Description
Pacifism and nonviolence have separable foci and origins, yet they also share important similarities, and their respective histories are mutually imbricated. Both have, furthermore, been attracting growing scholarly interest in the twenty-first century. However, that scholarship has so far been scattered and nested in disparate sub-disciplinary debates and specialist publications. The time has come for a new and wider multidisciplinary agenda to coordinate several potentially fruitful and original strands of research on topics including: the varieties of approaches to nonviolence and pacifism; central accusations against pacifism; the tensions between pacifism and nonviolence; theories and practices outside the Global North; the multiple direct and indirect consequences of violence; the place of violence and nonviolence in political thought; the relationship between violence/nonviolence and gender, race, and other social identities; the religious roots of pacifism and nonviolence; the place of violence and nonviolence in popular culture (and the interests this serves); the potential for practical nonviolent policies of governance; predominant assumptions concerning violence in IR (about, e.g., terrorism, the international order, just war); what makes an act ‘violence’ and when direct action becomes ‘violent’; and methodological challenges in the study and pedagogy of nonviolence and pacifism.
