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Strategic nonviolent action has developed enormously over the past century: there is a burgeoning body of research, widespread use in social movements, and regular training of activists. Even so, understanding of nonviolent action has been constrained by the methods used to investigate it, for example case studies and practical experience. Te experimental method, as widely used in scientifc research, has yet to be applied to the study of nonviolent action in systematic ways. In this article, two possible experiments with nonviolent action are presented to highlight some of the possibilities. Experiments with nonviolent action have the usual rationale of acquiring knowledge and two additional rationales: participant practical understanding and participant willingness to learn from experimentation. Tere are a number of obstacles to nonviolence experimentation, including lack of funding, ethical challenges, and opposition from various parties. Yet until experimental testing becomes routine, the full potential of nonviolent action will not be realized.

Activists in both dictatorships and democracies use humor as a method of nonviolent resistance, and its special way of appealing to emotions and imagination through ambiguity frequently sets it apart from other forms of nonviolent action. This study analyzes three examples from twentieth‐century Sweden of the political uses of humor according to the ability of each to facilitate dialogue, break power, serve as an utopian enactment, and be a normative regulation. In these cases, humor is found to have a particular ability to break the power of dominant discourses, because their ambiguity makes them ideal as “guerrilla attacks” in the ongoing discursive guerrilla war the activists are waging.

Civil resistance requires significant forms of emotion management by activists. In this paper, we distinguish between the different foci of emotion management carried out frontstage and backstage – the frontstage focus is typically oriented to influencing the emotions of onlookers, opponents and other targets, the backstage focus is typically concerned with managing the emotions of the activists themselves in preparation for their frontstage performances. Of course, in any particular resistance activity the two dimensions of emotion management interact more or less continuously. Activists need to continually engage in impression-management to ensure they are maintaining their display of the appropriate emotions intended to evoke the desired emotional response in the targets of their performance.

«Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt» var en liten gruppe av såkalte totalnektere som på 1980-tallet var pådrivere for en endring av den norske militærnekterloven. Gjennom en kombinasjon av spektakulære aksjoner og sitt rettslige arbeid, skapte gruppen så mye oppmerksomhet om sin sak at embetsmennene i Justisdepartementet til slutt fremmet forslag om lovendring uten at en eneste politiker var pådriver i arbeidet. Med utgangspunkt i rettssosiologisk teori om legalstrategier og en relasjonell forståelse av forholdet mellom retten og sosiale bevegelsers påvirkningsmuligheter, undersøker artikkelen hvordan dette var mulig. Erfaringene fra «Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt» viser hvordan sosiale bevegelsers suksess ikke nødvendigvis avhenger av strukturelle forhold, og at et aktørperspektiv er viktigere i dette tilfellet. En liten gruppe kunne gjennom sin egen handlingskraft, initiativ og kreativitet vinne frem med kravene sine. Nøkkelord: Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt, sosiale bevegelser, totalnekting, aktørperspektiv, lovendring, Creative actors in the judiciary game – on the Norwegian campaign against conscription from a sociology of law perspective «Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt» (The Campaign Against Conscription) was a small group of so-called total resisters who during the 1980s were campaigning for a change in the Norwegian law on conscientious objection. By combining spectacular actions and legal work, the group created so much attention, that the civil servants in the department of justice in the end proposed a legislative change without a single politician being involved in the work. The article investigates how this was possible, by combing sociology of law theory regarding legal strategies with a relational understanding of social movements’ possibility to create change. The experiences of «Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt» show that social movements’ success do not necessarily depend on structural conditions, and that an agency oriented perspective is more important in this case. Through its own initiative, creativity and agency, a small group could have their demands met. Keywords: Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt, social movements, total resistance, agency, law change

Annotation This book analyses how humour in political activism contributes to facilitating outreach, mobilisation and the sustaining of cultures of resistance. Drawing on examples of attention-grabbing stunts from around the world, Humour in Political Activism demonstrates how they succeed in turning relations of power upside down. The ambiguity and unpredictability of humour, Sørensen argues, makes it difficult to respond to this form of political activism when it is performed in public. Humorous political stunts can therefore challenge state power, help influence changes in law and make significant contributions to the conversations about how societies should be organised. The book also investigates the potential risks and limitations of using humour in nonviolent action and what makes humour unique compared with other forms of non-humorous political activism.

Escalation of conflict is frequently deemed undesirable and problematic, as it is often assumed to refer to the escalation of violence. However, there exists a different form of escalation that we call "nonviolent conflict escalation." This occurs when previously unrecognized conflicts are intensified using nonviolent means to a point where the conflict can no longer be ignored. Five aspects of nonviolent escalations of methods are examined through case studies, showing how different forms of intensification can work together to escalate the conflict. Nonviolent escalations of unrecognized conflicts can serve as potent tools in struggles against tyranny, injustice, and human rights violations., Escalation of conflict is frequently deemed undesirable and problematic, as it is often assumed to refer to the escalation of violence. However, there exists a different form of escalation that we call “nonviolent conflict escalation.” This occurs when previously unrecognized conflicts are intensified using nonviolent means to a point where the conflict can no longer be ignored. Five aspects of nonviolent escalations of methods are examined through case studies, showing how different forms of intensification can work together to escalate the conflict. Nonviolent escalations of unrecognized conflicts can serve as potent tools in struggles against tyranny, injustice, and human rights violations.

During the last decade, radical clowning has become an increasingly popular tactic among participants in the global justice movement in the western world. In order to discuss how radical clowns differ from conventional clowns and what they have in common, radical clowning can be interpreted through the lenses of clown theory and the four concepts of play, otherness, incompetence, and ridicule. Ethnographic data from the Swedish anti-militarist network Ofog reveals how play and otherness contribute to radical clowns' attempts to communicate nonviolent values, negotiate space, and recognize the human in the other. The findings demonstrate one way that humor can be rebellious and challenge established relations of power.

When nonviolent activists design an action that poses a dilemma for oppo-nents—for example whether to allow protesters to achieve their objectiveor to use force against them with consequent bad publicity—this is calleda dilemma action. These sorts of actions have been discussed among acti-vists and in activist writings, but not systematically analyzed. We presenta preliminary classification of different aspects of dilemma actions andapply it to three case studies: the 1930 salt march in India, a jail-in usedin the Norwegian total resistance movement in the 1980s, and the free-dom flotillas to Gaza in 2010 and 2011. In addition to defining what isthe core of a dilemma action, we identify five factors that can make thedilemma more difficult for opponents to “solve.” Dilemma actions derivesome of their effectiveness from careful planning and creativity that pushopponents in unaccustomed directions.

The article introduces the concept of humorous political stunt and a new model of five types of stunts that in distinct ways challenge the prevailing order and transcend established power relations. The five types, named supportive, corrective, naive, absurd and provocative, each relate to those in power and their rationality in a different way. Supportive stunts are framed as ostensible attempts to help and protect from harm, here exemplified with a search for landmines in a Belgian bank investing in dubious companies. Corrective stunts present an alternative version of the power holders’ truth, illustrated with a Swedish peace organisation’s parody webpage of a government agency established to support arms export. In an example of a naive stunt, Burmese opposition challenges the military junta from behind a pretended innocence. Polish resistance to socialist rule shows how the absurd stunt defies all rationality. In a contemporary Russian provocative stunt directed towards the secret police, the pranksters transcend power by appearing not to care about the consequences of infuriating the powerful. In all instances, humour is the tool of serious dissent and protest attempting to humiliate and undermine the powerful. The model has been applied to more than 40 stunts and illustrates methods of speaking truth to power that exploit humorous techniques such as irony, exaggeration or impersonation. The examples also document that humour is not always carried out at the expense of those at the bottom of society, but can indeed kick upwards in order to aim for change of the status quo.

This article investigates what culture means for nonviolent resistance. While literature on nonviolence has had a tendency to look instrumentally at culture, this article suggests an intertwined relationship. Activists are themselves embedded in their own cultures, and there is no “outside culture.” The authors suggest an innovative model of three strategies for analyzing the cultural aspects of a nonviolent struggle: (1) occasionally borrowing existing powerful symbols and cultural elements, such as flags or religious symbols, which is then applied; (2) partially remodeling“old” culture in the spirit of nonviolence. This strategy is illustrated through the Khudai Khidmatgar of the North-West Frontier Province in the 1930s and shows how the nonviolent struggle there, was “negotiated” with Islam and a traditional code of honor; and finally, (3) systematically creating a nonviolent movement culture, which is a much more complex process, is illustrated through the movement for landless workers in Brazil, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra.

This article explores how humor can be used as one aspect of a strategy of nonviolent resistance to oppression and dictatorship. It combines sociological and philosophical theories about humor's duality and incongruity with theories of nonviolent resistance to oppression in order to investigate the links between topics that have previously been considered unrelated. Experiences from the Serbian Otpor movement, which used humorous actions as a part of its strategy to bring down Slobodan Milošević from power, serve to illustrate the dynamics of humor as a form of resistance. Empirical examples and existing theory are combined to make an outline of an innovative theory of the functions of humor in nonviolent resistance.