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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND POLITICAL AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
Social Movements and Social Transformation: Steps Towards
Understanding the Challenges and Breakthroughs of Social Change
Winnifred R. Louis
University of Queensland
Cristina Jayme Montiel
Ateneo de Manila University
This special issue explores the role of social movements in bringing about, or failing to bring about, political
and social transformation. We have included articles that examine this topic broadly, from a wide range of
perspectives with psychology as a central theme. The focus includes the relationship among social move-
ments, radicalization, and nonviolence or violence. And most particularly, this Special Issue explores the
bidirectional association between social movements and what Galtung (1969) has called direct, cultural, and
structural violence. In this Introduction, we review the questions of interest and the broad aims of the Special
Issue, as well as the role of each selected article, and key achievements and limitations.
Keywords: social transformation, social change, social movements, activism, peace
As guest editors, we first identified a broad theme, understand-
ing the relationship between social movements and social trans-
formation, with five specific research questions of interest center-
ing on the relationships between collective action, structural
violence, direct violence, and peace. Here, we review each of the
articles to provide a summary and appreciation individually, in rela-
tion to these questions, before closing with some lessons and gaps.
Transformation of Structural Violence
by Social Movements
The central question asked in this special issue is, “How do
social movements or collective actors transform structurally vio-
lent societies?” The article that addresses this theme most directly
is Ben David and Rubel-Lifschitz’s (2018) “Practice the change
you want to see in the world: Transformative practices of social
movements in Israel.” The authors present three case studies of
social movements that brought about political and social transfor-
mation in Israel, drawn from the environmental, lesbian/gay/bi-
sexual/transgender, and religious contexts. Using qualitative meth-
ods, the authors followed each group and documented the means
by which activists overcame structural, cultural, and direct vio-
lence.
Three main practices are described in depth: adopting a complex
view of identities (rejecting simple binaries); commitment to a
moral compass (resisting retaliation in the face of state or opponent
violence); and the initiation of small and symbolic acts, timed and
leveraged to build trust and attract reciprocation. By these three
means and others, Ben David and Rubel-Lifschitz compellingly
propose, the social movements challenged the violent ground rules
of each conflict situation, and promoted deep cultural and struc-
tural transformation. The article is inspiring, and a wonderful way
to open the special issue.
Challenging Cultural Violence, Changing the
Valorization of Violent Transformations
Another core question invited by the special issue is, “How do
social movements challenge or reinforce cultural violence?” Fer-
Editor’s Note. Continue the conversation by submitting your comments
and questions about this article/book review to PeacePsychology.org/
peaceconflict. (The Editor of PeacePsychology.org reserves the right to
exclude material that fails to contribute to constructive discussion.)
WINNIFRED R. LOUIS, holds a PhD. she is a Professor in Psychology at
the University of Queensland. Her research interests focus on the influence
of identity and norms on social decision-making. She has studied this broad
topic in contexts from political activism to peace psychology to health and
the environment.
CRISTINA JAYME MONTIEL, is a professor of peace/political psychology
and has been teaching at the Ateneo de Manila University for more than 40
years. She received the 2010 Ralph White Lifetime Achievement Award
from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Peace Psy-
chology. In 2016, she was recognized by the Psychological Association of
the Philippines as their Outstanding Psychologist. Her research publica-
tions include topics related to peace psychology in Asia, Mindanao peace-
building, and a psychology of democratic transitions. She has also been a
consultant for the Philippine government’s Commission on Human Rights,
and the Office of the Presidential Adviser for the Peace Process.
THE EDITORS THANK the commentary writers for providing their insights
and working to such tight timelines.
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be addressed to
Winnifred R. Louis, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St.
Lucia, Queensland 4067, Australia or to Cristina Jayme Montiel, Depart-
ment of Psychology, Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue,
Loyola Heights 1108 Quezon City, Philippines. E-mail: w.louis@psy
.uq.edu.au or cmontiel@ateneo.edu
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2018, Vol. 24, No. 1, 3–9 1078-1919/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000309
3
guson, McDaid, and McAuley (2018) directly take up this question
in their fascinating piece, “Social movements, structural violence
and conflict transformation in Northern Ireland: The role of Loy-
alist Paramilitaries.” The authors identify five conflict transforma-
tion challenges addressed by actors in a structurally violent society
in initiating and following through on a transition toward peace,
and discuss how each challenge was met in the Loyalist context.
The challenges were (a) de-mythologizing the conflict, in the sense
of stepping back from an understanding that it is inevitable and
archetypal—a prerequisite for other steps in the transition toward
peace; (b) stopping direct violence itself (making the decision as a
group to cease physical attacks); (c) resisting pressure from group
members and others to maintain the use of violence (both in the
process of developing the peace, and in the aftermath); (d) devel-
oping a robust activist identity whereby strong norms confirmed
that political challenges related to structural violence and inequal-
ity would be confronted through nonviolent means; and (e) devel-
oping a sense of societal progress in relation to the Loyalists’
former republican enemies. Through their insightful analysis, Fer-
guson and colleagues help us to understand how and why violent
campaigns are brought to an end: the specific group dynamics that
pose barriers, and the means that can help actors to overcome the
obstacles.
A point that is particularly striking in this piece is the distinction
between peace-building and counterradicalization or deradicaliza-
tion. The authors make a strong argument that it is through the
involvement of former violent group members in the peace/polit-
ical process that the process retained credibility and political
direction. The violent actors’ experience of violence, and moral
authority as previous perpetrators of violence, as warriors, was
important in the transition to peace. It allowed their conviction that
the Loyalists’ aims must be pursued through nonviolent, political
means to be persuasive. Their involvement and authority were
necessary to moderate the passion of new militant youth members,
so that the movement could remain committed to the peace pro-
cess. In this sense, the authors argue, a strategy of deradicalization
that involves persuading members of radical groups to leave the
group as they become disillusioned with violence may actually
retard the development of peace. Peace requires the group to
embrace an alternative to violence—a commitment to radical po-
litical action, which is necessary for transformation to occur. The
people who can best sell this message to new warriors are past
veterans of the conflict who remain within the group and attempt
to sway its direction— or so Ferguson and colleagues argue.
Appraisals of Violence by the State
and Antistate Movements
Another pair of questions posed in the call for articles were
“How do collective actors respond to direct violence by the state?
and “How does the state respond to direct violence by collective
actors?” Two articles, by Soares and colleagues and by Kiguwa
and Ally, directly address these questions.
In their article, “Public Protest and Police Violence: Moral
disengagement and its role in police repression of public demon-
strations in Portugal,” Soares, Barbosa, Matos, and Mendes (2018)
examine both citizens and police perspectives—a valuable trian-
gulation, and more broadly, a rarity in peace psychology in study-
ing the perspective of state actors, which can only help to illumi-
nate the dynamics of interest. Specifically, Soares and colleagues
examine repression by the police of protestors during antiausterity
demonstrations, from the point of view of each party. Police who
had personally acted to disperse protesters were sampled in semi-
structured interviews, alongside a diverse group of citizens re-
cruited on a convenience basis.
The authors find that the same moral values were cited by both
citizens and police to justify police violence, including police
officers’ rights to self-defense; their duty to defend others; and
their duty to protect public order. Both groups also tended to reject
violence against protesters for “good” causes (e.g., workers) com-
pared to “bad” ones (e.g., neo-Nazis). However, compared to
citizens, police were more likely to displace blame to higher
authorities who gave the commands for violence, as well as to
dehumanize protesters and blame them for making the violence
necessary. In the police accounts, the delivery of force was occa-
sioned by protestor transgressions and preceded by negotiations
and warnings. The protesters’ failure to respond to negotiations
and disperse in the face of warnings was held to justify the
violence that ensued. Two key points of contention were the
definition of proportional force (generally greater force was justi-
fiable for police than for citizens) and the relative priority of the
“right to protest.”
The right to protest was subordinated in police accounts to other
values and duties, but seen as trumping other concerns by many
citizens, particularly in reference to the glaring injustices and
structural violence that the protest was designed to address. Some
citizens also voiced the view that if the state were unjust, the police
had a duty to disobey and confront the state on behalf of citizens,
a view that was not expressed by any serving officer. Similarly,
police referenced past incidents in which officers were injured as
justification for violence in present incidents, which citizens did
not. These appraisals highlight how narratives of past direct vio-
lence and structural violence perpetuate and promote the valoriza-
tion of current violence: a grim lesson continually being relearned.
A related piece by Kiguwa and Ally (2018) also highlights how
episodic violence by protesters and police is constructed in a way
that reinforces or challenges structural violence. In the article,
“Speaking violence: Discursive analysis of student protests in
South Africa in an online discussion forum,” Kiguwa and Ally
examine public responses to violence by students and by the state
in the “Fees Must Fall” social movement (a movement protesting
fee increases at South African universities). The authors analyze
online responses to the police shooting of a student leader who was
negotiating between police and protesters and who was, at the time
of the shooting, unarmed, with her arms raised, and her back to the
police.
Their analysis identifies the emergence of race talk, where
online speakers as well as protagonists in the conflict are refer-
enced in terms of race, and where their positions or behavior are
linked to the colonial/apartheid or antiapartheid histories of South
Africa. Within this dynamic, state violence was justified by two
atttributions: (a) depoliticizing the student movement (presenting it
as aimless and criminal) to delegitimize their cause and their
actions, and relatedly (b) presenting student violence as inherent in
the protest actions, which were positioned as part of an ongoing
violent enterprise. Police violence was often constructed as respon-
sive to protestor actions, such as taunting police, throwing stones,
and property destruction (burning university buildings), and as
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4LOUIS AND MONTIEL
necessary to law and order. In contrast, other community members
raised protesters’ experience of structural violence as poor and as
Black as justification for their protest actions and property destruc-
tion. As the authors highlight, therefore, the discursive constructs
of race, class, and student delinquency or entitlement allows for
some forms of violence to be justified and valorized, while other
forms are denounced as illegitimate and deviant.
Does Violent Collective Action Undermine or
Reinforce the Effects of Nonviolent Action?
One fascinating research question that received little attention
from authors concerns the relationship between violent and non-
violent actors for the same cause. “When direct violence is em-
ployed by some collective actors for a cause, what is the result for
the effectiveness of nonviolent collective actors working for the
same cause, and vice versa?” we asked, in the call for articles. No
one has responded here, but the important work of Erica Che-
noweth and colleagues (e.g., Stephan & Chenoweth, 2008) has
begun to address this point (see also Piven & Cloward, 1977,1991;
Thomas & Louis, 2014). Some would suggest that violence by one
party legitimizes more dismissive, intransigent and violent re-
sponses by other parties in a social clash. The articles in this
volume by Soares and colleagues as well as by Kiguawa and Ally
arguably support this interpretation. Yet it is also clear from Soares
and colleagues’ article and from Kiguawa and Ally that violence is
sometimes constructed and projected onto disadvantaged group
protestors to legitimize state aggression and delegitimize the pro-
testers’ challenge of state privilege. Much more work remains to
be done.
How Do Violent Structures Transform Social
Movements or Collective Actors?
We assumed that social structures and collective movements
operate bidirectionally. Hence, in addition to studying the agentic
role of social movements in structural alterations, we likewise
asked the question “How do violent structures transform social
movements or collective actors?” This interrogation presents con-
ceptual and methodological challenges to the current field of
psychology, and is thus rarely addressed.
In order to study social structure as a potential exogenous
variable, one would need to vary its conditions. But without
agentic interventions, social structure is relatively invariant over
long periods of time. Only positions differ within a constant
structure. For this reason, examination of social structure as a
causal factor may need to be embedded in historical moments
when social movements grapple with structural alterations. Put
differently, conflicts exist on multiple layers of analysis that unfold
in uneven time frames (we return to this point in the following
section); but psychologists often analyze them at only one
individual-based level, at a single time point.
To observe how structural violence affects social movements,
we suggest at least two research strategies: one that examines
discourse, and the other that looks across time.
Discourse analysis per se need not lead to a more liberating,
complete, or integrative kind of research. However, analyses of
changing discourse of movements and the state over time may
allow researchers to detect collective meanings of transformative
changes that are otherwise invisible. Unlike personalized psycho-
logical utterances, discursive data related to structural shifts and
social movements are not individualized, but rather collective in
relation to both social object (features of an unequal structure) and
social utterer (social movements).
A discursive approach would recognize that social movements
are triggered by structural inequalities if collective utterances pivot
around issues of social inequality.
Such social discourses can be found in protest streamers, street
march chants, peace agreements, or even names of social move-
ments critical of structural inequality. For example, Soares and her
colleagues write about how a Portuguese movement against polit-
ical inequality and police repression named itself F
ⴱⴱⴱ
the Troika:
We Want Our Lives Back (Soares, Barbosa, et al., 2018). In South
Africa, protesters against economic inequalities and the high cost
of education labeled their movement Fees Must Fall (Kiguwa &
Ally, 2018). Further attention within psychology to organizational
or collective utterances emanating from protest movements would
be a valuable means of driving forward the research agenda in this
space.
Chronological strategies present a second methodological ap-
proach that allows for the examination of social structural effects
on social movements. As elaborated below, our issue contains two
examples that show how social movements flex and adapt to
structural changes across time. Ulug
˘& Acar (2018) utilize the
concepts of social movement vacillations, while Razakamaharavo
(2018) trace cycles of peace and violence across historical mo-
ments. The Turkey and Madagascar accounts illustrate how verti-
cal social structures continue to impinge on social movements
across historical moments of protracted struggles.
The chronological analysis of vertical structures in peace
processes could be expanded to cover systemic inequalities
even among peace allies. For example, the peace process in
Northern Ireland was partially shaped by international leader-
ship between the United States, Northern Ireland, and the
United Kingdom. An external viewer may appreciate the facil-
itative effects of superpower participation in this peace process.
But a closer look may unveil a muffling of domestic interests in
exchange for political or material gains by the global peace
partners. To clarify this issue empirically and structurally, one
may need to use a time coordinate to examine alterations in
national gains during and after the Northern Ireland peace
crisis. It is easy to think of other examples.
How Do Reactions to State and Nonstate Violence
Differ According to the Democratic or Authoritarian
Characters of the Society?
Another pair of questions within the call for articles that we
as editors put forward that received no answers was, “How do
the citizens’ participation in the Psychology of Dictatorship
(see Moghaddam, 2013)orthePsychology of Democracy (see
Moghaddam, 2016) affect reactions to state and non-state vio-
lence?” The important theorizing of Moghaddam in these two
books—which respectively lay out some of the social psycho-
logical principles and processes of living in more authoritarian
and more open regimes—is only just now beginning to receive
the attention that it deserves (see Louis, Chonu, Achia, Chapma,
& Rhee, in press;Wagoner, Bresco, & Glaveanu, in press). The
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5
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND TRANSFORMATION
work is highly relevant to peace psychology, and we look
forward to the impetus that work in this space eventually will
provide to the psychology of macrolevel changes.
One of the points made by Moghaddam (2013,2016)inthe
two books is that although dictatorship and democracy might be
seen as qualitatively different, in fact there is a continuum along
which states can be ordered of less to more freedom. The point
is relevant to the special issue, in that the transformative impact
of social movements can be seen as shifting states along this
continuum, either toward more freedom, or toward more repres-
sion.
An important analysis compatible with Moghaddam (2013,
2016) is provided by Ulug
˘and Acar (2018) in their article, “What
happens after the protests? Understanding protest outcomes
through multi-level social change.” These authors examine the
perspective of participants of the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul,
Turkey, through a series of expert interviews discussing the impact
of the protests for individuals, groups and society in the short and
long term. The important and innovative analysis highlights that a
number of gains occurred on all three levels, but that there were
overall losses over time, particularly with the rising authoritarian-
ism in Turkey after the coup attempt of 2016.
For these authors, the success of transformative social move-
ments in creating more freedom can be temporary and fragile,
and also failure can be momentary. Social movements, by their
success and failure, may create countermobilization and repres-
sion, and do so at the same time as they struggle and succeed or
fail in creating institutions and cultures that support structural
peace. These vacillations toward and away from positive struc-
tural change call out for additional research and theorizing.
Another piece which explicitly takes a historical perspective
and reengages the theme of cycles of peace and conflict is
Razakamaharavo’s (2018) “Processes of Conflict De-escalation
in Madagascar (1947–1996)”. The authors analyze the Mada-
gascar context, where episodes of conflict of varying intensity
occur and reoccur, in relation to “de-escalation” and conflict
escalation processes that also wax and wane. Like Ulug
˘and
Acar, Razakamaharavo highlights the multileveled nature of
peace and conflict, and like Moghaddam, the fragility of struc-
tural peace. Building structural peace is put forward as a long,
slow process, prone to setbacks and reversals, with many re-
gions and networks trapped indefinitely for reasons that (as
Razakamaharavo reviews in some depth) scholars increasingly
seek to understand. The review of this literature on conflict
traps and cycles, as well as Razakamaharavo’s analysis of the
Madagascar context specifically, is a welcome addition to the
special issue.
What is apparent in the analysis is how factors across the
levels change in tandem, in sequence, and sometimes in con-
tradictory ways: institutional changes, changes in structural
relations between groups, policy changes, ideological changes,
changes of personnel and by leaders of tactics, as well as
changing narratives and experiences of trauma and healing.
When social movements grapple with structural alterations,
such social shifts can in turn shape the nature of the very
collective agent that produced the structural change, resulting in
a complicated and historically elongated series of macrovacil-
lations and cycles of peace and violence. There is much work to
be done to understand these complexities! For example, what
indicators should we use to measure latent violence, or trans-
formation (see also Christie, 2018)? But it is exhilarating to see
some of the complexity mapped out by Razakamaharavo in this
issue.
Considering the Voices of the Scholarship of Social
Transformation
Finally the special issue highlights questions of regional as well
as interdisciplinary voice. As Montiel (2018) notes in “Peace
Psychologists and Social Transformation: A Global South Per-
spective,” voices from the Global South are still neglected within
peace psychology, and the journals and editors of peace psychol-
ogy still have their own social transformation to bring about (see
also Moghaddam & Lee, 2009;Moghaddam & Taylor, 1985).
Some of the critical issues from this nexus include: the underre-
sourcing of universities and scholars in the Global South; their
involvement in ongoing violence and trauma; the (sometimes
malevolent) politicization of their silence and their speech; and the
implementation of theoretical and methodological choices and
agendas of the first world. While acknowledging the longer-term
and complex problems, Montiel calls for immediate steps that
would create positive change, such as professional bodies to open
the schemes for developing academics from the global south; and
for peace psychologists to codesign projects and conduct analyses
and writing with southern scholars to allow a wider range of voice
and ownership of the project.
A Critical Summary: Lessons, Practical Implications,
Limitations, and Directions of Inquiry
We are exhilarated by the special issue, which highlights both
the possibility and the gaps in the psychology of macrolevel
change. Turning to the limitations, there is little methodological
diversity: We see theory pieces and qualitative case studies, rather
than any broad surveys or experimental methods. The divergent
contexts also cast into relief the difficulties of integrating concep-
tually, creating a sense of frustration articulated especially by van
Zomeren (2018).
In his commentary piece, van Zomeren notes the challenge of
adapting one’s own theories or calling for emergent theorizing,
before attempting to bring his “selvations theory” to bear. Van
Zomeren conceives the self as akin to a subjective vibration within
a web of relationships (a selvation), which would both influence
and be influenced by changing societies. We see his insightful
piece as an exciting beginning, but the article also highlights the
challenge of keeping individual level, mesolevel, and macrolevel
analyses in the same theoretical frame. We are simply not used to
this in social psychology, yet arguably it is possible and vital to
address the topic of social transformation as internal, relational,
and structural changes co-occurring.
While the social progress identified by Ben David and Rubel-
Lifschitz (2018), and the cycles and oscillations identified by Ulug
˘
and Acar (2018) and Razakamaharavo (2018) are clearly outcomes
of the individual motives, attributions, and group processes dis-
cussed by the other authors, the feedback loops are difficult both
to document and theorize. To name just a few, barriers include the
length of time over which social movements and social change
unfolds— decades and centuries, arguably, rather than hours or
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6LOUIS AND MONTIEL
days; the complexity of the relationships and unstable, ever-
changing actors; the chaotic processes—referring here to chaos
theory: the emergence of new levels of order, as well as the
collapse back into constituent elements and disorder; and relatedly,
the need for new multilevel models which are only just now
starting to be conceptually and statistically understood (Louis,
Amiot, Thomas, & Blackwood, 2016).
To elaborate on the issue of levels of analysis, Ulug
˘and Acar
(2018) as well as Razakamaharavo (2018) also highlight the mul-
tilevel nature of peace: for individuals, for groups, and for societ-
ies. The idea of a society being at peace is called into question
when we understand that conflict can be structural or cultural, as
well as direct (Galtung, 1969,1990); that it can involve direct
actions from individual hate crimes (e.g., Sullivan, Ong, Macchia,
& Louis, 2016) through crowd events (La Macchia & Louis, 2016)
to war (Christie & Louis, 2012), and invoke identities from mul-
tiple levels and intersectionalities (Louis, Amiot, et al., 2016;
Louis, La Macchia, et al., 2016). Similarly, structural peace and
violence can be identified as present or absent in myriad relation-
ships within any given society—families, relationships; schools,
workplaces; political relations, media representations; and so on.
As we have argued earlier, the work of Moghaddam (2013,2016)
is an important beginning to the challenge of theorizing macrolevel
change, and we hope that others will eventually be able to build on
this (Louis et al., in press;Wagoner et al., in press; see also Christie,
2018;Hegarty, 2014). Christie’s (2018) commentary pushes forward
the conceptual conversation about social transformation. His article
elaborates on models and metrics for constructive social change,
across varied analytical layers. Christie points out how social trans-
formation can be viewed as wide-scale social shifts that are system-
ically embedded, sustainable across time, upwardly scalable, and
marked by subaltern involvements. Such transformative phenomena
can be measured using metrics of survival and well-being, in struggles
for direct and structural peace, respectively.
We are far from being able to comprehensively analyze these
interrelated and interinfluencing degrees and states of peace, or to
theorize them. And the preceding paragraphs simply relate to the
complexity of direct, structural, and cultural peace and conflict
within relationships, actors, and institutions at a given point in
time. When we add in the concept of time, and how actors,
relationships, and institutions may be involved in cycles of peace
and conflict which invoke different processes, and require different
interventions or approaches to engage (Christie & Louis, 2012;
Galtung, 2001;Hegarty, 2014), the complexity increases further.
And if we add in a more thorough engagement with the role of
culture (van Zomeren & Louis, 2017), so much more theoretical
depth and breadth is needed. For example, if we start to consider
Galtung’s cultural violence and peace through contemporary social
psychological lens, we would ask about which groups it attaches
to, what norms it relates to, how it is created and embodied and
made manifest in materials and relationships, and so on.
Yet even within social psychology, the topic of transformative
social change through social movements has not been widely
researched; perhaps the work of Drury and Reicher has come the
closest (e.g., Drury & Reicher, 2009;Reicher, Haslam, & Hopkins,
2005). Yet there are a number of themes in contemporary research
which could be developed more strongly, such as the role of
leadership (e.g., Blackwood & Louis, in press); of norms (Louis,
2014); of allyship and solidarity (Droogendyk, Louis, & Wright,
2016;Droogendyk, Wright, Lubensky, & Louis, 2016;Techake-
sari, Droogendyk, Wright, Louis, & Barlow, 2017;Thomas,
Amiot, Louis, & Goddard, 2017); the processes involved in col-
lective harmdoing (Louis, Amiot, & Thomas, 2015); or the under-
lying neuroscience (e.g., Molenberghs, Ogilvie, Louis, Decety,
Bagnail, & Bain, 2015).
The current authors do not generally engage these specific
processes in detail, although the articles by Ben David and Rubel-
Lifschitz (2018) and by Ferguson and colleagues (2018) in partic-
ular contain important reflections on the nature of leadership and
norm change. The authors in this special issue present more
wide-ranging, broad-brush approaches, as the call for articles had
invited. The questions we posed were intended to inspire and direct
authors, but we did not expect all of the questions to be fully
addressed in this special issue. Rather, our hope is that this special
issue and the questions raised will help stimulate further research,
and this is already taking place through our students and the next
generation of researchers. The present authors’ work is exciting—
yet as van Zomeren (2018) has noted, it invites much more fleshed
out theorizing and empirical testing.
It will also be important to continue the work of Bretherton
(2018), whose article elaborates on lessons learned from this
thematic issue. She addresses practitioners and activists, with
practical tips on how to deal with power and (de)humanization
within social movements. Her commentary offers a minimanual
for collective movement operations. In aid of social transforma-
tion, Bretherton identifies doable and tested practices on-the-
ground that mitigate structural and cultural violence, manage vio-
lence at demonstrations, and help plan social movements. Her take
home messages—and particularly her reflections on power, con-
trol, and listening within movements—will fascinate readers.
We note as a limitation of the special issue the absence of many
liberation movements of ongoing importance socially as well as
theoretically. The voices heard here deserve to be heard— but we
again fail to hear from the decolonization struggles of Indigenous
peoples—a consistent and disturbing silence in psychology. Through
the articles in the special issue, we hear from Israel, Ireland, South
Africa and Portugal, Turkey, Madagascar, and the Philippines. And
when we include the commentaries, we also hear from Australia, the
Netherlands, and the United States. In this sense the special issue is
more inclusive, and we salute this achievement. Yet at the same time,
it is striking that there are no articles from Latin America—a region
of dramatic social transformation.
We likewise acknowledge a limitation of research domain. Our
articles focus on domestic peace and violence, a social phenome-
non close to the everyday experiences of peoples with a long
history of oppression. This issue, however, does not address the
domain of globalized peace and violence, where structural inequal-
ities thrive between nations and regions. Global inequalities are
longstanding—for example, they flourished even during colonial
eras. In addition, peace and violence are rapidly latching on to
global networks of funding, peace/militarization international net-
works, and cyberspace communication. Indeed, a peace psychol-
ogy of global social movements and violent structures may need to
be advanced. We look forward to the development of a truly global
scholarship of social transformation in the near future.
Yet as we close the special issue, it seems to us that the strengths
of the authors’ articles deserve to be celebrated. The diversity is
refreshing, and the authors represent a group of new, strong voices
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7
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND TRANSFORMATION
in peace psychology. The theorizing is fresh and innovative. The
topics are broad (even vast) and important (even vital). We have
much to enjoy in the articles here, and as we look forward to the
new research on peace psychology and social transformation that
it will engender, we have much to anticipate in future.
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