This research explores the 2018 revolution in Sudan to assess the extent to which the adoption of non-violence led to a more successful revolution and set Sudan on a path of democratic governance. It ...investigates the revolution's main slogan, Silmiya, coming from the Arabic word Salam meaning 'peace'. Thus, the nature and function of non-violence as well as what motivates people to resort to non-violence will be considered. The research acts as a point of departure from Fanon's theory of violence arguing that violence is revolutionary and liberating. Ultimately, the research challenges normative frameworks on the necessity of violence for social movements to succeed as Fanon theorises, sheds light on the power of non-violence, and highlights the importance of re-examining characteristics historically associated with non-violence, such as passivity or weakness.
Introduction
Past research examining the relationship between psychosis and criminality has typically focused on chronic schizophrenia and violence. However, contact with the criminal justice system ...is not constrained to the most unwell or most violent. The present study is novel as it examines the different clinical stages of psychosis, from the at-risk mental states (ARMS)/Ultra-High Risk (UHR) to the early and chronic psychotic illness phase, across the entire spectrum of criminal offending.
Objectives
The main study objective is to establish the prevalence of the clinical stages of psychosis among adults entering custody and to examine the sociodemographic and forensic characteristics associated with the different stages of psychosis. A further aim is to examine whether psychosis-spectrum prisoners differ from non-psychotic prison controls across these characteristics.
Methods
Participants consist of unselected 291 adult male and female prisoners entering the largest maximum security reception centres in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. They completed a range of semi-structured questionnaires and adapted mental health screening measures. The Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental States (CAARMS; Yung et al., 2005) was used to ascertain whether participants met the Ultra High Risk (UHR), First Episode of Psychosis (FEP) or Established Psychosis (EP) criteria.
Results
Participants were 34.25 years old (SD = 10.69) on average and men were significantly older than women (
p
= 0.035). Among prisoners with a psychosis-spectrum illness (
n
= 121), the prevalence of UHR was 24%, First Episode Psychosis (FEP) was 6% and established psychosis was 11%. Compared to controls, psychosis spectrum prisoners were found to have higher levels of social disadvantage, psychiatric comorbidities and multiple incarceration episodes. However, psychosis was not associated with a greater risk of violent offending. Implications on the complex illness burden associated with psychosis and the need for early identification and intervention across forensic mental health services will be further discussed.
Conclusions
This study is novel as it examines the full spectrum of psychotic illness across the entire spectrum of criminal offending. The findings support the notion that risk of criminal justice contact and complex illness burden exist across the different clinical stages of psychosis, from the UHR to the early FEP and chronic psychosis stages, for both violent and non-violent offending. Early intervention services must consider how to more effectively identify and intervene to reduce the risk of criminal justice system contact among mentally ill individuals.
Disclosure of Interest
None Declared
Collective action research tends to focus on motivations of the disadvantaged group, rather than on which tactics are effective at driving the advantaged group to make concessions to the ...disadvantaged. We focused on the potential of nonnormative nonviolent action as a tactic to generate support for concessions among advantaged group members who are resistant to social change. We propose that this tactic, relative to normative nonviolent and to violent action, is particularly effective because it reflects constructive disruption: a delicate balance between disruption (which can put pressure on the advantaged group to respond) and perceived constructive intentions (which can help ensure that the response to action is a conciliatory one). We test these hypotheses across 4 contexts (total N = 3650). Studies 1-3 demonstrate that nonnormative nonviolent action (compared with inaction, normative nonviolent action, and violent action) is uniquely effective at increasing support for concessions to the disadvantaged among resistant advantaged group members (compared with advantaged group members more open to social change). Study 3 shows that constructive disruption mediates this effect. Study 4 shows that perceiving a real-world ongoing protest as constructively disruptive predicts support for the disadvantaged, whereas Study 5 examines these processes longitudinally over 2 months in the context of an ongoing social movement. Taken together, we show that nonnormative nonviolent action can be an effective tactic for generating support for concessions to the disadvantaged among those who are most resistant because it generates constructive disruption.
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Why do some rebel groups provide governance inclusively while most others do not? Some insurgencies divert critical financial and personnel resources to provide benefits to anyone, including ...nonsupporters (Karen National Union, Eritrean People's Liberation Front). Other groups offer no services or limit their service provision to only those people who support, or are likely to support, the insurgency. The existing literature examines how insurgencies incentivize recruitment by offering selective social services, yet no research addresses why insurgencies provide goods inclusively. I argue that inclusive provision of services legitimates insurgents’ claim of sovereignty to domestic and international audiences, and thus is a strategic tool secessionist rebels use to achieve their long-term goal of independence. With new and original data, I use a large-N analysis to test this hypothesis. The results of the analysis support the hypothesis, underscoring the importance insurgent nonviolent behavior and addressing key issues such as sovereignty and governance.
An emerging consensus holds that nonviolent resistance campaigns are more successful than violent campaigns, partly because they attract more participants. Yet, we lack an understanding of whether ...and why nonviolent tactics attracts support. We propose two motivational logics that can explain support for nonviolence: An instrumentalist logic, whereby nonviolent resistance is preferred based on cost-benefit considerations, and an intrinsic logic where nonviolent resistance is preferred because of perceived inherent moral worth. To investigate the motivational pull of these two logics, we conduct a pre-registered survey experiment among more than 5000 respondents across 33 countries in fall 2019. We find that nonviolent tactics strongly increase movement support relative to violent tactics, and that the preference for nonviolence is primarily driven by intrinsic commitments to the moral worth of nonviolent resistance, rather than instrumental considerations.
This article considers the challenges associated with completing risk assessments in countering violent extremism. In particular, it is concerned with risk assessment of those who come to the ...attention of government and nongovernment organizations as being potentially on a trajectory toward terrorism and where there is an obligation to consider the potential future risk that they may pose. Risk assessment in this context is fraught with difficulty, primarily due to the variable nature of terrorism, the low base-rate problem, and the dearth of strong evidence on relevant risk and resilience factors. Statistically, this will lead to poor predictive value. Ethically, it can lead to the labeling of an individual who is not on a trajectory toward violence as being "at risk" of engaging in terrorism and the imposing of unnecessary risk management actions. The article argues that actuarial approaches to risk assessment in this context cannot work. However, it further argues that approaches that help assessors to process and synthesize information in a structured way are of value and are in line with good practice in the broader field of violence risk assessment.
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Why do organizations choose to use nonviolence? Why do they choose specific nonviolent tactics? Existing quantitative work centers on mass nonviolent campaign, but much of the nonviolence employed in ...contentious politics is smaller-scale nonviolent direct action. In this article, we explore the determinants of nonviolence with new data at the organization level in self-determination disputes from 1960 to 2005. We present a novel argument about the interdependence of tactical choices among nonviolent options in self-determination movements. Given limitations on their capabilities, competition among organizations in a shared movement, and different resource requirements for nonviolent strategies, we show that organizations have incentives to diversify tactics rather than just copy other organizations. The empirical analysis reveals a rich picture of varied organizational resistance choices, and a complex web of interdependence among tactics.
SignificanceThe effects of recent protests for racial equality, particularly when they included violence, are currently of public and academic interest. To better understand these effects, we combine ...a dataset of all 2020 BlackLivesMatter protests with survey data containing measures of prejudice and support for police reform. Protests were not associated with reductions in prejudice, but were associated with increases in support for police reform. Specifically, a mix of nonviolent and violent protests was associated with an increase in police-reform support among conservatives living in liberal areas. This study highlights the importance of considering multiple measures of protest effectiveness and suggests that mass protest (including when it mixes nonviolence and violence) can be effective at advancing the movement's goals.
In 1885, Kropotkin called for geography to be ‘a means of dissipating hostile prejudices’ between nations that make conflicts more likely, and ‘creating other feelings more worthy of humanity’. As a ...body of scholars, we have risen far more ably to the negative task of ‘dissipating’ than to the positive charge of ‘creating’: Geography is better at researching war than peace. To redress that imbalance, we need both to
conceptualise more clearly what we mean by peace, and make a
commitment to researching and practising it. These arguments are made with reference to the broader literature and research along the Danish/German, Israeli/Palestinian and Kyrgyz/Uzbek interfaces.
► Geography has handled the study of war with more depth and panache than the study of peace. ► This needs rectifying in order to make geography more useful. ► We must do two things: conceptualise peace, and make a commitment to it.