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ancianita

(40,516 posts)
Wed May 28, 2025, 01:45 PM Wednesday

Remember Gene Sharp and his compendium of resistance actions.

https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/browse-methods

The intro:

The methods of intervention may often be more directly confrontive, while the methods of noncooperation may in some situations be less so. These two groups of methods can be coercive, that is, make it impossible for an opponent to rule or carry out their policies. The other category, which Sharp calls "protest and persuasion," has methods that tend to be less confrontive, but in some situations (for example some police states) the opponent may consider them highly threatening and react accordingly.

We use Gene Sharp's classification of 198 methods in this database. He acknowledges that some methods can arguably be placed in a different category, depending on circumstance, and his classification should not be regarded as rigid. Some of the names of the methods may not be self-explanatory, so I have taken the liberty of interpreting some of them, often using Sharp's own words in the process. (Press the button "More" for further interpretation.) The material is drawn from his 1973 book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Part One, Power and Struggle (Boston: Porter Sargeant Publishers). Any errors I make of interpretation are my responsibility alone.

Additional methods: In researching for this database we have identified methods beyond Sharp's 198. They may of course be controversial. The user encountering them in reading the cases will probably want to return to this page and press the "More" button for those methods in order to discover our rationale for adding these methods to the 198. - George Lakey, 20/8/11
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