The study of the intersection of social movements and violence is diverse. This is so, principally, because the forms of violence under study are all encompassing, ranging from police arrest of peaceful protesters, to protest by throwing food at politicians, to protest by lethal, indiscriminate violence on civilians. Nevertheless, in the social movement literature, the mainstream approach to the study of these phenomena takes the position—sometimes by default—that neither the various forms of violence nor the various types of the groups engaging in violence need to correspond to particular theories, but rather both action and groups should be studied through the more general conceptual frameworks and theoretical presuppositions characterizing the literature. This position is partly a consequence of the fact that the study of these phenomena developed within the broader study of social movements. Thus, for example, research on the American civil rights movement of the 1960s covered not only the peaceful tactics of this movement but also state violence in response to these tactics, as well as the violence wielded by the radical branches of the movement, most notably the Black Panthers. The conceptualizations and theories pertaining to the study of the phenomena connecting social movements to violence, therefore, have not claimed autonomy within the general literature on social movements, but rather have relied heavily and approvingly on this literature.