From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: ON THOUGHT AND ACTION: Nonviolent Struggle
Date: 19 Aug 92 08:23:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: mont.1992Aug19.082307.27391
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: PACH
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

The ACTivist July/August 92

The ACTivist is published monthly (one issue during July and August)
by the ACT for Disarmament Coalition, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto, 
Ontario, Canada, M5S 2R4, phone 416-531-6154, fax 416-531-5850,
e-mail web:act.

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/** gen.newsletter: 121.20 **/
** Written 11:33 pm  Aug 11, 1992 by web:act in cdp:gen.newsletter **
ON THOUGHT AND ACTION

Unarmed Forces
Graeme MacQueen, ed.
Science for Peace/Samuel Stevens
pp.132

Nonviolent Struggle and Social Defence
Shelley Anderson and Janet Larmore, eds
War Resisters' International
pp. 146

Reviewed by Maggie Helwig

There is an almost disturbing similarity between these two books 
in their basic conception -- both the proceedings of conferences on 
nonviolent action against various forms of violence, edited into book 
form; both internationally focused; including some of the same 
contributors (notably Julio Quan and the omnipresent Gene Sharp); 
both, in fact, using the same tones-of-brown colour scheme and 
pictures of Palestinians holding up V-signs on the cover.

The two cover pictures, however, are strikingly different, in some 
ways that pretty much encapsulate the differences between the 
two books. On Nonviolent Struggle and Social Defence, we see a 
crowd of young men and women, chanting, waving their arms, faces 
full of anger and joy and determination. On Unarmed Forces, there is 
a single very young girl in extreme close-up, one eye bandaged, her 
small hand held out in a touching and rather sad appeal.

It is a beautifully composed photograph, and Unarmed Forces is a 
very skillfully assembled book. The result of a conference held at 
McMaster University in Hamilton in 1989, it was not published 
until last month, and it is clear that a good deal of care and thought 
went into selecting a few speeches to be reprinted, after editing to 
make them more of 'a book'. Nonviolent Struggle, on the other hand, 
was published in 1991 after a conference which took place in 
Bradford, England in 1990, and shows all the signs of a rush job -- 
some pieces printed in question and answer format, some as essays, 
some as transcribed and barely edited speeches, and the whole 
thing concluded by a long and essentially point-form essay by Brian 
Martin on "Arguments and Actions" for social defense.

Finally, it depends what you want out of a book. Unarmed Forces 
is a better read, first of all. It is more thoughtful, in some ways. 
Many of the pieces have a more vivid sense of the people speaking, 
and their own feelings about the place of nonviolence in their lives 
and work. It raises in a more systematic way some of the 
philosophical problems in nonviolent action -- for instance, the 
relationship of nonviolent activists to the 'structural violence' of 
systematic starvation in Central America and elsewhere.

Having attended the McMaster conference, however, I know 
how much was left out to create this thoughtful, finished impression, 
and I am sorry for the loss of many valuable if not so well-organized 
panel and roundtable discussions. I particularly regret that the 
hastily-organized workshop on women dealing with violence in 
their own lives does not appear at all in the written record of the
 proceedings.

For anyone concerned to put ideas of nonviolent defence or 
nonviolent social change into action, Nonviolent Struggle is going 
to be a considerably more useful tool. The sort of half-finished 
feeling which makes it less, well, intellectually pleasing than 
Unarmed Forces also challenges the reader to keep thinking. It is 
not a final word on anything, but a sharing of some experiences, 
some ideas and some strategies -- and very much concerned that 
these strategies should be used.

Ideally, I suppose, one would be able to have both books available, 
and use them to bounce off each other in all sorts of potentially 
interesting ways. Given that most of us probably can't have both,
 I would give a slight edge to Nonviolent Struggle and Social Defence. 
It is not such a good read -- and Unarmed Forces is a very good 
read -- but it has a bit more of a chance of making something 
actually happen in the world.


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