How can educators, scholars and professionals better understand and analyze what elements are at work when civilians use nonviolent tactics? How and when should external agents - governments, non-state actors - act or not act when civil resistance is gaining momentum? How can the dynamics and history of civil resistance better inform the understanding of political contention, negotiations, transitions, and violent and nonviolent conflicts?Historically, political change in countries that curtail freedom and ignore international human rights norms has been difficult to achieve.
Violent revolution or the use of armed force by external actors is typically seen as the necessary means of overcoming oppression. Yet civil resistance, relying on a variety of methods of nonviolent action, has been used for this purpose for well over a century in different parts of the world, by different peoples and societies, in different cultures and political systems, and with impressive results as well as some apparent failures.This phenomenon has only recently started gaining greater recognition as a potentially formidable strategic force by policy makers, political observers and scholars.
Often this recognition has been spurred by the spectacle of dictatorships and undemocratic rulers succumbing, not to armed insurrections, but to the coercive nonviolent pressure of mass civic movements, as in countries such as the Philippines, Chile, Poland, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine or Egypt.
The sweeping political ferment taking place in North Africa and the Middle East since the end of 2010 provides new, dramatic evidence of how civil resistance can drive political change. Furthermore, countries that experience bottom-up, civilian-based resistance are known to have a better track record of successful democratic transitions than the states that initiated their systemic transformation after a protracted civil war, or due to top-down, elite-to-elite negotiations or external military interventions.
Period
09-07-2012 - 13-07-2012 (1 weeks)
Target group
Applications are invited from graduate students, junior faculty, researchers and professionals from universities and civil society organizations.Course participants are expected to have general interest in and/or experience (based on their academic or/and professional work) with civic movements, bottom-up organizing, nonviolent methods of struggle or popular nonviolent revolutions.
The language of instruction is English, thus all applicants have to demonstrate a strong command of spoken and written English to be able to participate actively in discussions at seminars and workshops.
Course aim
This course is designed to provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world - from Egypt to Burma, from Zimbabwe to West Papua.
Credits
1.0 ECTS credits
The ECTS points offered by this course may be accepted for credit transfer by the participants' home universities. Those who wish to obtain these credits should inquire about the possible transfer at their home institution prior to their enrollment. The Summer University Office will send a transcript to those who have fulfilled all the necessary course requirements and request one.
Course fee
EUR 300: Fee payment deadline: May 28, 2012
Course leader
Maciej Bartkowski International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), Washington DC, USA Stephen Zunes Middle Eastern Studies, University of San Francisco, USA Kurt Schock Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Rutgers University, USA Matte
Scholarships
Financial aid is available in the following categories:
- tuition waiver
- accommodation grant
- travel grant (full or partial)
Central European University Summer University
Address: 9 Nador Street
Postal code: 1051
City: Budapest
Country: Hungary
Website: http://www.summer.ceu.hu
E-mail: summeru@ceu.hu
Phone: 361 3273811
