Security without weapons : rethinking violence, nonviolent action, and civilian protection / M.S. Wallace.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wallace, M. S. (Mary S.), author.

Series:

Interventions (Routledge (Firm))

Interventions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanitarian intervention.

War--Protection of civilians.

War.

Violence--Prevention.

Violence.

Nonviolence.

Humanitarian intervention--Sri Lanka.

War--Protection of civilians--Sri Lanka.

Violence--Sri Lanka--Prevention.

Nonviolence--Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka--History--Civil War, 1983-2009.

Sri Lanka.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 261 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business, 2017.

Summary:

Few questions of global politics are more pressing than how to respond to widespread violence against civilians. Despite the efforts of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) proponents to draw attention away from exclusively military responses, debates on humanitarian intervention and R2P's "Third Pillar" still tend to boil down to two unsatisfying options: stand by and "do nothing" or take military action to protect civilians - essentially using violence to stop violence. Accordingly - and given disagreement and uncertainty regarding moral claims, as well as the unpredictability of military effectiveness - this book asks: how can we counter violence ethically and effectively, taking action consistent with our particular moral commitments while also nurturing difference and enacting responsibility towards multiple others? After evaluating the pragmatic and ethical failings of military action, the book proposes nonviolent intervention as a third - unarmed, on-the-ground - option for protecting civilians during humanitarian crises. In the empirical section of the book, focusing on the discursive and psychological conditions enabling violence, Wallace analyses the mechanisms by which Nonviolent Peaceforce - an international NGO engaged in nonviolent intervention/unarmed civilian peacekeeping (UCP) - was able to protect civilians and prevent violence, even if on a limited scale, in the broader context of Sri Lanka's war/counterinsurgency in 2008. Both philosophically innovative and practically useful to those working in the field, the book contributes to a range of literatures and debates: from just war theory and poststructuralist ethics to nonviolent action and conflict transformation, and from humanitarian intervention, R2P, and civilian protection to strategic theory and discursive and psychological theories of violence. Book jacket.

Contents:

Challenging the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence in a world of contested and contingent moral frameworks

Challenging assumptions about the necessity and efficacy of violence for defense, protection, and victory

The conviction and provisionality of nonviolent action : coercion and transformation in nonviolent struggle, nonviolent intervention, and nonviolent defense

Confronting wrongs, creating wrongs : official discourses and the legitimation of violence in Sri Lanka

Making sense of violence : media accounts and combatants' understandings

Assessing violent and nonviolent alternatives for confronting the violence of Sri Lanka's civil war : toward a psycho-discursive theory of civilian protection and violence prevention

Security without weapons : rethinking protection through the work of Nonviolent Peaceforce in Sri Lanka.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138944862

1138944866

OCLC:

936350244