Sean Chabot - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Sean Chabot
How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights ... more How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights movement? Responses generally focus on Martin Luther King's pilgrimage to nonviolence or favorable social contexts and processes. This book, in contrast, highlights ...
The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory, 2019
The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frant... more The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frantz Fanon as an apostle of violence. In the process, they deny his deep commitment to revolutionary humanism and mutual recognition among colonizer and colonized. This chapter argues that Fanon is highly relevant for understanding and confronting colonial violence in the contemporary world-system. It starts by discussing Fanon's analysis of total violence in colonial contexts, before considering his original approach to decolonizing counter-violence. Then it examines Fanon's concept of new humanism and illustrates the latter's significance. We propose that "stretching Fanon" allows us to make sense of how today's wretched of the earth struggle against and beyond conditions of colonial annihilation.
Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vin... more Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vinthagen, Stellan, 1964-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för freds-och utvecklingsforskning Chabot, Sean (author) University of Gothenburg Faculty of Social Sciences. Department ...
Societies Without Borders, 2013
Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the unde... more Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the underlying hegemonic story of neoliberalism. It is hard to dispute that the most popular brand of nonviolence, articulated by Gene Sharp and his followers, has helped people overthrow authoritarian regimes across the globe. Yet Sharp’s nonviolence also promotes the spread of neoliberal freedom and democracy, which cause multiple forms of visible and invisible violence. This article’s first section examines significant details in Sharp’s hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance and problematizes its limited understanding of violence. The following section relates Sharp’s approach to Iran’s Green Movement and Egypt’s Revolution. It shows how strategic nonviolence enabled these social movements, but also pushed them toward neoliberalism. The final section returns to the ideas and practices of Gandhi for a counter-hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance as well as freedom and democracy. We conc...
Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action... more Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action against oppressive forces. They pay much less attention to positive dimensions of resistance that allow practitioners to create alternative social relationships and ways of life. As a result, studies on nonviolent resistance tend to take “the colonizer’s model of the world” for granted. This article contest the prevailing approach by drawing on Gandhi, on the one hand, and autonomist Marxist and anarchist literature, on the other, to explore decolonizing forms of nonviolent resistance. It argues that Gandhi’s “constructive program” and autonomist Marxist thought on “reclaiming the commons” offer tools that are relevant for innovative research on decolonizing nonviolent resistance. And it shows that the Zapatista movement and revolutionary Zapatista women are on the frontlines of experiments with constructive work and autonomous commons in the world today. They demonstrate to scholars as...
International Review of Social History, 2004
Paper presented at the International Peace …, 2004
Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vin... more Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vinthagen, Stellan, 1964-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för freds-och utvecklingsforskning Chabot, Sean (author) University of Gothenburg Faculty of Social Sciences. Department ...
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2000
Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before th... more Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956? How did transnational diffusion of the Gandhian repertoire proceed over time? Classical diffusion theory provides a useful starting point for answering these questions, but it does not fully capture the twists and turns occurring in the transnational diffusion of a collective action repertoire. To account for the non-linear and contingent aspects of transnational diffusion between social movements, this article proposes an alternative theoretical framework and applies it to the case of diffusion between the independence movement in India and the civil rights movement in the United States. The historical case study emphasizes collective reinvention of the Gandhian repertoire by American civil rights networks, instead of critical mass or individual thresholds; and the intergenerational transfer of relevant knowledge and experience from these implementation pioneers to the new generation of civil rights movement activists. Finally, the article examines whether its alternative theoretical framework only applies to this particular instance of transnational diffusion or whether it has more general relevance for social movement theory.
Relaciones Internacionales UAM
The Diffusion of Social Movements, 2010
Societies Without Borders, 2012
Civil Resistance: Comparative Perspectives on Nonviolent Struggle, 2015
Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action... more Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action against oppressive forces. They pay much less attention to positive dimensions of resistance that allow practitioners to create alternative social relationships and ways of life. As a result, studies on nonviolent resistance tend to take "the colonizer's model of the world" for granted. This article contest this approach by drawing on Gandhi and autonomist Marxist literature to explore decolonizing forms of nonviolent resistance. It argues that Gandhi's "constructive program" and autonomist Marxist thought on "reclaiming the commons" offer tools that are relevant for innovative research on decolonizing nonviolent resistance. And it shows that the Zapatista movement and revolutionary Zapatista women are on the frontlines of experiments with constructive work and autonomous commons in the world today. They demonstrate to scholars as well as activists that revolutionary nonviolence for dignity and self-rule remains possible. PAGE 1
(150 words) Leading nonviolent resistance scholars have interpreted nonviolence as an effective s... more (150 words) Leading nonviolent resistance scholars have interpreted nonviolence as an effective strategy for political reform within the violent world-system. In contrast, a revolutionary approach requires us to change the violent world-system by creating alternative ways of life. Nonviolence is not just a strategy without and against violence; it is a holistic and constructive process for making other worlds without-against-and-beyond violence possible. It involves one No against systemic violence as well as many Yeses beyond it. Although Zapatista rebels asserted their dignity with Fire, they learned to confront and move beyond violence with Word and Autonomy as weapons. Revolutionary Zapatista women engaging in counter-conduct within the movement are on the frontlines of contemporary struggles without-against-and-beyond violence. In this chapter we propose eleven theses to critically reflect on the state of nonviolent resistance studies, utilizing practices and insights of the Zapatista movement to exemplify revolutionary nonviolence and encourage further research on struggles for autonomy and alternative ways of life. The peripheral field of "nonviolent action studies" that took shape in the 1970s, particularly with the now classic work of Gene Sharp (1973), was for a long time an almost invisible area related to other more prominent fields exploring activism, such as social movement studies. However, during the last decade it has emerged as a popular framework for understanding unarmed popular uprisings, such as those in the Arab rebellions 2011. With the publication of the celebrated work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (2011), there has been a virtual explosion of interest and research. At the backdrop of this development, we make in this chapter is a critical problematization of the enthusiasm for "regime change", "nonviolence," and "civil resistance".
Journal of Hindu Studies, 2014
Journal of Resistance Studies , 2019
How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights ... more How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights movement? Responses generally focus on Martin Luther King's pilgrimage to nonviolence or favorable social contexts and processes. This book, in contrast, highlights ...
The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory, 2019
The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frant... more The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frantz Fanon as an apostle of violence. In the process, they deny his deep commitment to revolutionary humanism and mutual recognition among colonizer and colonized. This chapter argues that Fanon is highly relevant for understanding and confronting colonial violence in the contemporary world-system. It starts by discussing Fanon's analysis of total violence in colonial contexts, before considering his original approach to decolonizing counter-violence. Then it examines Fanon's concept of new humanism and illustrates the latter's significance. We propose that "stretching Fanon" allows us to make sense of how today's wretched of the earth struggle against and beyond conditions of colonial annihilation.
Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vin... more Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vinthagen, Stellan, 1964-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för freds-och utvecklingsforskning Chabot, Sean (author) University of Gothenburg Faculty of Social Sciences. Department ...
Societies Without Borders, 2013
Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the unde... more Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the underlying hegemonic story of neoliberalism. It is hard to dispute that the most popular brand of nonviolence, articulated by Gene Sharp and his followers, has helped people overthrow authoritarian regimes across the globe. Yet Sharp’s nonviolence also promotes the spread of neoliberal freedom and democracy, which cause multiple forms of visible and invisible violence. This article’s first section examines significant details in Sharp’s hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance and problematizes its limited understanding of violence. The following section relates Sharp’s approach to Iran’s Green Movement and Egypt’s Revolution. It shows how strategic nonviolence enabled these social movements, but also pushed them toward neoliberalism. The final section returns to the ideas and practices of Gandhi for a counter-hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance as well as freedom and democracy. We conc...
Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action... more Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action against oppressive forces. They pay much less attention to positive dimensions of resistance that allow practitioners to create alternative social relationships and ways of life. As a result, studies on nonviolent resistance tend to take “the colonizer’s model of the world” for granted. This article contest the prevailing approach by drawing on Gandhi, on the one hand, and autonomist Marxist and anarchist literature, on the other, to explore decolonizing forms of nonviolent resistance. It argues that Gandhi’s “constructive program” and autonomist Marxist thought on “reclaiming the commons” offer tools that are relevant for innovative research on decolonizing nonviolent resistance. And it shows that the Zapatista movement and revolutionary Zapatista women are on the frontlines of experiments with constructive work and autonomous commons in the world today. They demonstrate to scholars as...
International Review of Social History, 2004
Paper presented at the International Peace …, 2004
Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vin... more Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vinthagen, Stellan, 1964-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för freds-och utvecklingsforskning Chabot, Sean (author) University of Gothenburg Faculty of Social Sciences. Department ...
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2000
Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before th... more Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956? How did transnational diffusion of the Gandhian repertoire proceed over time? Classical diffusion theory provides a useful starting point for answering these questions, but it does not fully capture the twists and turns occurring in the transnational diffusion of a collective action repertoire. To account for the non-linear and contingent aspects of transnational diffusion between social movements, this article proposes an alternative theoretical framework and applies it to the case of diffusion between the independence movement in India and the civil rights movement in the United States. The historical case study emphasizes collective reinvention of the Gandhian repertoire by American civil rights networks, instead of critical mass or individual thresholds; and the intergenerational transfer of relevant knowledge and experience from these implementation pioneers to the new generation of civil rights movement activists. Finally, the article examines whether its alternative theoretical framework only applies to this particular instance of transnational diffusion or whether it has more general relevance for social movement theory.
Relaciones Internacionales UAM
The Diffusion of Social Movements, 2010
Societies Without Borders, 2012
Civil Resistance: Comparative Perspectives on Nonviolent Struggle, 2015
Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action... more Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action against oppressive forces. They pay much less attention to positive dimensions of resistance that allow practitioners to create alternative social relationships and ways of life. As a result, studies on nonviolent resistance tend to take "the colonizer's model of the world" for granted. This article contest this approach by drawing on Gandhi and autonomist Marxist literature to explore decolonizing forms of nonviolent resistance. It argues that Gandhi's "constructive program" and autonomist Marxist thought on "reclaiming the commons" offer tools that are relevant for innovative research on decolonizing nonviolent resistance. And it shows that the Zapatista movement and revolutionary Zapatista women are on the frontlines of experiments with constructive work and autonomous commons in the world today. They demonstrate to scholars as well as activists that revolutionary nonviolence for dignity and self-rule remains possible. PAGE 1
(150 words) Leading nonviolent resistance scholars have interpreted nonviolence as an effective s... more (150 words) Leading nonviolent resistance scholars have interpreted nonviolence as an effective strategy for political reform within the violent world-system. In contrast, a revolutionary approach requires us to change the violent world-system by creating alternative ways of life. Nonviolence is not just a strategy without and against violence; it is a holistic and constructive process for making other worlds without-against-and-beyond violence possible. It involves one No against systemic violence as well as many Yeses beyond it. Although Zapatista rebels asserted their dignity with Fire, they learned to confront and move beyond violence with Word and Autonomy as weapons. Revolutionary Zapatista women engaging in counter-conduct within the movement are on the frontlines of contemporary struggles without-against-and-beyond violence. In this chapter we propose eleven theses to critically reflect on the state of nonviolent resistance studies, utilizing practices and insights of the Zapatista movement to exemplify revolutionary nonviolence and encourage further research on struggles for autonomy and alternative ways of life. The peripheral field of "nonviolent action studies" that took shape in the 1970s, particularly with the now classic work of Gene Sharp (1973), was for a long time an almost invisible area related to other more prominent fields exploring activism, such as social movement studies. However, during the last decade it has emerged as a popular framework for understanding unarmed popular uprisings, such as those in the Arab rebellions 2011. With the publication of the celebrated work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (2011), there has been a virtual explosion of interest and research. At the backdrop of this development, we make in this chapter is a critical problematization of the enthusiasm for "regime change", "nonviolence," and "civil resistance".
Journal of Hindu Studies, 2014
Journal of Resistance Studies , 2019
Relaciones Internacionales, Oct 2018
Los investigadores de la resistencia no-violenta se han concentrado, casi exclusivamente, en el e... more Los investigadores de la resistencia no-violenta se han concentrado, casi exclusivamente, en el estudio de la acción oposicional contra las fuerzas opresivas. Con ello, han dedicado menor atención a las dimensiones positivas de la resistencia, que permiten a los practicantes generar relaciones sociales y formas alternativas de vida. Como resultado, los estudios sobre la resistencia no-violenta tienden a dar por sentado “el modelo del mundo del colonizador”. Este artículo cuestiona esta lectura predominante, recurriendo a Gandhi, por una parte, y a la literatura autonomista marxista y anarquista, por otra, para explorar formas descolonizadoras de resistencia no-violenta. A través del mismo, se argumenta que el programa constructivo de Gandhi y el pensamiento marxista autonomista de la reivindicación de los comunes ofrecen herramientas relevantes para investigaciones innovadoras sobre la descolonización de la resistencia no-violenta. Además, se señala que el movimiento zapatista y las mujeres zapatistas revolucionarias se encuentran a la vanguardia de los experimentos de trabajo constructivo y de comunes autónomos en el mundo de hoy. Este artículo propone demostrar a académicos y activistas que la no-violencia revolucionaria por la dignidad y el autogobierno sigue siendo posible.
Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory, 2019
The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frant... more The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frantz Fanon as an apostle of violence. In the process, they deny his deep commitment to revolutionary humanism and mutual recognition among colonizer and colonized. This chapter argues that Fanon is highly relevant for understanding and confronting colonial violence in the contemporary world-system. It starts by discussing Fanon's analysis of total violence in colonial contexts, before considering his original approach to decolonizing counter-violence. Then it examines Fanon's concept of new humanism and illustrates the latter's significance. We propose that "stretching Fanon" allows us to make sense of how today's wretched of the earth struggle against and beyond conditions of colonial annihilation.
A new consensus has emerged about how to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Instea... more A new consensus has emerged about how to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Instead of supporting authoritarian regimes, experts across the political spectrum now agree that nonviolent resistance by people in the region is the ideal method for achieving liberation. But what purpose does such nonviolent resistance serve? And who actually benefits from it? Gandhi raised these questions over a century ago. In his book Hind Swaraj, he gave the following response to Indian nationalists suggesting that India will be free when it kicks out the British and takes over the current system of government: "[You] want English rule without the Englishman. You want the tiger's nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English…. This is not the Swaraj [self-rule] that I want." He warned that replacing foreign with domestic elites would not lead to genuine freedom and democracy for oppressed Indians. If Indian nationalists did not confront the imperial logic in themselves as well as their colonizers, they would just substitute Indian for British tyranny. They would get rid of the tiger, but not the tiger's nature.