John Paul Lederach. Els anomenats pacifistes. La noviolència a l’Estat espanyol. Barcelona: International Catalan Institute for Peace; Pagès, 2011. Collection “Noviolència i lluita per la pau”, 3.
In this pioneering book (1984), Lederach reconstructs the brief history of active nonviolence in Spain, with the goal of explaining, through practical examples, the ethical conception and the way of doing politics of radical pacifism. The book is based on empirical work and numerous interviews, two of which –with Gonzalo Arias and Lluís M. Xirinacs—are published in this edition.
This small but great book has become a classic which had to be reeissued at a time when the peaceful revolts in Tunisia and Egypt or the movement of the Indignats are arousing an interest among new generations to learn the genealogy of a method of struggle that will hopefully become hegemonic.
About the author
John Paul Lederach has worked in the fields of conflict transformation and peacebuilding for more than twenty years. He is currently a professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a researcher at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. ICIP has published Transformació de conflictes: petit manual d’ús (The Little Book of Conflict Transformation) by the same author.