ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the risk of falling into a degenerative, regressive and repressive field of research. Section one focuses on problems at the descriptive level. Nonviolent action is reduced to behaviour or rigid practices. This division does not include non-observable phenomena and divides means and ends. Section two focuses on the praxeological level, where the risk creates a regressive field. Here, we find that the concern of behaviours and practices led nonviolence to focus on disruption, leaving aside a serious debate on construction. Section three focuses on problems at the religious level, where religion has been put in an ad hoc category, principled nonviolence. The complexity of religious experiments with nonviolence is trapped in the secular narrative of the concept of principled nonviolence; a new nonviolence narrative may help to make sense of these experiments and glimpse the opportunity to reconcile religion and secularism.
