Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

Barton Meyers, “Defense against aerial attack in El Salvador,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology , Vol. 22, Winter 1994, pp. 327-342. I thank Mary Cawte for pointing out this reference.

Barton Meyers, “Disaster study of war,” Disasters , Vol. 15, No. 4, December 1991, pp. 318-330.

Examples of useful sources of this sort are Christopher T. Carey, “Defense against the poor man’s nuclear bomb: biological protection and decontamination,” American Survival Guide, Vol. 20, No. 6, June 1998, pp. 32-33, 58-59 and 68; Hugh D. Crone, Banning Chemical Weapons: The Scientific Background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

John B. Alexander, Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Malcolm Dando, A New Form of Warfare: The Rise of Non-Lethal Weapons (London: Brassey’s, 1996); Nick Lewer and Steven Schofield, Non-Lethal Weapons: A Fatal Attraction? Military Strategies and Technologies for 21st-Century Conflict (London: Zed Books, 1997); David A. Morehouse, Nonlethal Weapons: War Without Death (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996).

Steve Wright, letter to Brian Martin, 29 March 1994.

Steve Wright, letter to Brian Martin, 17 September 1993.

Steve Wright, “The new technologies of political repression: a new case for arms control?” Philosophy and Social Action , Vol. 17, Nos. 3-4, July-December 1991, p. 31-62; Steve Wright, An Appraisal of Technologies for Political Control (Luxembourg: European Parliament, 1998). The Campaign Against Arms Trade, among others, has targeted the repression trade. See for example “Campaigner’s guide to the internal repression trade,” Peace News, March 1996, pp. 7-10.

The dilemmas involved when nonviolent resisters “accept casualties” are dealt with by Gene Keyes, “Heavy casualties and nonviolent defense,” Philosophy and Social Action , Vol. 17, Nos. 3-4, July-December 1991, pp. 75-88.

I thank Andreas Speck for this point.

Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

Henry H. Bauer, Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992); Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: New Left Books, 1975).

Ian I. Mitroff, The Subjective Side of Science: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Psychology of the Apollo Moon Scientists (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1974).

Obviously, not everyone is able to participate in every form of nonviolent action. For example, using a short-wave radio to send messages requires certain skills and technology. But virtually everyone can participate in petitions, rallies, boycotts, strikes and other forms of noncooperation. On participation by people with disabilities, see Brian Martin and Wendy Varney, “Nonviolent action and people with disabilities,” Civilian-Based Defense, Vol. 15, No. 3, Year-End 2000, pp. 4-16.

There is a considerable literature on citizen participation in technological decision making. See for example Malcolm L. Goggin (ed.), Governing Science and Technology in a Democracy (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986); Alan Irwin, Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise, and Sustainable Development (London: Routledge, 1995); Frank N. Laird, “Participatory analysis, democracy, and technological decision making,” Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 18, No. 3, Summer 1993, pp. 341-361; Brian Martin (ed.), Technology and Public Participation (Wollongong: Science and Technology Studies, University of Wollongong, 1999); James C. Petersen (ed.), Citizen Participation in Science Policy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984); Richard E. Sclove, Democracy and Technology (New York: Guilford Press, 1995); Leslie Sklair, Organized Knowledge: A Sociological View of Science and Technology (St. Albans: Paladin, 1973); Langdon Winner (ed.), Democracy in a Technological Society (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992). However, most of this writing sees citizens as involved in decision making but not actually doing research. On science by the people, see Brian Martin,“The goal of self-managed science: implications for action,” Radical Science Journal , No. 10, 1980, pp. 3-17; Brian Martin,“Anarchist science policy,” The Raven, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 136-153; Richard Sclove, “Research by the people, for the people,” Futures, Vol. 29, No. 6, 1997, pp. 541-549. Relevant here are the diverse experiences in participatory action research, though such “people’s research” is far more likely to be in fields of social analysis rather than science and engineering. See for example Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart (eds.), The Action Research Planner (Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University, 3rd edn, 1988); Robert A. Rubinstein, “Reflections on action anthropology: some developmental dynamics of an anthropological tradition,” Human Organization , Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall 1986, pp. 270-279; William Foote Whyte (ed.), Participatory Action Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991); Trevor Williams, Learning to Manage our Futures: The Participative Redesign of Societies in Turbulent Transition (New York: Wiley, 1982).

Jun Ui, “The interdisciplinary study of environmental problems,” Kogai — The Newsletter from Polluted Japan , Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 1977, pp. 12-24.

Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves (Boston: New England Free Press, 1971 and several later editions).

Steven Epstein, “Democratic science? AIDS activism and the contested construction of knowledge,” Socialist Review , Vol. 21, April-June 1991, pp. 55-64.

Conventional technology policy literature is not deployed in this chapter. It is almost entirely oriented to top-down decision making and provides few insights about policy making for a participatory system such as social defence. Issues such as the suppression of innovation by vested interests, the influence of managerial control, worker opposition and social movements are almost entirely absent from the conventional policy literature. Innovation from the grassroots, or more generally any innovation that is noncommercial or a challenge to state interests, is given virtually no attention. Some typical sources that fit this characterisation are Rod Coombs, Paolo Saviotti and Vivien Walsh, Economics and Technological Change (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1987); Richard R. Nelson (ed.), National Innovation Systems: A Comparative Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); J. E. S. Parker, The Economics of Innovation (London: Longman, 1974); Ray Rothwell and Walter Zegveld, Reindustrialization and Technology (Harlow: Longman, 1985). I thank Rhonda Roberts for helpful comments on these points. See Rhonda Roberts, “Managing innovation: the pursuit of competitive advantage and the design of innovation intense environments,” Research Policy, Vol. 27, 1998, pp. 159-175.