Kurt Schock (ed.), Civil Resistance: Comparative Perspectives on Nonviolent Struggle – Book review

Schock, in his introductory essay, makes the point that to understand civil resistance, there are four central dynamics: widespread mobilization, weathering repression, severing the opponent from its sources of power, and constructing alternatives. Varying essays in this collection tackle different aspects of this dynamic, with several of them drawing not only on the literature of civil resistance but also that of social movements and revolution. We are presented with a view of nonviolence that takes local and personal realities into account in ways that are only just now making an appearance in the literature on nonviolence.