Concepts

‘Effervescence of the crowd’ is a term used to describe the tendency of people to feed off of a momentary sense of excitement, taking to the streets and appearing briefly to be mobilized for a cause, only for the initial excitement to wear off and for the energy to dissipate (or worse, degenerate into violence… read more

In nonviolent conflict intervention (also known as third party nonviolent intervention), interposition is the act of literally getting in between conflicting parties to deter them from using violence against one another. Commonly, it is assumed that interposition owes its effectiveness to the conflicting parties’ unwillingness to harm an innocent bystander. However, there is also a… read more

Non-embarrassment is a nonviolent strategic principle employed by Gandhi. “Embarassment,” in this context refers to the alternate definition of embarrass, “to confuse, flummox.”  The principle states that one should never persist actively in a nonviolent resistance campaign towards an opponent while that opponent is distracted. There are two main reasons, both derived from the intention… read more

‘Reference public’ is the term used to describe those who stand to have their views on a given issue influenced through witnessing a nonviolent struggle; it is particularly used in relation to the paradox of oppression.… read more