ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the attitudes of civil society organisations (CSOs) towards violence. Civil society activists engage with violence in varied and often complex ways. The majority of those we interviewed were opposed in principle to violent activism, but those principles were often qualified to allow for the possibility of violence in some circumstances. In the practice of resisting state violence CSOs must also resist the state’s framing of their activities as criminal. In so doing they work at defining violence not only in the context of state violence but also in terms of deciding which of their own tactics (for example destruction of property) should be defined as violent. In some states non-violent activists had to decide how far they were prepared to work alongside those engaged in violent resistance. In resisting violent states the question of violence as a form of resistance is inevitably complex and ambiguous. The complexity of civil society’s relationship with violence eludes simple dichotomies between violence and non-violence.
