Pacifism and Nonviolence: Discerning the Contours of an Emerging Multidisciplinary Research Agenda

Abstract

Pacifism and nonviolence have separable foci and origins, yet also share important similarities, and their respective histories are mutually imbricated. Both have, furthermore, been attracting growing scholarly interest. However, that scholarship has so far been scattered in disparate sub-disciplinary debates and specialist publications. The time has come for an ambitious multidisciplinary agenda to coordinate research on topics including: the varieties of approaches to nonviolence and pacifism; accusations against pacifism; tensions between pacifism and nonviolence; theories and practices outside the Global North; the multiple consequences of violence; violence and nonviolence in political thought; the relationship between violence/nonviolence and gender, race, and other social identities; the religious roots of pacifism and nonviolence; the place of violence and nonviolence in popular culture; practical nonviolent policies of governance; predominant assumptions concerning violence in ir; the threshold characteristics of ‘violence’; and methodological challenges in the study and pedagogy of nonviolence and pacifism.

Introduction: Enacting Peace Amid Violence: Nonviolent Civilian Agency in Violent Conflict

“…With its thematic focus on nonviolent civilian agency and its diverse outlook in terms of contributors' disciplines, methodologies, geographical foci and more, this special issue speaks directly to research gaps in the study of nonviolence, understood not just as resistance but detected in other practices, policies, and enactments, identified by the Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence (Christoyannopoulos 2023). There is now a small but growing scholarly interest in the practices, meanings, effects, and ethics of (nonviolent) civilian agency in conflict.…”