Violence, communication, and civil disobedience

Abstract

The proliferation of civil disobedience in recent times has prompted questions about violence and justified resistance. Non-violence has traditionally been associated with civil disobedience. If civil disobedience is a political exercise, there are good normative and pragmatic reasons for adhering to non-violence. But some violent actions may be compatible with civil disobedience. This paper defines violence as the application of force intending to cause or reckless about causing harm, and seeks to distinguish violent actions compatible with civil disobedience from conduct too violent to qualify. Whereas civil disobedience is irreconcilable with attacks against other human beings, some violence against property, targeted and symbolic, coheres with the communicative ends of civil disobedience. More intriguing questions arise when disobedience entails extensive attacks against property, such as activities of environmental groups against environmentally harmful practices (ecotage). Despite the extent of violence against property, such activities might still qualify as civil disobedience.

Environmental Activism and the Fairness of Costs Argument for Uncivil Disobedience

“…As a first-pass response, consider the conception of civil disobedience that we employ -it is a deliberately illegal and nonviolent public protest that aims to promote political change primarily through communicating to the government and/or the public that something is seriously amiss. This conception is broadly similar to many of the already expanded conceptions of civil disobedience on offer within the literature (Markovits 2005;Lefkowitz 2007;Smith 2011;Brownlee 2012;Smith 2013;Celikates 2016a;Celikates 2016b;Marcou 2021;Gray & Lennertz 2020). These conceptions reject, in various ways, the overly narrow description of (and requirements imposed on) civil disobedience within Rawls' account.…”

“…For other representative texts, see PeterSinger (2002), DanielMarkovits (2005), KimberleyBrownlee (2012), WilliamSmith (2013), BennyTai (2017), AndreasMarcou (2021), PieroMoraro (2007), and David Miguel Grey and Benjamin Lennertz (2020), among others. The literature on the issue of categorisation is extensive, and we will not discuss it here.…”