Stellan Vinthagen. Una teoria de l’acció noviolenta. Com funciona la resisència civil. Barcelona: Institut Català Internacional per la Pau; Pagès, 2019. Nonviolence and the Struggle for Peace Book Series, 12.
In this book, Stellan Vinthagen provides the first major systematic attempt to develop a theory of nonviolent action since Gene Sharp published The Politics of Nonviolent Action in three volumes in 1973. The author bases his theory of nonviolent action on a large number of examples of historical and contemporary social movements from various parts of the world, such as the civil rights movement in the United States, anti-Apartheid protestors in South Africa, and Gandhi and his followers in India.
In an innovative and penetrating way, Vinthagen argues for a repertoire of nonviolence that combines resistance and construction and that consists of dialogue facilitation, normative regulation, power breaking and utopian enactment. The book is essential for the training of anyone involved with nonviolent action.
About the author
Stellan Vinthagen is a professor of sociology and the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst. He is also a council member of War Resisters International (WRI), academic advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), cofounder of the Resistance Studies Network and editor of the Journal of Resistance Studies. He has been an educator, organizer and activist since 1980 and has participated in more than thirty nonviolent civil disobedience actions, for which he has served a total of more than one year in prison.