistance that makes use of social, economic and political confrontation without resorting to violence or to the threat of violence.
The author
Sharon Erickson Nepstad is Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on social movements, studies of civil resistance and nonviolence, and the sociology of religions. Her publications include the book Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement, which received an award from the American Sociological Association’s section on Peace, War and Social Conflict in 2009. She is currently studying nonviolence and the Arab Spring revolts.
The collection
The collection ‘Nonviolence and the Struggle for Peace’ aims to provide society, academia, and public administrations with instruments of reflection and action that demonstrate that nonviolence is desirable, viable and efficient.Gandhi avui (Gandhi and Beyond), by David Cortright; Els anomenats pacifistes (The So-called Pacifists), by John Paul Lederach; or Noviolència: història d’una idea perillosa(Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea), by Mark Kurlansky, are other books available in this collection.