Humor and Nonviolent Struggle in Serbia

Humor and Nonviolent Struggle in Serbia PDF Author: Janjira Sombatpoonsiri
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815653409
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
In this highly original and engaging work, Sombatpoonsiri explores the nexus between humor and nonviolent protest, aiming to enhance our understanding of the growing popularity of humor in protest movements around the world. Drawing on insights from the pioneering Otpor activists in Serbia, she provides a detailed account of the protesters’ systematic use of humor to topple Slobodan Miloševic in 2000. Protest newsletters, documentaries of the movement, and interviews with activists combine to illustrate how humor played a pivotal role by reflecting the absurdity of the regime’s propaganda and, in turn, by delegitimizing its authority. Sombatpoonsiri highlights the Otpor activists’ ability to internationalize their nonviolent crusade, influencing youth movements in the Ukraine, Georgia, Iran, and Egypt. Globally, Otpor’s successful use of humor has become an inspiration for a later generation of protest movements.

Nonviolent Struggle

Nonviolent Struggle PDF Author: Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190268573
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
From Gandhi's movement to win Indian independence to the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, an expanding number of citizens have used nonviolent action to win political goals. While such events have captured the public imagination, they have also generated a new surge of scholarly interest in the field of nonviolence and civil resistance studies. Although researchers have produced new empirical data, theories, and insights into the phenomenon of nonviolent struggle, the field is still quite unfamiliar to many students and scholars. In Nonviolent Struggle: Theories, Strategies, and Dynamics, sociologist Sharon Nepstad provides a succinct introduction to the field of civil resistance studies, detailing its genesis, key concepts and debates, and a summary of empirical findings. Nepstad depicts the strategies and dynamics at play in nonviolent struggles, and analyzes the factors that shape the trajectory and outcome of civil resistance movements. The book draws on a vast array of historical examples, including the U.S. civil rights movement, the Indonesian uprising against President Suharto, the French Huguenot resistance during World War II, and Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers. Nepstad describes both principled and pragmatic nonviolent traditions and explains various categories of nonviolent action, concluding with an assessment of areas for future research. A comprehensive treatment of the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent resistance, Nonviolent Struggle is essential reading for students, scholars, and anyone with a general interest in peace studies and social change.

Humour in Political Activism

Humour in Political Activism PDF Author: Majken Jul Sørensen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137573465
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
This book analyses how humour in political activism contributes to facilitating outreach, mobilisation and the sustaining of cultures of resistance. Drawing on examples of attention-grabbing stunts from around the world, Humour in Political Activism demonstrates how they succeed in turning relations of power upside down. The ambiguity and unpredictability of humour, Sørensen argues, makes it difficult to respond to this form of political activism when it is performed in public. Humorous political stunts can therefore challenge state power, help influence changes in law and make significant contributions to the conversations about how societies should be organised. The book also investigates the potential risks and limitations of using humour in nonviolent action and what makes humour unique compared with other forms of non-humorous political activism.

Civil Resistance

Civil Resistance PDF Author: Kurt Schock
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145294511X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
In the past quarter century the world has witnessed dramatic social and political transformations, due in part to an upsurge in civil resistance. There have been significant uprisings around the globe, including the toppling of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Color Revolutions, the Arab Spring, protests against war and economic inequality, countless struggles against corruption, and demands for more equitable distribution of land. These actions have attracted substantial scholarly attention, reflected in the growth of literature on social movements and revolution as well as literature on nonviolent resistance. Until now, however, the two bodies of literature have largely developed in parallel—with relatively little acknowledgment of the existence of the other. In this useful collection, an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars takes stock of the current state of the theoretical and empirical literature on civil resistance. Contributors analyze key processes of nonviolent struggle and identify both frictions and points of synthesis between the narrower literature on civil resistance and the broader literature on social movements and revolution. By doing so, Civil Resistance: Comparative Perspectives on Nonviolent Struggle pushes the boundaries of the study of civil resistance and generates social scientific knowledge that will be helpful for all scholars and activists concerned with democracy, human rights, and social justice.

Biblical Humor and Performance

Biblical Humor and Performance PDF Author: Peter S. Perry
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666711314
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
What’s so humorous about the Bible? Quite a bit, especially if experienced with others! Nine biblical scholars explore their experiences of reading and hearing passages from the Bible and discovering humor that becomes clearer in performance. Each writer found clues in their chosen biblical text that suggested biblical authors expected an audience to respond with laughter. Performers have a powerful role in either bringing out or tamping down humor in the Bible. One audience may be more disposed to respond to humor than another. And each contributor found that experiencing humor changed the interpretation of the biblical passage. From Genesis to Revelation, this study uncovers the Bible’s potential for humor.

The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements

The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements PDF Author: Lester R. Kurtz
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815654294
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
Political repression often paradoxically fuels popular movements rather than undermining resistance. When authorities respond to strategic nonviolent action with intimidation, coercion, and violence, they often undercut their own legitimacy, precipitating significant reforms or even governmental overthrow. Brutal repression of a movement is often a turning point in its history: Bloody Sunday in the March to Selma led to the passage of civil rights legislation by the US Congress, and the Amritsar Massacre in India showed the world the injustice of the British Empire’s use of force in maintaining control over its colonies. Activists in a wide range of movements have engaged in nonviolent strategies of repression management that can raise the likelihood that repression will cost those who use it. The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements brings scholars and activists together to address multiple dimensions and significant cases of this phenomenon, including the relational nature of nonviolent struggle and the cultural terrain on which it takes place, the psychological costs for agents of repression, and the importance of participation, creativity, and overcoming fear, whether in the streets or online.

Educating for Peace through Theatrical Arts

Educating for Peace through Theatrical Arts PDF Author: Candice C. Carter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000592197
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
This volume illustrates how theatre arts can be used to enact peace education by showcasing the use of theatrical techniques including storytelling, testimonial and forum theatre, political humor, and arts-based pedagogy in diverse formal and non-formal educational contexts across age groups. The text presents and discusses how the use of applied theatre, especially in conflict-affected areas, can be used as an educational response to cultural and structural violence for transformation of relations, healing, and praxis as local and global peacebuilding. Crucially, it bridges performing arts and peace education, the latter of which is unfolding in schools and their communities worldwide. With contributors from countries including Northern Ireland, Denmark, Norway, the USA, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, Pakistan, Burundi, Kenya, and South Africa, the authors identify theoretical and technical aspects of theatrical performance that support peace through transformation along with embodied and sensorial learning. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in teacher education, arts-based learning, peace studies, and applied theatre that consider practice with child, adolescent, and adult learners.

Civil Resistance

Civil Resistance PDF Author: Erica Chenoweth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190244429
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
A sweeping overview of civil resistance movements around the world that explains what they are, how they work, why they are often effective, and why they can fail. Civil resistance is a method of conflict through which unarmed civilians use a variety of coordinated methods (strikes, protests, demonstrations, boycotts, and many other tactics) to prosecute a conflict without directly harming or threatening to harm an opponent. Sometimes called nonviolent resistance, unarmed struggle, or nonviolent action, this form of political action is now a mainstay across the globe. It was been a central form of resistance in the 1989 revolutions and in the Arab Spring, and it is now being practiced widely in Trump's America. If we are going to understand the manifold protest movements emerging around the globe, we need a thorough understanding of civil resistance and its many dynamics and manifestations. In Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know® , Erica Chenoweth -- one of the world's leading scholars on the topic--explains what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. Featuring both historical cases of civil resistance and more contemporary examples such as the Arab Awakenings and various ongoing movements in the United States, this book provides a comprehensive yet pithy overview of this enormously important subject.

Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe

Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe PDF Author: Olena Nikolayenko
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110841673X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
This book examines a dramatic rise of nonviolent youth movements on the eve of national elections in Eastern Europe.

Cultural Texts of Resistance in Zimbabwe

Cultural Texts of Resistance in Zimbabwe PDF Author: Rodwell Makombe
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538150921
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
This book uses critical textual analysis and postcolonial theory to analyse cultural texts of resistance in contemporary Zimbabwe.