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While it is generally well known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the US southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how that came to be. Drawing on primary data that consist of detailed semistructured interviews with members of the Nashville nonviolent movement during the late 1950s and 1960s, we contribute unique insights about how the nonviolent repertoire was diffused into one movement current that became integral to moving the wider southern movement. Innovating with the concept of serially linked movement schools – locations where the deeply intense work took place, the didactic and dialogical labor of analyzing, experimenting, creatively translating, and resocializing human agents in preparation for dangerous performance – we follow the biographical paths of carriers of the nonviolent Gandhian repertoire as it was learned, debated, transformed, and carried from India to the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and Howard University to Nashville (TN) and then into multiple movement campaigns across the South. Members of the Nashville movement core cadre – products of the Nashville movement workshop schools – were especially important because they served as bridging leaders by serially linking schools and collective action campaigns. In this way, they played critical roles in bridging structural holes (places where the movement had yet to be successfully established) and were central to diffusing the movement throughout the South. Our theoretical and empirical approach contributes to the development of the dialogical perspective on movement diffusion generally and to knowledge about how the nonviolent repertoire became integral to the US civil rights movement in particular.

The frequent occurrence of stonethrowing by Palestinian boys presents a dilemma pulling activists in disparate directions, provoking contested interpretations of this tactic and forcing international human rights workers (HRWers) to weigh their relative commitments to nonviolence, noninterference, and solidarity with Palestinians. In tactical discussions, local activists and HRWers often frame stonethrowing by referencing historical nonviolent templates, sometimes to legitimize “limited violence” and sometimes to condemn it. Building from fieldwork and interviews, I argue that memory templates serve as master frames that aid in interpreting protest actions, perhaps especially in settings where heterogeneous teams of international activists seek common frames of reference as they negotiate a developing praxis in a new context. Nevertheless, these templates were sometimes constructed through highly selective readings of the multilayered discourse and complex biographies of such figures as Gandhi and King. While the “hermeneutic circle” anticipates such selective readings, I argue that even the multivocal, sometimes contradictory, Gandhi and King texts can be remembered and applied in patterns that appear co-optive to the opposing camps of principled and pragmatic nonviolent adherents. Grounded in HRWer deliberations in the field, the core theoretical contribution of this paper maps out discursive strategies activists employ as they leverage memory templates in tactical debates.

The emerging synthesis between nonviolent action and contentious politics studies has yielded important insights. Yet it also reproduces the dichotomy between politics and culture that continues to haunt both fields. Extending recent work by Jean-Pierre Reed and John Foran, our contribution introduces the political cultures of nonviolent opposition concept to forge a new synthesis, one that recognizes the politics of nonviolent culture and the culture of nonviolent politics. We apply our theoretical framework to two empirical cases, the Indian independence movement and the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (known as Movimento Sem Terra or MST), and conclude with ideas for further research on political cultures of nonviolent opposition.

Hunger strikes have a long history in efforts to achieve social change but scholars have made few comparative, empirical, or theoretical contributions to understanding their dynamics and connections in the social movement and nonviolent action literature. We examine hunger strikes from 1906 to 2004 with a comparative perspective, elaborating on its use as a tactic of nonviolent change. Using data assembled from the New York Times, Keesing's Worldwide Online, and The Economist we analyze how, when, where, and why hunger strikes occur, and by whom they have been utilized to seek change. In general, findings reveal that hunger strikes over the last century have been widespread phenomena that are typically small, brief, and relatively successful tactics against the state. Several themes emerge regarding hunger strikes including their appeal to the powerless and emergence when few political opportunities exist, their significance for third-party mobilization, and the role of emotions in the protest dynamics. Taken together, the power struggle involving the hunger strike is an important example and extension of “political jiu-jitsu” as presented by Sharp (1973).

Lorenzo Bosi is currently ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social & Political Movements of the University of Kent. His research examines social movements, political violence, as well as consolidated political identities and relations, in socio-politically polarized contexts such as Northern Ireland. He is also participating as an affiliated researcher in an international research project: The European Protest Movements since the Cold War.

Where international nonviolence organizations have increasingly become key players in both the development and evaluation of effective nonviolent movements, little scholarly attention has been given to their role in transnational mobilization. In this chapter, I present new data on a growing population of nonviolent protest INGOs, a transnational nonviolence network, working to globally spread tactical knowledge and resources. To examine determinants of how this population has grown as a whole, I employ negative binomial regression analysis to weigh the effect of nonviolent protest, social movements, and world society theories on nonviolent INGO expansion. I then examine how this network and its ties to different world regions have changed over the latter half of the twentieth century. I find it has been most significantly shaped by the expansion of global political and civil society networks, global human rights work, and a global discourse about nonviolence. The purpose here is to expand knowledge of the global institutional foundations of transnational protest resources, opportunities, and discourse among nonviolent movements.

This chapter enquires into the political struggles that have led to the gradual institutionalization of neoliberal policies in India. As India witnessed a surge in democratization since the 1980s, the state sought to implement a policy regime of privatization and liberalization, albeit with mixed success. This chapter's contribution is to focus on the party-movement relationships that were integral to establishing this new political economy. To this end the chapter undertakes an “event-centered” analysis of the failed authoritarian interlude of 1975–1977 (the Emergency) and its aftermath. Subsequent to this turning point, the chapter argues the two key political parties – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress – converged upon and shaped support for a neoliberal project. In particular, the chapter traces the mechanisms by which the BJP seized the political opportunity opened during the wave of democratization that occurred from the Emergency period onward, gradually constructing a political bloc in opposition to socialism. Together with Congress Party policies “from above,” the populist mobilization led by the Hindu Right sought to embed neoliberalism by eroding the disciplinary power of the middle classes. In making this argument, the chapter offers a theory of neoliberalism as a political project that, even as it is led by particular agents such as sections of the capitalist class, technocrats, and/or organized global interests, nevertheless must be embedded through democratic processes.

This paper aims to utilize a framework from classic sociology – Max Weber’s Typology of Rationality – to understand the motivations for social entrepreneurship in responsible tourism in India. The critical role of the social entrepreneur in effecting the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship has been largely under-recognized. The authors seek to explore, develop and enhance Weber’s theoretical arguments in the context of the tourism industry.

The authors used a constructivism paradigm and Seidman’s (2006) Three Interview Series technique to obtain the narratives of two social entrepreneurs in India. Data were analyzed using a hybrid thematic coding procedure.

Findings indicate that there exists a dynamic interplay between the formal and substantive rationalities that underlie the behavior of social entrepreneurs. The authors also discuss how entrepreneurs draw upon their formal and substantive repertoires to create their identities through the simultaneous processes of apposition (“Me”) and opposition (“Not Me”).

The findings provide an important recognition of the impact of formal and substantive rationalities on the conceptualization, implementation and manifestation of social enterprise for a variety of stakeholders.

This paper makes a significant contribution to understanding the why and the how of social entrepreneurship in responsible tourism. It provides a framework that can be widely applied to develop and enhance Weberian theory and further the understanding of the fundamental nature of human behavioral phenomena in tourism and beyond.

The term “nonviolence” is often misconstrued and misunderstood (Schock, 2003). Some people associate it with passivity, neutrality, or the total avoidance of conflict. Others assume it is a “bourgeois” tactic that entails nothing more than negotiation, compromise, and gentle calls for change. Some believe that nonviolence is only for total pacifists – that is, those who, for religious or moral reasons, refuse to use any form of violence under any circumstances. Another misconception is that nonviolent methods can only be used in democracies, where the state is reluctant to crack down violently on civilian resisters. And many think that nonviolent methods are inherently slow – requiring long periods of time to yield results – and are generally less effective than violence methods.