The Framework of Nonviolence: Alternate Socio-Political Models, with Safoora Arbab
The Metta Center for Nonviolence is pleased to announce our next online course for our School of Nonviolence!
The Framework of Nonviolence: Alternate Socio-Political Models
October 7/8- November 18/19*
Instructor: Safoora Arbab
*In order to accommodate as many interested students across timezones as possible with this important topic, this course will be a hybrid of recorded talks and online engagement and live Zoom sessions (if you can make them). Safoora is currently based in Thailand, so the timing of the optional and recommended live meeting sessions is as follows:
Mondays at 7-9PM California Time / Tuesdays at 9-11am Thailand Time, October 7th/8th to November 18th/19th.
Course Overview:
In this course, we will explore texts and films to understand what the major components of an alternate socio-political framework are, or ought to be. If nonviolence is an oppositional interpretive framework to the one in which we are presently living — in which violence is the norm — then what would comprise the essential components of alternate models?
In order to postulate alternate models we have to first clearly understand the normative foundations of our present structures so that we can resist them and avoid reproducing them at institutional and communal levels. Therefore, this course will partially delve into the philosophical foundations of our given political structures in order to understand why violence sits at the core. However, the focus of this course will be on exploring alternatives, and as such we will delve into anarchist theories and practices, “utopian” models, and also how historical/contemporary alternative communities have been set up. In particular, we will analyze why the framework of nonviolence points towards decentralized, radically egalitarian, and democratic communities, and we will discuss how such communities can be — and historically have been — realized and made functional.
Course Fee: $100. This is to offer as a gift to our course instructor. Please make a donation at this link.
This course is an offering for our multi-year path of the School of Nonviolence. For more information about the School, contact us.
