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Nonviolent Resistance and Culture
by Majken Jul Sørensen and Stellan Vinthagen
This article investigates what culture means for nonviolent resistance.
While literature on nonviolence has had a tendency to look instrumentally
at culture, this article suggests an intertwined relationship. Activists are
themselves embedded in their own cultures, and there is no ‘‘outside
culture.’’ The authors suggest an innovative model of three strategies for
analyzing the cultural aspects of a nonviolent struggle: (1) occasionally
borrowing existing powerful symbols and cultural elements, such as flags
or religious symbols, which is then applied; (2) partially remodeling ‘‘old’’
culture in the spirit of nonviolence. This strategy is illustrated through the
Khudai Khidmatgar of the North-West Frontier Province in the 1930s and
shows how the nonviolent struggle there, was ‘‘negotiated’’ with Islam
and a traditional code of honor; and finally, (3) systematically creating a
nonviolent movement culture, which is a much more complex process, is
illustrated through the movement for landless workers in Brazil, the Movi-
mento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra.
During the February 2011 revolution in Egypt, there were several
occasions when activists took time out to pray in the middle of a
fight with police, and most importantly, the police respected this by
turning their back to the activists during the prayer.
1
Afterward they
engaged in street battle again. The respect shown by the police force,
which otherwise used massive violence against the protesters, both
before and after these events, is a sign of how strong the culture of
prayer is in Egypt. At other times, prayer was ignored by the repres-
sive state forces. On some occasions, factors such as pressure from
superior officers, fear, or ambition are stronger. In Cairo, the police
showed respect for activists’ prayers several times but it was not
automatic. Nevertheless, when protesters and authorities share a
common culture, there is a possibility that this changes the conflict
dynamics.
PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 37, No. 3, July 2012
!2012 Peace History Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
444
CULTURE MATTERS FOR NONVIOLENCE
Nothing within the field of politics is possible to fully understand
without including a cultural perspective. Because everyone belongs to
specific cultures, different elements of these cultures can either
strengthen or weaken a commitment to nonviolence and support or
suppress the willingness and eagerness to resist injustices. Using vari-
ous examples, we will show how this relationship can be understood
and categorized.
Culture has formed a vital part of social movement studies since
the 1990s. James Jasper studied the role of ‘‘moral panics’’ and acti-
vists’ personal life histories,
2
while Alberto Melucci, through the
‘‘identity paradigm,’’ has inspired a whole field of movement’s
research on collective identity.
3
Through studies of the peace move-
ment of the 1980s, John Lofland has suggested an analytical table of
dimensions and degrees of cultural elaboration in different move-
ments.
4
Simultaneously, within the theories of revolution, culture has
found its place. Here, John Foran has showed how ‘‘oppositional
culture’’ plays a key role together with other factors in explaining the
results of revolutionary attempts in the Third World.
5
Much of
the cultural analysis of movement’s activism has been within the theo-
retical perspective of ‘‘frames,’’ a perspective that largely emphasizes
strategic struggles over definitions and worldviews in society.
6
Within the emerging field of ‘‘nonviolent action,’’ culture is often
reduced to an instrumental tool (symbols, signs, dress, etc.).
7
Some
even see cultural elements as technical tools that can be used as ‘‘black
propaganda’’ to manipulate opinions in the interests of the activists.
8
Others use ‘‘culture’’ as a contextual resource to provide conditions of
the struggle. In West Papua, Jason MacLeod shows how traditional
dance, music, and food as well as Christianity are all cultural elements
that have been important for the nonviolent struggle for independence
from Indonesia, as these aspects of identity distinguish the Papuans
from the migrants from other parts of Indonesia. However, this fram-
ing of identity also separates the Papuans from potential allies within
Indonesia. Barbara Epstein makes a detailed analysis of cultural
change processes and cultural work by the activists in her analysis of
how radical activists in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s
attempted to create a ‘‘cultural revolution,’’
9
but she does not provide
an explicit cultural framework. On the other hand, we can find
authors who use cultural theories from postcolonial studies, social
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 445
movement theory, or subaltern studies in their rich interpretations of
Gandhi’s work or nonviolent resistance movements.
10
However, their
writing does not develop a general strategic typology of how activists
use culture. As nobody has elaborated on how culture and nonviolent
action relate to each other with a pragmatic perspective on how move-
ments use culture, that is what we will discuss here in order for both
researchers and activists to understand nonviolence and culture better.
Our pragmatic perspective treats movements as peopled with crea-
tive cultural actors who use cultural elements and reconstruct them
within an experienced cultural context. Activists do not act purely
instrumentally, because their work is done from within a lived cultural
experience. Activists do not only use culture; they are motivated by
and view the world from their own cultural perspectives. Neither do
they passively rearticulate the pre-existing culture they belong to.
Instead, they are active agents that co-construct cultural elements
within the processes of social interaction and conflicts with others in
society. Culture gives a movement both meaning and ‘‘weapons’’ in
their struggle.
In this article, we will first discuss ‘‘culture’’ from the perspective
of nonviolence for social change. After that, we will suggest three dif-
ferent ways of describing and analyzing nonviolent movements’ rela-
tions to culture. Finally, we discuss the implications of these three
different types of relations and approaches for the future research of
culture and nonviolence.
WHAT IS ‘‘CULTURE’’ FROM A NONVIOLENT PERSPECTIVE?
As human beings, we need culture to make sense of the world. Of
course, the world exists in a material sense, but what that means is
decided by our interpretations. We interpret everything we see, hear,
feel, or taste through different cultural filters that make the world
comprehensible for us. Even if one believes that there is an ‘‘objective’’
reality ‘‘before’’ or ‘‘behind’’ what we see, hear, feel, and taste, we
have no possibility of accessing this ‘‘true reality.’’
11
Since the 1970s, many different theoretical perspectives have tried
to capture the contested concept ‘‘culture.’’
12
Within later cultural
studies, postcolonial studies, postsubcultural studies, or Jeffrey C.
Alexander’s ‘‘strong program’’ of a ‘‘cultural sociology,’’ ‘‘culture’’
takes on somewhat abstract forms, such as structures of codes, repre-
sentation, or symbols.
13
When we use the word ‘‘culture,’’ we are
446 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
here, for practical purposes, instead inspired by a social anthropo-
logical treatment of ‘‘cultures’’ (in plural).
14
We consider that culture
historically evolved patterns of practice, meaning, and values of a
community, which together form a worldview and way of life. It is
developed both consciously (as ideologies and religions), but also as
tacit in the everyday life (as practical habits, custom, or ‘‘habitus’’).
15
It has a material, a practical, and a symbolic dimension, but the sym-
bolic and practical aspects are of most interest in this context. The
symbolic dimension is about values, ideas, and stories and gives mem-
bers of the community their language and understanding of the world.
The dimension of practice emphasizes the way culture is about habits,
practical solutions to everyday life, or as Michael Carrithers says,
‘‘human traits that are learned and learnable.’’
16
To Zygmunt
Bauman, culture is all about ‘‘praxis,’’ a living and integrated part of
social interaction and human life, and as such, the source of both
order and change.
17
We see culture as integrated to human life, giving meaning and a
sense of coherence. It is connected to conflicts, power, and struggle.
Culture is contested, contradictory, changing, yet it is possible that
people experience culture as stable, coherent, and ‘‘natural.’’ Change
can be a reaction to external circumstances, but can also be initiated
from processes or individuals internal to the group. Cultural change
involves and influences the interests of individuals and groups, for
example political struggles, and is of interest to everyone who
struggles for nonviolent social change.
For practical purposes, we refer to two very different cultures: the
dominant culture that the resisters want to change and the alternative
culture they create through that struggle.
18
However, in reality, the
lines between these ideal types are blurred and cultures multiply. Our
interest is what happens in the meeting between existing dominant
cultures and the people who struggle for nonviolent social change. To
what degree do they recycle the old and to what degree do they try
to invent a new culture? And what is the most successful strategy to
create long-term changes?
When it is cultural hegemony itself, or elements within a culture,
which is seen as harmful, then culture is the target of resistance. Other
times, culture is ‘‘just’’ a tool for creating change. In both cases, ideas
of resistance have to make sense within the cultural understanding of
that particular society. Thus, cultural change toward nonviolent values
is not simply a matter of destroying the means of repression or making
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 447
dominance costly or practically impossible, it is a matter of making
the ideas of resistance make sense. Therefore, successful changes might
take place in subtle ways.
CULTURE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CHANGE
In 1977, Clifford Geertz wrote:
Thrones may be out of fashion and pageantry too; but political
authority still requires a cultural frame in which to define itself
and advance its claims, and so does opposition to it.
19
The quote is just as relevant today as it was thirty-five years ago.
In The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power, Jan Kubik
shows how both the opposition and the socialist government in Poland
in the 1970s and 1980s used different cultural frames to express them-
selves.
20
Both the regime and the opposition drew from existing
frames and historical events in a constant fight over how to express
‘‘the truth.’’ The opposition also found new ways of showing resis-
tance and developed its own discourse to counter the regime’s domi-
nant discourse of what Poland was, and should be. Both the visit of
the Pope in 1979 and the oppression of dissent served the re-invention
of old cultural symbols and the invention of new ones. The Pope’s
visit gave new strength to the already strong Polish Catholicism and
showed that organizing outside of the state was possible. The deaths
of protesting students and workers became powerful symbols of
further resistance through their funerals and the creation of memorials.
Kubik suggests a typology for these inventions. The typology has
two extremes: ‘‘Either one can aim for complete replacement of exist-
ing traditions, customs, rituals, and symbols. The reigning principle
here is discontinuity. At the other extreme one finds the strategy of
perfect preservation based on the principle of continuity.’’
21
Kubik
does not think that these extremes exist in the real world, but that all
empirical cases fall some place along this continuum. In the middle,
we find the principles of remodeling, which is neither an attempt of
complete replacement nor a perfect preservation. Although Kubik uses
his typology to explain how both the regime and the opposition move-
ment invented and re-invented cultural expressions, the typology is
useful for analyzing nonviolent struggles for change and their relation
to culture. As we are concerned with change and not preservation, we
448 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
will focus on the end of the continuum between remodeling and
complete replacement.
We suggest a model consisting of three strategies of how nonvio-
lent movements can relate to the dominant cultures:
1. Borrow powerful symbols or other cultural elements that are
already part of either mainstream culture or an established
culture of resistance. This use of culture does not demand any
major changes, but creative combinations of ‘‘old’’ culture and
‘‘new’’ issues.
2. Remodel by interpreting the existing culture in the spirit of
nonviolence, for example by introducing new understandings
of the Bible, the Koran, the nation, or other important
traditional cultural elements.
3. Create a whole new, alternative, and nonviolent culture that
more or less reconstructs and replaces the old way of
understanding the world and the old social life form.
In the following sections, we will describe and illustrate these three
different strategies. They should be understood as Weberian ‘‘ideal
types’’ along the ‘‘change’’ section of Kubik’s continuum, and in prac-
tice it may be difficult to decide which category to place particular
examples in. The third strategy is a matter of relatively high complex-
ity and elaboration and with a number of cultural transformations,
compared to the other two. It should not be interpreted as ‘‘pure’’ or
utopian nonviolence; any nonviolent culture will have its own power
relations, lack of perfection, and needs of change.
22
Among the three strategies of (1) borrowing, (2) remodeling, and
(3) creating, common sense might suggest that the more elaborate cul-
tural creative works (2 and 3) are the most powerful and effective
means in general. However, they demand more efforts and they take
more time. Therefore, they are often not suitable. Strong and short-
term mobilizations instead have to rely on the borrowing of powerful
cultural elements, and might, in their respective struggles and contexts
be suitable and effective enough.
BORROW EXISTING POWERFUL SYMBOLS AND CULTURAL
ELEMENTS
In this section, we will show how existing powerful symbols can
be used to strengthen a commitment to nonviolence or to show
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 449
contempt and protest in subtle or open ways. These are just a few of
the many possible examples of using cultural symbols; only the crea-
tivity of the nonviolent resisters limits possibilities. The examples also
show that borrowing does not demand much change of the resisters’
own culture.
Some symbols are very specific to a limited group and other
symbols are known almost worldwide. Given the strong national
symbolism invoked by a national flag, the burning of flags becomes a
strong symbol of contempt for that state. However, the burning of
a flag in itself does not say anything about what part of state policy
the protest and contempt is directed against. In situations where the
use of a particular flag is illegal, flag-raising ceremonies can be a pow-
erful expression of dissent because of their association with ambitions
for establishing new independent states. In West Papua, the Morning
Star flag is such a symbol of Papuan nationalism.
23
Contemporary social movements almost always have a symbol,
such as the peace symbol and the women’s symbol. The use of a color
is a simple way of creating identity among people, and colors are
often connected to ideologies, parties, national flags, or religions,
loaded with values and meaning. In the Philippines, the yellow color
was extensively used during the struggle against Ferdinand Marcos
(1986) in the ‘‘People Power Revolution’’ or the ‘‘Yellow Revolution.’’
As the leader of the struggle, Corazon Aquino, regularly appeared in
interviews and TV with yellow clothes, the color became connected to
her and the yellow-clad opposition protesters. When a group of people
walked down the streets of Manila, all dressed in yellow, it became a
powerful statement, especially when demonstrations were forbidden.
After a while, more and more people dressed in yellow walked in
town, and the military regime didn’t know what to do. Forbidding a
color was a bit too authoritarian, even for this normally very repres-
sive regime.
Religious symbols are used in almost every nonviolent struggle in
places where people believe in a certain faith. The protesters in the
Philippines carried statues of the Virgin Mary, and during the Vietnam
War, ‘‘engaged Buddhists’’ were active in the struggle against the war
and used strong Buddhist symbols. For example, family altars were
carried into the street in an attempt to stop the tanks from using the
roads.
24
Another way of expressing dissent against the war was when
monks caught the world’s attention by burning themselves to death in
South Vietnam. In Vietnam, self-immolation is a well-known cultural
450 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
symbol that a monk uses as an expression of the suffering he is pre-
pared to go through in order to serve his people. It is not performed
in order to commit suicide, as it is the burning and suffering, not
death which is the goal. However, the self-immolation was interpreted
differently in other cultural contexts.
25
Another case can be used to illustrate the notion that almost every-
thing can be used as an important symbol. In the Palestinian village
Bil’in, activists have creatively utilized numerous powerful symbols in
their struggle against the Israeli-built wall that separates them from
their farms and olive trees. Every Friday, they demonstrate from the
village to the wall, often together with international solidarity activists
and international media. In one action during Christmas, several acti-
vists were dressed as Santa Claus, and on another occasion, a whole
group was painted blue to resemble the aboriginal Na’vi people, from
the blockbuster movie ‘‘Avatar.’’
26
This popular Avatar symbolism was
also employed by an Indian Adivasi community in its struggle against a
foreign mining corporation; the community won the struggle.
27
These cases illustrate how powerful symbols or cultural elements
can play a role when they are borrowed, creatively used, and inte-
grated into a nonviolent struggle. When a movement uses a strong and
established cultural element in a conflict situation, the element can
gain even more importance than before. This provides cultural lever-
age, giving worthiness or legitimacy to the movement and the struggle.
This happens both through the use of a cultural element that is
already a powerful symbol (as the national flag) and by the new use
of it (as the yellow color in the Philippines), giving it a new impor-
tance and meaning. Thus, these symbols are reinvigorated and rein-
vented through the creative use of the culture in a new situation.
REMODELING ‘‘OLD’’ CULTURE IN THE SPIRIT OF NONVIOLENT
RESISTANCE
In the second category, we will move further down the continuum
toward more radical and dramatic remodeling of ‘‘old’’ culture. First,
we will illustrate the principle of this cultural resistance strategy
through radical reinterpretation of what a ‘‘mother’’ is in Argentina.
Second, we will elaborate on remodeling through a more detailed
study of the Khudai Khidmatgar.
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo from Argentina are a well-
known case of nonviolent protest that began in the late 1970s against
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 451
the military dictatorship. When the junta started the practice of mak-
ing people they considered a threat to their regime ‘‘disappear,’’
thousands of relatives were left behind without any explanation of
what had happened to their loved ones. It has been estimated that
30,000 people disappeared during the six years of military rule, when
trade union activists, progressive priests, students, and anybody
thought to have ‘‘leftish’’ opinions were abducted, tortured, killed,
and their bodies dumped.
28
As the majority of the disappeared were
young people, it was often their mothers who searched for them by
contacting every ministry, police unit, military institution, or hospital
they could think of. A group of women started to meet regularly,
and in April 1977, they made their first public demonstration in front
of the government house at Plaza de Mayo, the central square of
Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires. It was an extremely courageous act,
as the fourteen women who participated in the first public appear-
ance ran a great risk of disappearing themselves. But the fact that
they were middle-aged women who had spent most of their lives as
housewives, taking care of home and family, made the regime less
nervous. In their masculine perspective of the world, no one would
take a bunch of crazy old women seriously. The regime was soon
proved wrong, as the women gained international recognition and
their symbol of a diaper emblazoned with their children’s names,
worn as a scarf, became known worldwide. It was extremely difficult
for the regime to confront them without losing face because they
were mothers searching for their children. According to Argentina’s
conservative military elite, women should be home, looking after the
children and taking care of the family. Although the disappearances
changed the situation drastically, the mothers still constructed them-
selves as caregivers and protectors of their children. They used the
hegemonic cultural understanding of home, family, and women’s role
in society to find a safe space to organize their resistance. Within a
few years, the group grew and became a serious challenge to the mil-
itary regime.
ABDUL GAFFAR KHAN AND THE KHUDAI KHIDMATGAR
29
In India in the 1930s, as part of the struggle for independence
from the British colonial rule, the Khudai Khidmatgars and their lea-
der Abdul Gaffar Khan followed a strictly nonviolent rule. They acted
in the North-West Frontier Province, which is part of what is now
452 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
Pakistan. We will begin by describing how their traditionally violent
honor culture was transformed into a nonviolent honor culture.
Abdul Gaffar Khan, also known as Badshah Khan, raised an army
of 100,000 unarmed ‘‘soldiers,’’ ready to sacrifice their lives for a free
India. Khan belonged to the Pathans,
30
a group of people who were
(and still are) known as warriors with a strong commitment to honor.
At the time, they were infamous and feared both by the British Army
and other Indians. (Today, the Pathans are mainly known as the
ethnic group that makes up the majority of the Taliban in
Afghanistan.) Khan was a devout Muslim and for many years, worked
to improve the living conditions among the Pathans in the province.
He started schools, taught hygiene, and encouraged his people to give
women greater freedom. He spent many years imprisoned by the Brit-
ish authorities for his struggle for social change. The North-West
Frontier Province was governed by martial laws, and it was possible
to keep people in prison for years without charging or convicting them
of anything.
Inspired by Gandhi’s resistance, Khan started the organization
Khudai Khidmatgars, which means ‘‘Servants of God,’’ after a meeting
in September, 1929. He envisioned an ‘‘army’’ with officers, flags,
orchestra, and discipline, but without weapons. Everyone who became
a member had to swear to refrain from violence and revenge, live a
simple life, use two hours every day for social work, and refrain from
participating in feuds.
31
The Pathans participated in Khudai Khidmat-
gars with the same eagerness that they had previously shown in
bloody fights to protect the family honor.
Khan established training camps for the Servants of God, where
they had parades, physical exercises, and cooperative practical work,
such as cleaning and cooking. The members also had to give their
services to the rest of the population. To keep your word is part of
the Pathan code of honor, and people who had sworn an oath to
remain nonviolent also intended to keep it. The Khudai Khidmatgars
were extremely disciplined. Gandhi was impressed with them, because
it was more difficult for him to make the Hindus—who had a reputa-
tion for being much more peaceful than the Pathans—renounce the
use of violence against the British. Khan repeated time and again that
only patience and cooperation would make it possible for the Pathans
to conquer the British colonial power.
32
Their braveness and steadfast-
ness became an inspiration for the nonviolent resistance in the rest of
India.
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 453
The British were skeptical of the Pathan’s nonviolence and did
what they could to break the nonviolent discipline and humiliate
them. Khan thought that the British were more afraid of a nonviolent
Pathan than a violent one, as when the reactions to the 1930 civil
disobedience campaign were brutal many places in the rest of India, it
was even worse in the North-West Frontier Province. Khan was
convinced that the purpose of the brutality was to provoke a violent
reaction so that the British would get the upper hand, as the British
knew exactly how to react to a violent Pathan rebellion, which they
had repeatedly repressed in the past.
The worst massacre on the Khudai Kidmatgars took place on
April 23, 1930 when about two hundred demonstrators were killed at
the Kissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar. Shortly before that, Gandhi
had started the most important civil disobedience campaign of the
independence struggle, when he finished his Salt March in Gujarat.
This was a campaign against the Salt Tax and the Salt Laws, which
made it illegal for Indians to produce salt themselves. In Peshawar,
most people participated enthusiastically in the illegal production of
salt. On this day in April, Khan gave a speech in Utmanzai where
he encouraged people to participate in the campaign. After that, he
started to move toward Peshawar to repeat the encouragement there,
but the British arrested him on the way. People in Peshawar gathered
in the bazaar for a peaceful protest against the arrest. Soldiers from a
nearby base were sent to Kissa Khwani, and their armored vehicles
struck. Some people died in the attack. After that, the soldiers were
ordered to shoot, and several more people were killed. The demonstra-
tors were willing to go home if the soldiers would withdraw so that
they could collect the dead and wounded, but they were not allowed
to do that. A newspaper, which represented the official British view,
described how the demonstrators during the next hours moved toward
the soldiers one by one and then were shot down. This massacre is
just one example of the excessive use of force by the British against
the Khudai Kidmatgars. At another occasion in August the same year,
seventy people were killed.
33
The British also attempted to provoke a violent reaction by violat-
ing the honor of the Pathans. One way of doing that was by forcing
them to take off their clothes in public. A few weeks after the
massacre in the bazaar, Khudai Kidmatgars offices in Utmanzai were
surrounded by the British force. All members were ordered to get out
and take off their clothes. When they refused, their clothes were
454 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
forcefully removed, and many were beaten unconscious. One by one
they got the same treatment. Not one Khudai Kidmatgar member was
violent against the British, and no one tried to run away. On the
contrary, the British brutality and humiliation made even more people
all over the province join the movement.
GROUNDING THE NOTION OF NONVIOLENCE IN ISLAM AND
PUKHTUNWALI
34
The Khudai Khidmatgar movement is an excellent example of
how a strong culture of nonviolent resistance can be built by integrat-
ing people’s original cultural and religious elements into the nonvio-
lent struggle. Khan personally shared many of Gandhi’s views on
nonviolence. However, he developed his thoughts about nonviolence
and the movement long before he met Gandhi. Whereas Gandhi him-
self found inspiration for his nonviolent principles in Hinduism, the
Khudai Khidmatgar was firmly rooted in both Islam and the tradi-
tional Pathan code of honor, known as ‘‘Pukhtunwali’’ Without this
connection to two important cultural elements, Khan would probably
never have been able to mobilize such a strong movement.
The elements of Islam that Khan draws upon are the concepts of
jihad, martyrs, and struggle against injustice. Like other religions, Islam
and the Koran are subject to many different interpretations and inter-
nal discussions of what it means to be a good Muslim. Islamic discus-
sions of nonviolent struggle frequently start with ‘‘jihad,’’ one of the
most contested concepts within Islam.
35
In the west, ‘‘jihad’’ is often
misleadingly translated as ‘‘holy war’’ and associated with violence.
Although some Muslim scholars preach this version and fundamentalist
followers such as the Taliban commit violence in the name of God and
call it jihad, others argue strongly against this. Asma Afsaruddin writes
that a correct translation of jihad is ‘‘struggle’’ or ‘‘striving’’ and
continues that according to the worldview of the Koran, jihad means
that ‘‘human beings should be engaged constantly in the basic moral
endeavor of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong.’’
36
Jihad is divided into a greater jihad and a lesser jihad. The greater
jihad is the inner struggle to become a good, devout Muslim to
conquer one’s own weaknesses, while the lesser jihad is the struggle
against external enemies. According to Satha-Anand, there is nothing
in the Koran which requires the lesser jihad to be violent, it can just
as well be a nonviolent struggle against injustice.
37
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 455
Mukulika Banerjee has carried out extensive research on the
Khudai Kidmatgars, which is presented in the book The Pathan
Unarmed. Her interviewees, ‘‘ordinary’’ members of the movement,
frequently referred to the concept of ‘‘jihad’’—and they meant both
the lesser and the greater jihad. To them, the lesser jihad was their
nonviolent struggle against the unjust colonial power. The greater
jihad was their inner development to become good Khudai Khidmat-
gar ‘‘soldiers’’ with patience, self-restraint, and determination to serve
their community.
Khudai Khidmatgar’s participants saw their struggle as closely
connected to Islam. As one of the informants in Banerjee’s book
states, ‘‘Badshah Khan told us that Allah does not answer the prayers
of people in a ghulam [bonded, enslaved] land and that we must
therefore free ourselves.’’
38
The concept of martyrdom is linked to the concept of jihad, and
the members of Khudai Khidmatgar used this expression to describe
their own experiences in the movement. In their stories, jihad is con-
nected to the sacrifice and suffering that one underwent during the
British repression. Khan himself is described as a martyr by other
members owing to the many years he spent in prison and his courage
in standing up against injustice. Joining the movement meant being
prepared to risk death, and Khan stressed that dying fighting the Brit-
ish nonviolently would mean giving your life to a great cause.
In earlier times, martyrdom and related concepts like ‘‘ghazi’’
were used to describe people who died as soldiers when fighting,
sword in hand, to establish Islam as a religion. However, the way that
the Khudai Khidmatgar used the concept came to mean anyone who
made a sacrifice in the fight. This way, Khan gave traditional Islamic
words and concepts a new meaning in the nonviolent struggle.
In addition to grounding nonviolence in the Pathan’s faith, Khan
also made clear connections to the traditional Pathan cultural code of
honor called pukhtunwali, which was just as important to Pathans as
Islam. Honor and freedom are strong elements of Pathan culture, and
Khan challenged his people to take their own culture seriously. Tradi-
tionally, you could only be a Pathan if you were a free man. Those
who did not live an independent life serving others were not consid-
ered members of the tribe. Khan raised the question how they could
be truly honorable men as long as they were enslaved by the British.
This was a serious provocation, and had he been a leader with less
support, this would have been an insult that could have caused a
456 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
major feud. However, many Pathans accepted Khan’s challenge and
joined the Khudai Khidmatgar. In his struggle to make the Pathans
put aside their feuds (a condition for becoming a member), he
appealed to their sense of honor toward their forefathers whose land
had been stolen by the British. Khan often said that the Khudai Khid-
matgar was open to anyone except cowards; so implicitly, he said that
those who continued feuding were cowards. But Khan did not use all
aspects of pukhtunwali. The isolation of women (purdah) is one part
of the culture that he challenged. Women in his own family became
active members of the movement and led by example.
Although violent feuds over violated honor were frequent, the tra-
ditional code of honor does not necessarily mean that honor can only
be restored through violent revenge killing. Economic domination or
social humiliation also constituted acceptable ways of restoring honor.
Therefore, humiliating the British by forcing them to leave India with
nonviolent methods was a way of restoring the honor of the forefa-
thers. It was especially satisfying for the Khudai Khidmatgar to make
the British, who called themselves civilized, lose their temper in front
of nonviolent Pathans, the presumed barbaric and uncivilized people.
In pukhtunwali, honor is also associated with courage, and willingness
to show great courage is another way of restoring honor. By standing
up to the British with nonviolent methods, the Khudai Khidmatgars
also asserted their own dignity.
Khan also drew on the traditional concepts of masculinity and
manliness. But again, he used these in unique ways, so that masculin-
ity was not connected to physical strength. Instead, the notion was
associated with self-restraint and forgiveness of the enemy. Nonviolent
methods did not require physical strength, so women and children
could participate in the struggle if they had the inner strength and
self-discipline. This focus on self-restraint was a good fit with the
tradition. Honor killing was only accepted when certain rules were
followed, which meant that blind anger would not restore honor.
Khan’s interpretation of the various concepts was not accepted
instantly. It took time to develop a strong nonviolent movement in the
province. Pukhtunwali and Islam did not play a major role in the
Khudai Khidmatgar, and some members and supporters were Hindus
and Sikhs. But what Khan did was to consistently show his potential
followers that nonviolence and civil disobedience did not conflict with
Islam and pukhtunwali. Khan consciously avoided supporting a
specific branch of Islam, as that could have caused splits and conflicts
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 457
within the movement. In its constructive program, the movement
mainly focused on social developments that were not connected to
religious issues.
Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgars achieved a lot in the 1930s.
However, because they had been part of Gandhi’s movement for inde-
pendence and did not support Pakistian’s separation from India, they
were not considered heroes in Pakistan. When Banerjee did her
research in the 1990s, the former Khudai Khidmatgars whom she met
were old men who had been marginalized and whose stories were
largely forgotten. Although Khan’s remodeling of Islam and pustunw-
ali had a huge impact at the time and continued to have for the
individuals who took part in the struggle, they have not had a
permanent influence on Pathan culture in the Province.
In this section, we have seen how traditional cultural values or
practices (e.g., ‘‘mothers’’ or an ‘‘honor culture’’) might be radically
reinterpreted and remodeled by a nonviolent action movement. The
ability to do this maneuver builds on activists’ knowledge of the
culture and their creative use of it. The remodeling of an apolitical
motherhood into an oppositional one is indeed a fundamental cultural
change. But both identities build on the mother as the caretaker and
protector of her children, one positioned in the private space of
families and the other in the public space of politics. Transforming a
traditionally violent honor culture into a nonviolent honor culture
demands extensive cultural work. Therefore, the work of the Khudai
Kidmatgars involved trainings, discipline, and extensive reinterpreta-
tions of traditional understandings of honor and the Koran.
Sometimes, such reinterpretation and remodeling is so fundamental
and so encompassing that we get something that is possible to describe
as a ‘‘new’’ culture: a nonviolent movement culture. A movement
culture is constructed by a movement and is a culture that articulates
the values and ideas of that movement.
CREATING A NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT CULTURE
In this section, we will give an example of how the landless move-
ment Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil
has managed to create an alternative and nonviolent culture.
39
They
have not merely borrowed existing symbols and elements from the
dominant culture; nor are they remodeling of ‘‘old’’ culture in the
spirit of nonviolence as we have seen with the Mothers from Plaza
458 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
de Mayo and the Khudai Khidmatgars, although both of these are also
happening here. They systematically reconstructed their own form of
culture, a movement culture that builds on the events and values of
the movement’s history.
MST: THE LANDLESS MOVEMENT OF BRAZIL
40
In ‘‘Rethinking Nonviolent Action and Contentious Politics,’’ Sean
Chabot and Stellan Vinthagen have argued that the peasant-based and
peasant-led MST has developed a new nonviolent action repertoire for
challenging the status quo in Brazil, with unique action forms, organi-
zational styles, and discursive language. It has done so by constructing
and sustaining its own movement culture based on the history of rural
struggle in Brazil, what we argue is a nonviolent movement culture.
41
The MST emerged in 1984 to coordinate local struggles for
agrarian reform and land redistribution that had been taking place
throughout Brazil since 1978. These local struggles sought to take
advantage of the Land Statute in Brazil’s Constitution, which stipu-
lates that land must fulfill a ‘‘social function.’’ Inspired by this Land
Statute, the MST adopted the slogan ‘‘land for those who work it’’
and established an organizational structure aimed at achieving three
major goals: providing impoverished landless families with agricultural
property by occupying unused land; forcing the political system to
implement agrarian reform enabling sustainable rural development;
and instigating social justice and dignity for all Brazilians.
42
During its existence, the MST has organized approximately
350,000 (out of four million) landless families in twenty-three of the
twenty-seven states of Brazil. In total, the land liberated constitutes an
area equal to that of Cuba. This bottom-up nonviolent revolutionary
struggle, centered on the well-prepared land occupations, has forced
the federal government to pass a number of political and legislative
reforms. The MST’s ambition is nothing less than to create an alterna-
tive development model for Brazil and to let occupied or liberated
land for collective use, articulated as a ‘‘new Brazil.’’
MST’s most significant and enduring accomplishment has been
the formation of a nonviolent movement culture, which provides
peasant activists with a sense of hope, solidarity, pride, and self-
confidence—not only when the social-political context is favorable,
but also when it is hostile. As one of the directors, Joa
˜o Pedro Ste-
dile, noted:
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 459
[T]he greatest success is the dignity the Sem Terra farmers have
won for themselves. They can walk with their heads held high,
with a sense of self-respect. They know what they’re fighting
for.
43
Land occupations are not just an effective tactic or strategy; they
constitute a new way of life aimed at creating peaceful and sustainable
alternatives to the modern Brazil, one of the most unequal countries
in the world, with millions who starve, despite impressive national
economic growth.
MST’s culture consists of several interrelated and partly overlap-
ping dimensions. Occupied land provides settlers not only with eco-
nomic resources and opportunities, but also with their own cultural
spaces for setting up autonomous institutions, exchanging oppositional
ideas, and sustaining a collective identity. In the temporary camps,
landless families grow crops like rice, potatoes, and beans to feed
themselves; they build schools, medical clinics, churches, and meeting
halls to form their own self-sufficient communities. In the ‘‘agro-
towns,’’ moreover, they develop small-scale farm industries and sell
the surplus of agricultural products through a network of coopera-
tives. Through these initiatives, members share relevant information,
learn practical skills, and socialize newcomers.
44
These spaces also
allow activists to forge emotional bonds by telling stories of struggles
and accomplishments. As a reaction to a massacre on April 17, 1996,
in Eldorado dos Carajas, when nineteen MST activists were killed and
another sixty-nine wounded, the MST organized the March to Brası
´lia
on the first anniversary of the massacre. The March became a testa-
ment to the peacefulness, bravery, and hope among its members.
45
The MST employs various symbols and rituals to preserve and
reinforce the nonviolent movement culture created in free spaces and
passed along through stories. For example, all the plastic tents on the
occupied land are black, while most MST activists wear red T-shirts,
insignias, and caps and carry red banners and flags. In the front of
marches, there is often a large wooden crucifix. Through early and
important inspiration from Christian liberation theology, many MST
activists subscribe to an understanding very different to the established
Catholic Church in Brazil. In this respect, we can see how a religious
reinterpretation is utilized for the purpose of the movement, and how
such a religious understanding motivates activism within MST, similar
to what we already have seen in the example of Khudai Khidmatgar.
460 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
Another important usage of symbols within the MST movement is
a site that operates as the central monument of the movement, where
nineteen mutilated nut trees (castanheira) were planted in the shape of
Brazil, with sixty-nine stones painted blood red placed below the tree
trunks. The trees (which are a common sight throughout the country)
stand for the victims of the Eldorado dos Carajas massacre in 1996,
while the stones represent the wounded. When participating in official
acts, training sessions, or collective gatherings, participants wave the
MST ‘‘national flag’’ (with a woman and a man with a raised
machete, pictured on a map of Brazil), sing the MST anthem and
other songs of struggle to generate enthusiasm and optimism. As a
result of the photograph exhibitions of the world famous Sebastia
˜o
Salgado, these characteristic symbols and rituals are now widely
known.
46
One key ritual element is the novel synthesis of Christian, native,
and movement elements that together create a unique form of ritual:
the Mı
´stica. At the beginning and end of MST gatherings, activists
often use this original ritual. At the end of one regional gathering, for
example, after having elected a new leadership to replace the one who
was murdered, the Mı
´stica consisted of all activists gathering in dark-
ness in front of several sparsely lit coffins and funeral music. After a
while, light arose, more lively music was played, and children carrying
flowers started to dance among the coffins. Then, at a given moment,
the lids of the coffins were lifted and up arose the living and newly
elected leadership. During such ritual forms as the Mı
´stica, the pain,
history, and power of MST are enacted in a way that facilitates feel-
ings of purpose, emotional community, and belonging.
MST’s nonviolent movement culture helps distinguish between
members and nonmembers, friends and foes, ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them,’’ by
establishing and redrawing group boundaries. In MST, people become
members through their deeds. As Stedile points out:
There is no membership, no cards, and it’s not enough just to
declare that one wants to be in the MST. The only way to join is
to take part in one of the land occupations, to be active on the
ground. That’s how we get members…. We wanted to get away
from party or union-style bureaucracy—filling in forms, and sub-
scription fees. When your base is poor, illiterate farmers, you
have to develop ways of going about things that are as open as
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 461
possible, drawing people in rather than putting up barriers or
bureaucratic hiccups.
47
In this way, nonviolent direct action is a key mechanism of mem-
bership and mobilization, making the movement culture resistant to
both stagnation and political infiltration, two recurrent problems when
movements grow and get old. Although the MST accepts the support
of sympathetic organizations like the Workers’ Party (PT) and the
Catholic Church’s Pastoral Commission on Land—Commissa
˜o
Pastoral da Terra (CPT)—its spokespersons insist on remaining an
autonomous movement and initiating independent campaigns. During
the presidency of Lula from PT, MST even increased its nonviolent
resistance.
Their choice of keeping the nonviolent direct action of land
occupation as the core of the movement is essential. While group
boundaries contribute to the formation, reproduction, and modifica-
tion of collective identity, the MST’s interpretive framing gives the
landless peasants ideological and strategic direction. The main chal-
lenge for the MST is to simultaneously dramatize the injustice of land
distribution in Brazil to wider audiences, persuade governmental
institutions to promote agrarian reform, accentuate the agency and
(potential) efficacy of landless peasants, gain support for its vision of
an alternative society, and motivate bystanders to get involved in
peaceful land occupations and join the movement. That is done
through land occupations, as they show the existence of land, despite
hunger, and the agency of the landless themselves, despite repression,
and they show success: the (future) ownership of land. Thus, land
occupation frames the problem, the agents, and the solution, literally.
To win this communicative battle with government officials and the
mainstream media, spokespersons argue that the MST’s campaigns not
only confirm an old (and admirable) Brazilian tradition of nonviolent
action against repression and exploitation, but also highlight the need
for fundamental transformation of Brazil’s dominant culture and polit-
ical system. Furthermore, by creating and applying a nonviolent action
frame, leading organizers expand the scope of the movement without
losing sight of its original goals—redistribution of land, agrarian
reform, and social justice based on everyday realities—or betraying
the interests of its social base, the landless peasants in Brazil.
48
Based on its nonviolent movement culture, the MST has devel-
oped an innovative nonviolent action repertoire for engaging in land
462 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
occupations. Land occupations not only constitute the primary form
of action, but also inspire an organizational style characterized by
decentralization, voluntarism, accountability, and ‘‘institutionalization
without bureaucratization.’’
49
Similarly, MST’s discursive language
underlines the movement’s reliance on nonviolent direct action, practi-
cal problem solving, economic self-sufficiency, and political education
rather than abstract theories, electoral mechanisms, external funding,
or lobbying. Therefore, even when the MST suffered numerous
setbacks during the early 1990s, its principal slogan always remained:
‘‘Occupy, Resist, Produce.’’
50
From the beginning, the flexible, multi-
faceted, and continuously evolving nonviolent action repertoire has
enabled as well as constrained the choice of specific tactics and their
application in practice. It also illustrates it is wrong to underestimate
the potential role of movement culture in transforming contentious
repertoires.
CONCLUSION
For nonviolent movements working for social change, there is no
possibility of ignoring culture. We have shown how people’s under-
standing of the world—that is their practices, meanings, and
values—strongly influences both their possibilities and limitations
when pursuing a nonviolent struggle. A movement aiming for success
needs to work with a dominant culture as far as possible and incorpo-
rate some elements of that culture that people recognize, rather than
simply fight against everything in the dominant culture. We found
many examples of the borrowing and creative use of existing powerful
symbols and cultural elements. However, it was a bigger challenge to
find movements that have remodeled ‘‘old’’ culture in the spirit of
nonviolent resistance. Even rarer are cases of the replacement of the
old with a nonviolent movement culture.
To challenge the existing, dominant, hegemonic forms of culture,
it is necessary to first master them, know how they work and are
expressed. If not, the second step becomes difficult: To reconstruct
them, to adjust, and to make another use of them. Thus, cultural
resistance demands intimate familiarity with the dominant culture.
Remodeling is difficult, maybe even impossible, without internal
knowledge of that which needs to be renewed.
However, also when activists know their dominant culture, the
actual nonviolent use or reconstruction of that culture is difficult. We
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 463
need to understand it as a creative work. The kinds of extensive elabo-
ration and experimentation that make nonviolent cultural resistance
possible have been illustrated through the cases discussed here.
51
Acti-
vists are faced with the challenge to be creative enough to find the
right symbols and use them in a new way at the right situation. Acti-
vists must also strike a cultural balance and not become too radical in
their new ways of doing things, as that might alienate potential sup-
porters and allies or, in the worst case, make the movement absurd
and unintelligible.
In many cases, it is necessary to distance oneself from established
cultural ‘‘truths’’ in order to end up with a culture that incorporates
nonviolence—for example, Khan wanted to show that nonviolence was
not inconsistent with Islam and pukhtunwali. By strengthening some
aspects of these two ideas, he also rejected the idea that violence was
necessary to create change. Nonviolent resistance means that both ideas
about nonviolence and ideas about resistance have to be present at the
same time. The Pathans did indeed believe that resistance was possible
(and necessary); for Khan the challenge was to make it nonviolent.
In other cases, it will be necessary to reject ideas that resistance is
not possible or desirable. For many subordinate groups, any kind of
resistance seems impossible. In many places where women are
considered subordinate, the idea that women can create changes for
themselves needs to be nurtured. Furthermore, in cultures where the
subordinates themselves have come to believe that they are of less
value than other human beings and internalized these ideas, empower-
ment is necessary. This is the case of the Dalits (also known as
‘untouchables’) in the caste system in South Asia. Upper caste Hindus
have oppressed Dalits for thousands of years, to a degree that has
made ideas about resistance seem impossible to many. Some Dalits
will themselves say that only by doing what they are supposed to do
as Dalits will they end up in a better position in the next life.
However, many decades of work for Dalit rights have created some
cultural changes.
Kubik’s idea of a continuum that varies from reinvention over
remodeling to remaining with the old can help us understand more
about cultural change and resistance. However, many questions
remain unanswered and should be the subject of further research.
1. How deep and drastic does change have to go in order to be
effective? In the case of the Khudai Khidmatgars, the change
464 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
was profound for the individuals who participated in the
struggle, and their participation influenced them for the rest of
their lives. But in spite of their success, other forces working
against them were so strong that their experience became
marginalized and, by now, it is hard to find any traces of it in
society at large. They disappeared out of the history books. At
the moment, the MST is still growing both in terms of
numbers, geography, international attention and influence on
Brazilian politics, but it remains to be seen to how far the new
nonviolent movement culture is able to change mainstream
Brazilian culture and for how long this change will last. Just as
in Pakistan, many forces are pulling in the opposite direction.
2. Cultural context matters, but how and what aspects of that
context? There are clear differences between the cultures of
Tibet and Sweden or in the countryside of Brazil and Pakistan,
but what aspects of these cultures matter for nonviolent
conflicts? Is it religion, mythology, popular music,
Hollywood ⁄Bollywood images and stories, or something else?
Additionally, all of these ‘‘cultures’’ have their own internal
subcultures or cultural differences. How will they matter?
3. To what degree is culture the leaders’ ideas and attempts of
‘‘cynical manipulation,’’ as opposed to cultural expressions
that arise spontaneously from people? Leaders can try to
manipulate with cultural symbols and use them as tools for
creating change. But we doubt that they will be very successful
if they do not truly believe in their own ideas. The risk of
backfire is enormous for any leader who is believed to have
done this. Participants within a movement will turn their back
on such leaders, and support is likely to be withdrawn for
movements thought to have falsely manipulated culture.
Leaders like Khan and Gandhi are themselves deeply situated
in their respective cultures. They find inspiration in part of the
culture and show that important local values are not
contradicting nonviolence.
NOTES
We would like to thank our colleagues in the Nordic Nonviolence Study
Seminar (Nornons), Henrik Frykberg and Jo
¨rgen Johansen, for valuable
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 465
comments and discussions about nonviolence and culture. We also thank
Minoo Koefoed, Brian Martin, Kirsti Rawstron, our anonymous reviewers as
well as the editor of Peace & Change for helpful comments. Stellan Vinthagen
did this research with support from the Swedish Research Council
(Vetenskapsra
˚det) within the program Globalization of Resistance 2011–2015
(No. HS-2010-54). See http://www.resistancestudies.org.
1. Emily Smith and Katie Glaeser, ‘‘Amid Egypt protests, prayer,’’ CNN,
Jan 28, 2011, picture 3, http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/28/amid-egypt-
protests-prayer/. Accessed March 14, 2012.
2. James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and
Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997),
9.
3. Alberto Melucci, John Keane, and Paul Mier, Nomads of the
Present:Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society
(London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989); Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes:
Collective Action in the Information Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
4. John Lofland, Polite Protesters: the American Peace Movement of the
1980s (Syracuse University Press, 1993).
5. John Foran, Taking Power: on the Origins of Third World Revolutions
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 60, 69.
6. Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, The Social Movements Reader:
Cases and Concepts (Malden, Massachusetts; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003); Hank
Johnston and Bert Klandermans, Social Movements and Culture (University of
Minnesota Press, 1995); Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, ‘‘Framing
Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,’’ in Annual
Review of Sociology Vol. 26, No. 1 (2000): 611–639.
7. Gene Sharp and Joshua Paulson, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th
Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Boston: Extending Horizons
Books, 2005); Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter
Sargent Publisher, 1973).
8. Robert L. Helvey, On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking about
The Fundamentals (Boston: The Albert Einstein Foundation, 2004), 82, Chap. 8.
9. Barbara Leslie Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution:
Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991).
10. Roland Bleiker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics
(Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Sean
Chabot, ‘‘Crossing the Great Divide: The Gandhian Repertoire’s Transnational
Diffusion to the American Civil Rights Movement’’ (University of Amsterdam,
466 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
2003); Richard Gabriel Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); David Jefferess, Postcolonial Resistance:
Culture, Liberation and Transformation (Toronto; London: University of
Toronto Press, 2008).
11. Jeffrey C. Alexander, et al., Kulturell Sociologi: Program, Teori och
Praktik (Go
¨teborg: Daidalos, 2011).
12. Michael Payne, ‘‘Introduction: Some Versions of Cultural and Critical
Theory,’’ in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, ed. Michael Payne
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 1–12; Ann Swidler, ‘‘Cultural Power
and Social Movements,’’ in Social Movements and Culture, ed. Hank Johnston
and Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota
Press, 1995).
13. See for example: Jefferess, Postcolonial Resistance: Culture,
Liberation and Transformation.; Sarah Joseph, Interrogating Culture: Critical
Perspectives on Contemporary Social Theory (New Delhi; Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, 1998); Ken Gelder, The Subcultures Reader, 2nd edn.
(London; New York: Routledge, 2005). See pp. 46-59, 73-4, 171-176 for
‘‘subculture’’, and 137-8, 471-2, 575-7 for ‘‘counterculture’’ (here ‘‘alternative
culture’’ refers to ‘‘counterculture’’).
14. Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, Encyclopedia of Social and
Cultural Anthropology (London: Routledge, 2002),136–143; Michael
Carrithers, ‘‘Culture,’’ in The Dictionary of Anthropology, ed. Thomas J.
Barfield (Oxford; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1997), 98–101.
15. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: on the Theory of Action
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).
16. Michael Carrithers, 98; Ann Swidler, ‘‘Culture in Action: Symbols
and Strategies,’’ in American Sociological Review Vol. 51, No. 2 (1986): 273–
286.
17. Zygmunt Bauman, Culture as Praxis, New edn. (London: SAGE,
1999).
18. What we here call ‘‘alternative culture’’ is sometimes called
‘‘subculture’’ or ‘‘counterculture’’ Gelder, The Subcultures Reader. For the
purpose of this article, it is not necessary to make a clear difference between
these different concepts. We are aware that it is a simplification to speak of
just one dominant culture and one alternative one, as in reality there are of
course many different versions. The possible combinations of dominant and
alternative cultures (in plural) depend on the context, where sometimes we
also find counter-movements with their form of counterculture to the
alternative culture, etc. As this is a limited study, we do not see the need to
expand on this complexity of cultural struggles.
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 467
19. Geertz quoted in Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols Against the
Symbols of Power: the Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in
Poland (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1994), 244.
20. Kubik, Power of Symbols.
21. Ibid, 259 (emphasis in original).
22. Stellan Vinthagen, ‘‘Nonviolent Movements and Management of
Power,’’ in Gandhi Marg Vol. 22, No. 2 (2000): 133–153.
23. Jason MacLeod, ‘‘Toward a new Papua: Civil Resistance, Framing,
and Identity in West Papua,’’ in Rediscovering Nonviolent History: Civil
Resistance Beneath Eulogized Violence, ed. Maciej Bartkowski (Palgrave,
Forthcoming), 1.
24. Bo Wirmark, The Buddhists in Vietnam: an Alternative View of the
War (Brussels: War Registers’ International, 1974), 23.
25. Hanh Nha
ˆt, Vietnam: the Lotus in the Sea of Fire, 1. British ed.
(London: S.C.M. Press, 1967), 118–119.
26. ‘‘Santa’ protests Israeli wall in Bil’in,’’ Ma’an News Agency, http://
www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=249567. Accessed March 14,
2012. This 2009 movie describes how a tribe successfully fights against and
resists their colonizers.
27. This campaign was done in support of the tribal group Dongria
Konds in Orissa, India, that were threatened by mining of their land by the
corporation Vedanta Resources. It was campaigners from Foil Vedanta and
Survival International that acted in New Delhi, see Hasan Suroor, ‘‘‘Avatar’
actors join protest in support of Orissa tribals,’’ The Hindu, http://
www.thehindu.com/news/national/article538594.ece. Accessed March 14,
2012.
28. For detailed considerations about the number of disappeared, see
Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: the Mothers of
the Plaza de Mayo, Latin American Silhouettes (Wilmington, Delaware:
Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994), 31.
29. Where nothing else is mentioned, the information about Kahn,
Khudai Khidmatgars and North West Frontier Province is taken from Eknath
Easwaran, A Man to Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan, Nonviolent
Soldier of Islam (Petaluma, California: Nilgiri Press, 1984).
30. We have chosen to follow the lead of Mukulika Banerjee and use the
anglophone spelling ‘‘Pathan’’ for this people. Other languages refer to them
as Pukhtun, Pakhtun and Pashtun. Likewise, we also spell Abdul Gaffar Khan
the way she does, rather than Ghaffar.
468 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
31. Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition & Memory in
the North West Frontier (Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American
Research Press, 2000), 81.
32. Ibid., 79–80.
33. Ibid., 59.
34. Ibid., 145–166. The author uses ‘‘Pukhtunwali’’. However also
‘‘Pushtunwali’’ is a commonly used concept.
35. Chaiwat Satha-Anand, ‘‘The Nonviolent Crescent: Eight Theses on
Muslim Nonviolent Action,’’ in Arab Nonviolent Political Struggle in the
Middle East, eds. Ralph Crow, Philip Grant, and Saad Eddin Ibrahim
(Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers, 1990).
36. Asma Afsaruddin, ‘‘Recovering the Early Semantic Purview of Jihad
and Martyrdom,’’ in Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in
Islam, ed. Qamar-ul Huda (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace
Press, 2010), 41.
37. Satha-Anand, ‘‘The Nonviolent Crescent: Eight Theses on Muslim
Nonviolent Action.’’
38. Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition & Memory in the North
West Frontier: 149.
39. We prefer to talk about ‘‘movement culture,’’ rather than
‘‘prefigurative community’’ (Epstein 2002), since our point is that, at least in
the case of MST, it is an attempt to create a ‘‘culture’’ not just something that
resemble or might become a culture.
40. This section on MST draws strongly on Sean Chabot and Stellan
Vinthagen, ‘‘Rethinking Nonviolent Action and Contentious Politics: Political
Cultures of Nonviolent Opposition in the Indian Independence Movement and
Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement,’’ Research in Social Movements,
Conflicts and Change 27 (2007).
41. J. P. Stedile, ‘‘Landless Battalions—The Sem Terra Movement of
Brazil,’’ in New Left Review, No. 15 (2002): 17. If we by ‘‘nonviolence’’ refer
to those that apply systematic resistance acts against domination but de facto
do not apply a strategy of deadly force, irrespective of how they themselves
term their struggle, and irrespective of the ideology that guides their activities,
MST is, in fact, a ‘‘nonviolent movement,’’ creating a ‘‘nonviolent culture.’’
42. Dawn Plummer and Betsy Ranum, ‘‘Brazil’s Landless Workers
Movement,’’ in Social Policy Vol. 33, No. 1 (2002): 19.
43. Stedile, 11.
44. Lucas Kintto, ‘‘And the Meek Shall Occupy the Earth,’’ in The
Courier Unesco, Vol. 54, No.1 (January (2001): 24–26; Stellan Vinthagen, ‘‘A
Movement Culture of Nonviolent Action,’’ (Lund: University of Lund, 2003).
Nonviolent Resistance and Culture 469
45. Plummer and Ranum, ‘‘Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement,’’ 14–
15.
46. Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras, ‘‘The Social Dynamics of Brazil’s
Rural Landless Workers’ Movement: Ten Hypotheses on Successful
Leadership,’’ in Canadian Review of Sociology ⁄Revue Canadienne de
Sociologie Vol. 39, No. 1 (2002): 90; Dan Baron Cohen, ‘‘Beyond the
Barricade,’’ Issue 338, New Internationalist, September 5 2001.
47. Stedile, 6.
48. Veltmeyer and Petras, ‘‘The Social Dynamics of Brazil’s Rural
Landless Workers’ Movement: Ten Hypotheses on Successful Leadership,’’ 88–
93.
49. Ibid., 93.
50. Stedile, 13.
51. Chabot; Fox.
470 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2012
