Technology for nonviolent struggle · Technology for Nonviolent Struggle Organised nonviolent struggle, using methods such as strikes, boycotts and noncooperation, is a possible alternative

Technology for nonviolent struggle

Brian Martin

WAR RESISTERS’ INTERNATIONALLONDON

http://www.gn.apc.org/warresisters/2001

ISBN 0903517 18 3

Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

Organised nonviolent struggle, using methods such as strikes, boycotts andnoncooperation, is a possible alternative to military methods. However,compared to military funding, there has been hardly any financial andorganisational support for nonviolent struggle. Putting a priority on nonviolentstruggle would lead to significant differences in technological development andscientific method. Research and development relevant to a number ofareas—especially communication and survival—are assessed in terms of theirrelevance to nonviolent struggle. The findings are used to suggest how scienceand technology used for the purposes of war and repression can be convertedmost effectively to serve the purposes of nonviolent struggle.

Dr Brian Martin is associate professor in Science, Technology & Society,University of Wollongong, Australia. He has researched and written both on thecritique of science and technology and on nonviolent action since the late1970s, is the author of many books and articles, and been involved in variousactivist groups. For further details about research and a full list of publications,see http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/.

Contents

Prologue. The vision of Aldous Huxley 11. Introduction 42. Militarised technology 83. Nonviolent struggle 264. Priorities for research and development 345. Communication 426. Survival 597. The built environment 688. Countering attack 719. Research methods 7510. Technology policy for nonviolent struggle 80Appendix. Theories of technology 91

AcknowledgmentsI thank all the individuals who offered insightful comments in interviews,seminars and correspondence, who for the most part must go unnamed. RobertBurrowes, Mary Cawte and Helen Gillett provided many useful suggestions on afirst draft of the entire manuscript. Mary Cawte was an essential part of theproject that led to this book. The project was supported by the AustralianResearch Council. Ellen Elster and Andreas Speck, members of the executive ofWar Resisters’ International, provided many insightful suggestions on the entiremanuscript.

Wil Rikmanspoel offered expert advice on preparing this pdf version of thetext.

Chapter 4 in part draws on “Science, technology and nonviolent action: thecase for a utopian dimension in the social analysis of science and technology,”Social Studies of Science, Vol. 27, 1997, pp. 439-463. Much of chapter 5 is adaptedfrom “Communication technology and nonviolent action,” Media Development,Vol. 43, No. 2, 1996, pp. 3-9. Chapter 7 is adapted from a portion of HelenGillett, Brian Martin and Chris Rust, “Building in nonviolence: nonviolentstruggle and the built environment,” Civilian-Based Defense, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall1996, pp. 1, 4-7.

Brian Martin, Technology for nonviolent struggle(London: War Resisters’ International, 2001)

Prologue

The vision of Aldous Huxley

In 1946, a remarkable essay by Aldous Huxleyentitled Science, Liberty and Peace was pub-lished.1 Huxley (1894-1963) is widely knownas a novelist whose most famous work, BraveNew World, was published in 1932. He wasalso a prolific and eloquent essayist in diversefields. Science, Liberty and Peace is filled withinsights about the connections between science,violence and nonviolence. Considering how farin advance of others Huxley was on this issue,it seems worthwhile examining how he arrivedat his conclusions.

Huxley’s essay begins with the point—quoting Leo Tolstoy from around the turn ofthe century—that if power in society is mostlyin the hands of a few people, then control overnature through science and technology willserve to increase power inequalities. Huxleypoints out that in the 1800s, armed liberationmight have seemed a reasonable prospect:barricades and sporting rifles could be used toresist the government’s cavalry and cannon.But with the development of weapons of massdestruction, people’s weapons were no longer amatch for the violence controlled by the state.Similarly, modern methods of mass persua-sion—notably the press and the radio—becometools for oppressors because they allow the fewto manipulate the many.

Mass production, the very foundation ofindustrial society, has aided this process,Huxley argues. Centralised production isfavoured by both governments and big busi-ness, and they put every obstacle possible in theface of decentralised production. In each ofthese developments—weapons, media andindustry—science and technology have playeda crucial role. The main thrust of science and

technology thus has served oppressors andhindered the expansion of peace and freedom.

Huxley’s analysis of society and science canbe traced back to one guiding principle: thatpower is corrupting. Huxley refers to LordActon, whose views on power are best knownthrough the aphorism “power tends to corruptand absolute power corrupts absolutely.”2 Ifpower is corrupting, then all technologies andsocial arrangements that allow or promoteconcentrations of power should be resisted.Huxley’s preferred path is decentralisation,which reduces the potential for abuse of power.

Huxley favours a society fundamentallydifferent from the one that existed in 1946.But how should change occur, given that theoverwhelming powers of violence and masspersuasion are held by what he calls the “rulingoligarchy”? Huxley believes that nonviolence isthe only way forward. He sees hope inGandhi’s methods, called satyagraha but morecommonly referred to in the west today asnonviolent action, and refers to the resistanceby the German people to the French andBelgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923.

Huxley argues for nonviolence as the onlyhopeful possibility given the power that scienceand technology, via modern weapons, hasplaced in the hands of oppressors. Huxley’ssupport for nonviolence can be interpreted asan independent principle of action to supple-ment his analysis based on the corruptions ofpower. But support for nonviolence is a logicalconsequence of an overall analysis based onthe idea that power is corrupting. Nonviolentaction, as a method of struggle, allows wide-spread participation, gives any individual onlylimited power over others, and is most com-patible with decentralised activity. Nonviolent

2 Technology for nonviolent struggle

action, then, is the method of struggle againstoppression that is least subject to the corrup-tions of power.

With his analysis based on the corruptinginfluence of power, Huxley is able to makemany penetrating insights. For example, henotes that oil is unevenly distributed through-out the world. Therefore, it is susceptible tomonopoly control, with wars being fought toacquire and maintain this control.3 Theobvious implication is that building an energysystem around oil makes society prone toinequality and war.

Huxley also makes the point that nuclearpower is complex and potentially destructiveand therefore a bad option. He prefers insteadthe development of regional energy self-suffi-ciency, which would minimise the social powerheld by any group.

The modern warfare state needs a strongcapital-goods industry and also the capacity tomobilise the entire population, either in themilitary or in industry, for war. Huxley waswell aware of this process during World War II.This universal mobilisation is easiest when thepopulation consists largely of rootless, prop-ertyless employees who depend on the state forvital services. Another value of large industry,from the point of view of the state, is that it ismuch easier to tax than small decentralisedmanufacturing.

Huxley also makes some important generalpoints. He laments the disastrous effects ofnationalism; he notes that preparation for waris useful to the holders of centralised politicalpower; and he says that socialist states combinethe worst aspects of centralisation of power.

Most of Huxley’s insights are fully relevantmore than half a century after they were firstpublished. The 1991 Gulf war is only the mostrecent example of a war fought over control ofoil supplies. Huxley’s concerns about nuclearpower and his support for decentralised energysources were taken up in a major way begin-ning in the 1970s. As for the process of mobili-sation for warfare, it is certainly the case thatmany populations around the world are even

more rootless and dependent on states than inthe 1940s. Huxley’s comments about thedanger of nationalism are still relevant today.The cold war is testimony to his point thatmobilisation for war serves the interests ofpolitical elites.4 The failures of socialist statesare now widely apparent.

On a few points Huxley’s vision was notquite accurate. Today, it is possible that totalmobilisation for war may be less necessary incountries with highly sophisticated weaponry,which make it possible for a relatively smallprofessional military force to wage war. This isone development that Huxley did not foresee.But it is quite compatible with his critique ofscience and technology as serving to increasethe power of oppressors.

He was worried about the opening of thearctic to food production, because it might bemonopolised by Russian and Anglo interests.This has not happened, but something similarseems to have occurred with the green revolu-tion and the current attempt by western corpo-rations to control Third World agriculturethrough genetically engineered organisms thatare controlled as a form of intellectual prop-erty. So even when Huxley’s specific concernshave not been borne out, his general analysisstill provides a fruitful perspective.

Huxley’s critique of science and technologyis a deep one. He sees them as having beendeveloped to serve powerholders. In order toserve liberty and peace, science and technologymust be redirected. Huxley recommends thatscientists boycott harmful work. He alsorecommends action to foster positive scientificresearch. This could be either political action toinspect or control scientific developments, oraction by scientists, for example to developregional self-sufficiency in food and energy.These strategies are still among the mostpromising ones today. One additional optioncould be added to Huxley’s list: the develop-ment of a movement for “community scienceand technology,” in which people, many ofwhom are outside the formal corps of profes-sional scientists and engineers, develop and

The vision of Aldous Huxley 3

promote science and technology that is rele-vant to community needs.5 This prospect wasnot outlined by Huxley, but it is quite compati-ble with his vision.

Huxley’s far-reaching and perceptive essayprovides an important lesson. It has no foot-notes and only mentions a few sources inpassing. It is an essay in the traditional sense,not a scholarly paper. In a world in whichscience and scholarship have become increas-ingly specialised, jargonised and professional-ised, it is salutory to know that crucial andlasting insights can be derived from a fewsound premises.

The response to Science, Liberty and Peacewas at best lukewarm. Reviewers ranged fromthe mildly critical to the openly hostile, gener-ally finding fault with one or more ofsatyagraha, decentralisation or the strategy ofrelying on scientists to bring about change.6

The time was not ripe for developing the linkbetween science and nonviolence. Huxley’sessay is virtually unmentioned in the fields ofboth peace research and the critique of sci-ence.7

In this book I develop ideas about technol-ogy and nonviolence that can be interpreted asa development and application of Huxley’svision. A recurring theme is that those tech-nologies that allow people to control their ownlives are the ones best suited to enabling acommunity to use nonviolent methods to resistaggression or oppression.

Notes1. Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty and Peace

(New York: Harper & Row, 1946; London:Chatto & Windus, 1947). It has been reprintedby the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute, 339Lafayette Street, New York NY 10012, USA.

2. Since Huxley wrote this essay, severalauthors have written about the corruptions ofpower, including Alex Comfort, Authority andDeliquency in the Modern State: A CriminologicalApproach to the Problem of Power (London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950); David Kipnis,The Powerholders (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1976); David Kipnis, Technology and Power(New York: Springer Verlag, 1990); Pitirim A.Sorokin and Walter A. Lunden, Power andMorality: Who Shall Guard the Guardians? (Boston:Porter Sargent, 1959). Kipnis’ work reports onpsychological experiments that provide strongevidence for Lord Acton’s insight.

3. This point has also been made by GodfreyBoyle, Living on the Sun: Harnessing RenewableEnergy for an Equitable Society (London: Calder &Boyars, 1975).

4. This point was also made most powerfully inthe opening of Herbert Marcuse, One DimensionalMan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

5. For further discussion, see chapter 9.6. Some significant reviews are P. W.

Bridgman, “Science and social evolution,” NewYork Times Book Review, 24 March 1946, pp. 3, 28;R. Brightman, “Science and peace,” Nature, Vol.160, 29 November 1947, pp. 733-734; R. T. Cox,Science, 31 January 1947, pp. 134-135; AnneFremantle, The Commonweal , 7 June 1946, pp.197-198; Joseph Wood Krutch, “The conditionof man,” The Nation, Vol. 162, No. 14, 6 April1946, pp. 402-403. I thank Mary Cawte fortracking down these and other reviews, plusconsiderable commentary on Huxley.

7. It is favourably cited and quoted in GodfreyBoyle, “Energy,” in Godfrey Boyle, Peter Harperand the editors of Undercurrents (eds.), RadicalTechnology (London: Wildwood House, 1976), pp.52-58, at p. 58.


Chapter 1

Introduction

Let’s begin with two bold propositions. First,methods of social action without violence canbe extremely powerful—indeed so powerful asto be a possible alternative to military defence.Second, technology, which is now massivelyoriented to military purposes, can be reorientedto support nonviolent action.

These two propositions, if followed through,lead to two striking conclusions. First, nonvio-lent struggle, which is normally seen as primar-ily a social and psychological process, has vitaltechnological dimensions. Second, reorientingtechnology to serve nonviolent struggle wouldinvolve a wholesale transformation of researchdirections, technological infrastructure andsocial decision making.

This is a quick overview of the task ahead inthis book. The rest of this introduction providesa more measured approach to key ideas. It isuseful to begin with weapons of war.

War has always involved suffering anddeath. Centuries ago weapons included swords,bows and arrows, catapults and battering rams,enough for plenty of killing. Today’s weaponsinclude rifles, tanks, giant battleships, aircraftfor saturation bombing, precision-guided mis-siles, landmines, and biological, chemical andnuclear weapons.1 Some types of weapons aremuch more powerful than in the past, whileothers are entirely new. It is now much easierfor military forces to kill large numbers ofpeople. Civilians are at much greater risk thanin earlier eras, in part due to the developmentof antipersonnel weapons such as clusterbombs.2 The rapid developments in technologyfor warfare over the past few centuries haverelied on the dedicated efforts of scientists andengineers.

One of the biggest problems with scienceand technology is their use in war. In 1975,prominent philosopher Arne Naess listed 13“current main grievances against science”which he considered to be justified and impor-tant. Second on his list was this: “Leadingscientists take part in creating new terrible andecologically devastating ways of warfare.Scientists support any state or regime if suffi-ciently rewarded. Some serve the State throughresearch on how to torture, and take part ininternational teaching on how to torture with-out organized opposition from colleagues.”3

In 1978, 26 individuals associated with theWorld Order Models Project, an initiativeseeking to develop visions of and methods toachieve a better world, endorsed a statemententitled “the perversion of science and tech-nology.” Focussing on the impact of scienceand technology on the Third World, thestatement listed the following problem as oneof the initial four points: “the employment of50 percent of all research scientists in the worldin military R&D [research and development];a significant proportion of that number fordeveloping the technology of mass destructionand repression.”4

In earlier eras, it was possible to imaginethat military technologies could be a source ofliberation as well as oppression. The sword andthe rifle can be used not only by rulers but alsoagainst them.5 But it is difficult to imaginecluster bombs and nuclear weapons being usedfor popular liberation. Modern weapons aremainly of use by governments against peoples,often against their own populations.

What is the alternative to military scienceand technology? The most common responseof the world’s governments is to seek controls,

Introduction 5

such as treaties against biological weapons oragreements on numbers of nuclear missiles.Such reforms are welcome enough but do littleor nothing to stem the development of evermore sophisticated weapons. Indeed, somecritics argue that arms control negotiationsserve only to regularise military races, not tohalt them.6

Whereas most governments seek only thoselimited controls on weapons to which theyagree, peace movements around the world havecalled for disarmament and totally getting ridof certain types of weapons, particularlynuclear, biological, chemical and antipersonnelweapons. Some groups and movements havepushed for complete elimination of weaponsand armies. Peace movement campaigns havehad some obvious successes, such as thebanning of above-ground tests of nuclearweapons, and also have created a climate ofopinion that has sometimes held backaggressive governments. However, peacemovement campaigns have seldom dealt di-rectly with the complex of scientific andtechnological operations serving military ends.

One exception to this is the movement for“peace conversion” or “economic conversion.”7

What this means is converting science, tech-nology and industry from military purposes tocivilian purposes, especially to activities thatserve human needs. This might mean con-verting a gun factory to a home appliancefactory or shifting from research into missileballistics to research into public transport.Historically, this sort of conversion was routineat the ends of major wars. But as militarytechnology becomes ever more specialised,conversion to civilian purposes becomes moredifficult. Converting production from militarytrucks to civilian trucks is not so difficult;converting production from nuclear submarinesto a useful civilian technology is quite achallenge. The technological dimension topeace conversion is actually the smaller hurdle.The major obstacle is the political andeconomic interests in continuing militaryproduction. These interests have become

entrenched since World War II, so thatgovernments administer what can be called a“permanent war economy.”

Peace conversion is a vital part of anyprocess of changing science and technology sothat they no longer serve to sustain war andrepression. But peace conversion can be onlyone part of this process, since it provides noalternative means of directly providing thesecurity that is the stated rationale for, ifseldom the consequence of, military forces.(The deeper driving forces behind militarysystems are discussed in chapter 2.)

One alternative to the military is nonviolentdefence. The military option involves profes-sional soldiers using specially designed instru-ments of violence to defend and attack.Nonviolent defence involves all concernedpeople using methods of nonviolent actionsuch as rallies, refusals to obey, strikes, boy-cotts, sit-ins and setting up alternative institu-tions. As a full alternative to military forces,nonviolent defence is also called social defence,civilian defence, civilian-based defence anddefence by civil resistance. From a nonviolenceviewpoint, only some functions of the mili-tary—notably defending the core values of asociety against attack—need to have anonviolent replacement. A nonviolent defencesystem would not take up other functions ofmilitaries, such as internal repression andthreatening other societies.

Methods of nonviolent action can also beused in campaigns against oppression, such asthe independence movement in India led byMohandas Gandhi and the US civil rightsmovement led by Martin Luther King, Jr.There are numerous other examples, some ofwhich are described later.

For those who are accustomed to thinkingabout weapons systems or to hearing abouthorrific wars and massacres around the world,nonviolent action at first glance may seemwoefully inadequate. Actually, though, it canbe an incredibly powerful technique. The keyto nonviolent action is promoting refusal toconsent. Even the most powerful weapons


system requires human decisions to build,maintain and operate it. If manufacturers,commanders or operators refuse to cooperate,weapons will not be created or used. There aremany examples where this process hasoccurred.

Most studies of nonviolent action havefocussed on social and psychological factors,such as how to mobilise support. This is appro-priate, since social and psychological factors arethe keys to successful nonviolent struggle.Nevertheless, there is a role for technologyappropriate for nonviolent defence. That is thetheme of this book.

Consider the vast resources, both humanand material, that have been devoted to mili-tary purposes for many decades. This includesdevelopment of weapons systems, training oflarge armies, military exercises, military indus-tries, and orientation of social institutions tomilitary ends. By comparison, only a tinyeffort has been made to improve methods ofnonviolent struggle. Is it any wonder thatnonviolent defence is not a well-developedalternative? Its occasional successes are all themore remarkable, considering that they areanalogous to the success of an army that hadno weapons production, no training, no moneyand no planning. The implication of thiscomparison is that nonviolent defence shouldnot be dismissed until it has been investigated,supported and tested on a scale similar tomilitary defence.

In the next chapter, the connectionsbetween technology and the military areanalysed. Chapter 3 gives a brief introductionto the dynamics of nonviolent action. Chapter4 introduces the main subject: how technologymight be used to support nonviolent struggle.

Nonviolent struggle potentially can involvenearly any area one can imagine, from sculp-ture to soccer. Since technology is increasinglypervasive, this means that design and choice oftechnology for nonviolent struggle also poten-tially affects nearly any conceivable area. Inmany areas, it seems, no one has even begun tothink through the implications. Chapters 5 to

8 give special attention to the key areas ofcommunication, survival, the built environ-ment and countering attack. Other areas thatmight be examined include art, sport, policing,prisons, money and jobs.8 Chapter 9 discussesthe implications of nonviolent action formethods of doing research. Chapter 10 ad-dresses the issue of “policy”: how to move frompresent-day militarised technology to a tech-nology useful for nonviolent struggle.

The approach I take is to start withnonviolent struggle and see what implicationsit has for technology. Of course this is not theonly way to approach these issues. Another isto start with a vision of a desired society—forexample, based on participation, self-reliance,equity and ecological sustainability, as well asnonviolence—and then see what technology ismost appropriate to create and sustain it.9 Butin practice these two approaches are not greatlydivergent, since in most cases the sort oftechnology suitable for nonviolent struggle isalso suitable for fostering participation, self-reliance and so forth, though in a few particu-lar areas there may be incompatibilities. I findit useful for the purpose of clarity to focus ontechnology for nonviolent struggle, whilenoting at various points the potential role ofthe same technology for promoting othervalues.

Introduction 7

Notes1. See, for example, Frank Barnaby, The

Automated Battlefield (New York: Free Press,1986); Martin van Creveld, Technology and War:From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: FreePress, 1989); James F. Dunnigan, How to MakeWar: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare(New York: Quill, 1983); James F. Dunnigan,Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponryand Tomorrow’s Brave New Battlefield (New York:St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Kenneth Macksey,Technology in War (New York: Prentice Hall,1986); William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power:Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D.1000(Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). On the continuingdanger of nuclear war, see William E. Burrows andRobert Windrem, Critical Mass: The Dangerous Racefor Superweapons in a Fragmenting World (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1994).

2. Eric Prokosch, The Technology of Killing: AMilitary and Political History of AntipersonnelWeapons (London: Zed Books, 1995).

3. Arne Naess, “Why not science for anarchiststoo? A reply to Feyerabend,” Inquiry, Vol. 18,1975, pp. 183-194, at p. 192.

4. Saul Mendlovitz and Rajni Kothari, “Theperversion of science and technology: an indict-ment,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 35, No.1, January 1979, pp. 57-59, at p. 57.

5. Even if armed liberation is possible, it maynot be a promising road to a better society, sinceit involves killing, secrecy, centralisation of powerand male domination. The armed liberators oftenbecome the new oppressors.

6. Johan Galtung, “Why do disarmamentnegotiations fail?” Gandhi Marg, nos. 38-39, May-June 1982, pp. 298-307; Johan Galtung, There AreAlternatives! Four Roads to Peace and Security(Nottingham: Spokesman, 1984), pp. 131-138;Alva Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament: How theUnited States and Russia Run the Arms Race (NewYork: Pantheon, 1976). Among other factors,disarmament negotiations keep control over theagenda in the hands of the dominant governmentsand dampen public concern by giving the illusionthat something is being done about the problem.

7. See, for example, Bonn InternationalCenter for Conversion, Conversion Survey 1996:Global Disarmament, Demilitarization and Demobili-zation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996);Seymour Melman, The Demilitarized Society:

Disarmament and Conversion (Montreal: HarvestHouse, 1988); Judith Reppy (ed.), Conversion ofMilitary R&D (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998);Peter Southwood, Disarming Military Industries:Turning an Outbreak of Peace into an Enduring Legacy(Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991); andthe journal Positive Alternatives, published by theCenter for Economic Conversion, 222 ViewStreet, Mountain View CA 94041-1344, USA.

8. On the topics of policing, prisons andeconomics from the perspective of social defence,see Brian Martin, Social Defence, Social Change(London: Freedom Press, 1993).

9. I thank Andreas Speck for emphasising thispoint. A theoretical foundation for this approachis given by Nicholas Maxwell, who argues thatmost scientific and scholarly work is based on the“philosophy of knowledge,” which assumes thatknowledge is of value in itself. Maxwell arguesthat the philosophy of knowledge should bereplaced by a “philosophy of wisdom,” in whichscience is directly geared to solve major problemsfacing humanity, such as poverty, repression andwar: Nicholas Maxwell, From Knowledge to Wisdom:A Revolution in the Aims and Methods of Science(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984); NicholasMaxwell, “What kind of inquiry can best help uscreate a good world?,” Science, Technology, &Human Values, Vol. 17, 1992, pp. 205-227.


Chapter 2

Militarised technology

In order to understand the potential role oftechnology for nonviolent struggle, it is usefulto understand the actual role of technology formilitary purposes. What is technology?1 Asimple and narrow definition is that technol-ogy is any physical object created or shaped byhumans (or other animals). Technologiesinclude paper, toothbrushes, clothes, violins,hammers, buildings, cars, factories, and geneti-cally modified organisms. These objects can becalled artefacts. A broader definition of tech-nology includes both artefacts and their socialcontext, such as the processes, methods andorganisations to produce and use them. Thisincludes things such as the manufacturingdivision of labour, just-in-time productionsystems, town planning and methods used inscientific laboratories. This broader definition isuseful for emphasising that artefacts only havemeaning within the context of their creationand use. In this book, the word “technology”refers to both artefacts and their social context.

Similarly, “science” can be defined as bothknowledge of the world and the social processesused to achieve it, including discussions inlaboratories, science education, scientific jour-nals and funding. The distinction betweenscience and technology, once commonly made,is increasingly blurred. The scientific enterpriseis deeply technological, relying heavily oninstruments and associated activities. Just asimportantly, the production of artefacts re-quires, in many cases, sophisticated scientificunderstanding. This is nowhere better illus-trated than in contemporary military scienceand technology. For example, the developmentof nuclear weapons depended on a deep under-standing of nuclear processes, and in turn

nuclear technologies provided means for devel-oping nuclear science. For convenience, I oftenrefer just to “technology” rather than “scienceand technology,” with the understanding thatthey are closely interlinked and that each canstand in for the other.

In this chapter, I examine military influ-ences on technology. Some influences areimmediate and obvious, such as militarycontracts to produce bazookas and cruisemissiles; others are deep and structural, such asmilitary links with capitalism and patriarchy.My approach is to start with the immediateinfluences and later discuss the deep ones. Thefirst section deals with military funding andapplications, training and employment, beliefsystems and suppression of challenges. Thesecond section deals with “countervailinginfluences,” namely factors that resist militaryinfluence on technology: civilian applications,bureaucratic interests and popular resistance.The final section discusses connections betweenthe military and social structures of the state,capitalism, bureaucracy and patriarchy, andhow they can affect technology.

Military shaping of technology

Military priorities play a major role in thedevelopment of many technologies.2 Figures 1and 2 illustrate how this process, which can becalled the military shaping of technology, canoccur. Factors such as funding and employ-ment are pictured as influences from the top(“military influence/context”). Military applica-tions are shown in the middle and civilianapplications at the bottom. Figure 1 shows thecase of science and technology that are very

Militarised technology 9

specifically oriented for military purposes, suchas the computer software in a cruise missile;there are only occasionally a few civilianspinoffs. Figure 2 shows a more general perspec-tive, looking at entire fields of science andtechnology. In this case, civilian applicationsare a significant competing influence.

With figure 1, the military-specific orienta-tion is blatant. With figure 2, it is clear thatboth military and civilian purposes may beserved by the same general fields. I now lookin more detail at the specific areas of military

funding and applications, training andemployment, belief systems and suppression ofchallenges.

Military funding and applicationsWhen money and other resources are providedto develop certain technologies, obviously thisis an enormously strong influence on whattechnologies are actually developed. Militarybudgets for research and development (R&D)around the world are huge. They have resultedin an amazing array of powerful and sophisti

military influence/context

specific technologies(cruise missiles,fragmentation bombs)

specific scientificknowledge(terrain contours,flesh-fragment dynamics)

civilian spinoffs

Figure 1. A model of military shaping emphasising military-specific science and technology.

civilian & military applications

military influence/context

civilian influence/context

generictechnologies(microelectronics,aerospace)

generic scientificknowledge(computational methods,aerodynamics)

Figure 2. A model of military shaping emphasising generic science and technology.


cated weapons, from land mines to aircraftcarriers.

Occasionally military funding leads to ideas,methods or products that are useful for civilianpurposes. For example, the computer networkcalled Internet grew out of a network set up bythe US Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency (DARPA). However, examples like thisare quite compatible with the idea that militaryfunding is a powerful way of shaping technolo-gies. The influence of funding simply makes itmore likely—not inevitable—that the resultingtechnologies will be mainly useful for militarypurposes.

“Funding” is a shorthand for a morecomplex process which can be called “militarytechnological innovation.”3 There are studiesof how military and political elites steer theprocess of deciding upon, developing anddeploying military technologies. This researchprovides insight into the specific features ofmilitary technological innovation in differentcountries and situations; it is fully compatiblewith the basic idea that military fundingpromotes and shapes technology to servemilitary purposes.

The military is always on the lookout foranything that can be used for its advantage.There is money to develop techniques andproducts. The possibility of applications has aninfluence on R&D, by encouraging at leastsome researchers to pursue areas where applica-tions are more likely. For example, some re-searchers in pure mathematics are more likelyto work in areas where there are possibleapplications. These applications might becomputational methods, theoretical chemistry,energy conservation or ballistics.

Sometimes entire fields are shaped bymilitary priorities. An obvious example isnuclear physics, which has received heavymilitary funding and provided jobs for manyresearchers. Furthermore, in several countriesgovernments pursued nuclear power pro-grammes as a means of keeping open theoption of acquiring nuclear weapons or (in theUS “Atoms for Peace” programme) to reposi-

tion nuclear technology as “peaceful.” Thepriority on nuclear weapons and nuclear powerhas meant that non-military nuclear physics,carried out in universities, has had a higherpriority than otherwise would have been thecase. Military researchers have been ready totake advantage of any advance from universityresearch. Without the military and commercialinterest in nuclear technology, it is likely thatother branches of physics such as solar physicswould have received greater attention.

Microelectronics and computing are otherfields that were, for many years, driven bymilitary applications.4 For example, the devel-opment of sophisticated nuclear weaponsmakes heavy demands on computer power. Inthe early decades of nuclear weapons, the USnuclear weapons design laboratories—LawrenceLivermore National Laboratory and LosAlamos National Laboratory—worked closelywith computer manufacturers to developmachines serving their particular requirementsfor high-speed numerical computation, and insome cases purchased a large proportion of theresulting production runs. Some of the choicesin the architecture of supercomputers conse-quently reflect military influences.5

Since the development of computers, thefield of numerical analysis—which, in part,deals with ways to solve problems using com-puters—has dramatically expanded, and thereare areas of pure mathematics that take upesoteric questions related to numerical analysis.Thus, the development of computers hasinfluenced the research priorities of somemathematicians; in turn, pure mathematicsresearch relating to numerical analysis occa-sionally leads to results that have practicalvalue.

In this way, possible applications influencethe direction of research. Military applicationsare one such application. Thus, although mostpure mathematicians do not have militaryapplications directly in mind, their work maybe oriented in directions making it more likelyto serve military purposes.


The large amount of US military fundingfor electronics in the years after World War IIactually led to few transfers for civilian uses.6

In recent years, commercial uses have played alarger role in microelectronics research.Commercialisation is even a goal for somemilitary-funded research.7

In the case of the insecticide DDT duringWorld War II, military applications served toaccelerate research in one particular direction.As a result of the emphasis on short-termcontrol of insect pests by chemicals to supportthe war effort, research into biological controlof pests declined rapidly, institutionalising apattern that has persisted long after commer-cial interests became the primary influence onpesticide research.8

The social science field of communicationstudies in the United States was shaped bymassive military funding and military agendas,especially in the early years 1945-1960. Themilitary’s interest in the field derived frominterest in psychological warfare which—inmilitary terms—included not just propagandabut also techniques such as deception, “dirtytricks,” assassination, and terrorism. Thiscontext was omitted from the academic face ofcommunication studies. Leading researchersand research centres received massive militarygrants. Major military studies were often laterpublished in academic forums, usually withoutacknowledgement of their link to the military.Communication research was oriented to thegoals of domination and manipulation of massaudiences. The development and use of now-standard survey techniques also reflectedmilitary priorities.9

Similarly, research in educational technol-ogy in the US has been heavily funded by themilitary, with military priorities of developingman-machine systems. Douglas Noble arguesthat computers in classrooms and computer-related procedures are not neutral tools, butrather reflect military goals. For example, wheneducational institutions operate in terms of“instructional delivery systems,” this can be

said to reflect a military interest in commandand control.10

It is worth emphasising that military shap-ing of science and technology can occur evenwhen researchers themselves do not realise thatmilitary funding or applications are influencingtheir work. It is always possible to debate thetrue purpose of any research. For example, inmilitary research on biological agents, militaryscientists and administrators may perceive orportray the research as “defensive”—designedto counter biological weapons of opponents—whereas outsiders may believe the research is aprelude to (offensive) biological warfare.11 This“ambiguity of research” is always present tosome degree, since any technology can be usedfor a variety of purposes, though more easilyfor some purposes than others.

In the following example, “pure” research istaken up by the military.

I did my PhD on the theory of denseplasma—the hot, ionised gas found at thecentre of the sun and red giant stars. Thework involved the calculation of the spatialcorrelations between the electrons andatomic nuclei making up this plasma. Thecalculations could be done mathematicallyrather than on a computer, but the work wasesoteric, painstaking and even a littletedious.

En route to take up a postdoctoral posi-tion in London, I stopped over at the Univer-sity of California in Berkeley to visit one ofmy thesis examiners. He congratulated me onthe thesis, and then remarked, ‘My col-leagues at Livermore are finding it very usefulfor their calculations of what happens at thecentre of a hydrogen bomb explosion.’

Aware that Livermore is a design labora-tory for nuclear weapons, I replied: ‘Surelynot! I thought of that possibility, butdiscarded it. My calculations are only validfor equilibrium systems. A hydrogen bombexplosion is not in equilibrium.’

‘Aha!’ he said. ‘Of course the Livermoregroup use enormous computer programs todo their non-equilibrium calculations. Butthey need to check these highly complexprograms by means of mathematical solu-


tions in special cases. Your calculations areplaying that role.’

A feature of this example from my youth-ful innocence was that the nuclear weaponsscientists were already using my calculationsbefore they had been published. But themain scientific application of my thesis whichI wished to see utilised, the correction of anerror in existing models of the solar interior,was only adopted three or four years later.12

Such personal concern to avoid military usesfor one’s research is not that common. Muchmore typical is a concern to do good scienceand not worry about applications. Seldom,though, is it expressed as bluntly as by a gradu-ate student at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology: “What I’m designing may oneday be used to kill millions of people … I don’tcare. That’s not my responsibility. I’m given aninteresting technological problem and I getenjoyment out of solving it.”13

Militaries need to ensure that weaponssystems work as desired. Therefore, they set upsystems to ensure compliance to militaryspecifications, or simply order certain productsor services that fit such specifications. Thesespecifications sometimes have an impact on“civilian” science and technology. In order toensure that weapons systems work, the USDepartment of Defense enforces regulationscovering certain required standards. Checks aremade of standards for the volt and ohm (unitsfor measuring electrical potential and resis-tance) either by auditors or, more recently, byinsisting on documentation of procedures.These standards may then be used in science.14

The influence of military R&D on techno-logical specifications is a more subtle influencethan the direct influence on choice of tech-nologies to produce. It is possible to delve intothe intricate issues of how standards or theform of civilian technologies have been shapedby military influences. But whether such influ-ences exist is less important than the obviousexistence of weapons: technologies designed tokill or destroy. The choice to produce weaponsis the key issue. Investigating subsequent influ-ences on the form or application of related

civilian technologies is an intriguing intellectualpuzzle but is not central to the problem oftechnology in war.

Training and employmentPrior to World War II, most scientific researchwas carried out by individuals or small groups,with small budgets. The war and the massivemilitary funding that accompanied and fol-lowed it led to science carried out on an indus-trial scale, with big funding, enormouslyexpensive pieces of apparatus, large teams ofworkers, managerial systems and centralisedcontrol, with an associated dependence onwealthy patrons, usually the government. Thissystem of “big science” is ideally designed toallow control over scientific agendas by statemanagers, among whom the military featuresprominently.15

Today, most scientists and technologists arefull-time professionals working for government,industry or universities. To get to these posi-tions, they first have to undergo a long periodof study and apprenticeship. To obtain aresearch post with some degree of authorityand influence in a field, the researcher mustproceed successfully through high school,university, PhD studies and often postdoctoralemployment. The employment situation andthe training to get there have a big impact onthe sort of work the researchers do.

Most scientific training promotes confor-mity to standard scientific ideas and methods.In school and university, students are seldomencouraged to question conventional ideas suchas cell structure, quantum theory or bridgedesign. Most science teachers simply teach “thefacts,” including a set of methods for solvingstandard problems. They might want in princi-ple to foster a more questioning approach, butin practice the syllabus is usually so filled withfacts and skills that there is little time to do so.Students who are good at solving complexproblems of the standard type—whether this iscalculus or chemical analysis—are given thegreatest encouragement through the system ofassignments, examinations and grades. Those


who develop their own methods, or who ques-tion the point of the exercises, are seldomfavoured, unless they are also extremely good atthe standard approaches.

By the time students are ready to begin theirresearch apprenticeship, they have imbibed thecurrent scientific world view. Research theninvolves a certain breaking down of the text-book picture of science, exploring areas whereanswers are less predictable and encouraginglimited challenges to orthodoxy.

Although scientific training promotesconventional orientations to science, a fewindividuals come through their education withunorthodox perspectives. However, it is mostdifficult to develop a career at variance withstandard views, because there are few jobs thatallow this. Most jobs in government and indus-try are for applied research and development,or in pure research very obviously related toapplied areas. Researchers in governmentagriculture departments might study transportof chemicals in soils. Chemical companies arelikely to employ researchers to develop moreeffective pesticides. University researcherstypically have more freedom, but they oftenrely on industry or government for grants toobtain equipment and technical support.Setting off in a research direction divergentfrom the standard one is not an easy road.

The military influence comes in at this level.The military provides jobs for a vast number ofscientists and engineers, perhaps one quarter oreven one half worldwide. Although a few mili-tary-funded scientists are able to do “pureresearch,” it is in areas of potential interest tothe military, such as theoretical nuclear physicsrather than sustainable agriculture.

The social location of most scientists andengineers who are not employed directly by themilitary is still quite convenient for militarypurposes. Most university and industry scien-tists and engineers are highly specialised intheir training and work: they cannot readilyswitch from mechanical engineering to micro-biology or vice versa. They are generally well-paid, see themselves as professionals and work

among peers. As a group of workers who aremainly highly specialised, professionally ori-ented employees, most scientists and engineersare receptive to doing work where there isample funding. They are trained and employedas technicians, namely to solve technicalpuzzles, and not to explore in depth whobenefits and loses from their work. The fundedresearch has to be in their field, so that theirspecialised skills can be brought to bear; it hasto be sufficiently well funded, in keeping withtheir professional status; and it has to be recog-nised as acceptable by their peers.

The military can take advantage of thissituation. Much military R&D requires highlyspecialised skills. The military has plenty ofmoney to pay for research. Finally, militaryfunding is acceptable to a good proportion ofscientists and engineers. Most corporations arehappy to have military funding, and so aremost universities.16 Most scientists and engi-neers are happy to accept whatever funding isavailable. There are also some who activelysolicit military support, proposing projects thatwill appeal to military funders.17

Occasionally, though, there is opposition byscientists to military research. The mostprominent case concerned the StrategicDefense Initiative (SDI), otherwise known as“star wars,” promoted by the US government.SDI was announced in 1983 during a massivemobilisation of the peace movement, and wasclearly an attempt to undermine opposition toUS government and military agendas. Thou-sands of scientists, seeing SDI as a continua-tion of the arms race, refused to seek or acceptfunding for SDI projects.18

However, this was an exceptional case, andeven so there were plenty of scientists who werequite willing to take money for SDI, often withthe rationalisation that they would use themoney for their own research purposes. Criticssaw SDI as both technically infeasible andmilitarily provocative. Many of those whosigned the pledge against receiving SDI fundingwere not opposed to military funding forresearch in areas not related to SDI; indeed,


many were seeking or in receipt of militaryfunding.

As noted, SDI was an exception, linked tothe strong antinuclear popular sentiment at thetime. In most cases, there is no attempt at aboycott, and only a minority of scientists refusemilitary largesse on an individual level. Forexample, the cream of western physicists joinedthe Manhattan Project during World War II toproduce the first nuclear weapons—of coursewith the honourable motivation of defeatingan evil enemy—and there has been no short-age of scientists to produce hydrogen bombs,antipersonnel weapons and instruments oftorture. When the Nazis took power inGermany in the 1930s, there was very littlepolitical resistance from the German physicscommunity even though top scientists weredismissed and pressured to emigrate.19

Groups that might challenge military priori-ties in a fundamental fashion, such as peacemovements, some churches, some trade unionsand some political movements, seldom havethe resources to fund scientific research, muchless large-scale technological development. Thetechnically trained labour force is mainlyavailable to those groups that can afford to payfor it. The military is in an excellent position todo so. Even when scientists and engineers areworking for industry and universities, or areunemployed, they provide a reserve labourforce of experts of potential value for militarypurposes.20

Belief systemsTechnology is shaped in various ways bysystems of belief, or ideology to use anotherexpression. At a basic level, it is necessary for aconsiderable number of people to believe intheir society’s superiority in order to justifykilling members of other societies, either indefending against attack or in launching one.Underlying the existence of the military is theassumption that it is legitimate to use technol-ogy to defend a society by force, including thesedays mass killing of enemy soldiers and civil-

ians. Technology is a means to achieve awidely shared aim.

Belief systems do not arise out of thin air.Education systems, cultural traditions, en-forcement of ideological orthodoxy and a hostof other mechanisms are involved. How beliefsinfluence technological development, and viceversa, is often hard to figure out. This topic isfar too big to deal with fully here, so a fewexamples will have to suffice.

In the 1920s, most aeroplanes were made ofwood but fully metal construction was heavilyresearched. The switch to metal aeroplanesoccurred before there was much evidence oftheir superiority, arguably because of beliefsabout science and progress. Metal symbolisedboth science and progress, hence far moreeffort was expended developing and justifyingmetal aeroplanes than improving woodenones.21

During the Vietnam war, US plannersconceptualised the war in terms of science,technology, bureaucracy and management.These were all areas in which the US wassuperior, hence defeat was unthinkable. Theconceptualisation of the war as technologicalled to the deployment of sophisticated weap-ons, contributed to the enormous human andenvironmental impact of the war (two millionVietnamese deaths), and helped obscure thereal reasons for US defeat.22

In the case of the Strategic Defense Initia-tive, there were massive military fundinginfluences on scientific research, but just asimportant were ideological factors. The massivefunding boom for star wars helped to drawcorporations into service to the US militaryand to weaken opposition to US militarypolicy, especially by promoting the idea thatthis was a “defence” system. Thus, althoughstar wars never came close to achieving itstechnological ambitions, it “worked” in botheconomic and political senses.23 On a widerscale, it can be argued that the US Cold Warvision of global power on the basis of auto-mated, centralised control both shaped thedevelopment of computers and was sustained


by both the technology and symbolism ofcomputers.24

Suppression of challengesMilitary funding, military applications and thetraining and employment of scientists andengineers are all influences that shape scienceand technology to be selectively useful formilitary purposes. Another influence operatesin a different way, by negative rather thanpositive reinforcement: when a developmentoccurs that challenges military priorities, it maybe subject to attack. This process is not alwaysstraightforward, so it is worth looking at a fewexamples. In each of these cases, military influ-ence is one among a number of influences onscience and technology.

Lucas Aerospace is a large corporation basedin the UK. Much of its work is for militarycontracts, specifically for aircraft. In the1970s, workers at Lucas, concerned about lossof employment from declining military orders,developed an alternative corporate plan.25 Thealternative plan included a number of productsthat could be produced with the facilities andskills available at Lucas, but which were de-signed to serve “human needs” such as masstransit or mobility of disabled people. Notethat the workers distinguished “human needs”from military contracts.

The management of Lucas consistentlyrefused to accept any of the workers’ proposals,insisting on managerial prerogatives, andrejecting even those alternatives that wereprojected to make a profit. This stance byLucas management was not taken at thebehest of the military, but it certainly servedmilitary ends (as well as maintaining manage-rial control). If initiatives such as those by theLucas workers had been successful and imitatedwidely, they might have been a threat to theusual acquiescent role taken by industry infulfilling military orders, and also a threat tothe achievement of military priorities fortechnological development.

In the 1980s, the US National SecurityAgency (NSA) attempted to put controls on

mathematical research in cryptography, thestudy of codes. Before publication, cryptogra-phy research was expected to be clearedthrough the NSA.26 In the 1990s, the NSAdeveloped a cryptography system—including acomputer chip, the “Clipper chip,” and anencryption algorithm, “Skipjack”—that wouldallow government agencies to read messagesunder certain conditions. Most computernetwork users strongly preferred encryptionsystems—of which a number were available—that could not be easily cracked by anyone.The US government banned export of encryp-tion systems while promoting the Clipper chip.The primary stated justification for the Clipperchip was monitoring of criminals, but the roleof the NSA showed the importance of militarypriorities. In this case, the alternative, a marketof encryption systems useful for commercial orprivate purposes, was opposed by militaryinterests.27

Another example is nuclear technology, inwhich military and civilian applications havelong overlapped. Nuclear power, inasmuch as itis perceived to be a civilian technology, helps tolegitimate nuclear technology generally,including nuclear weapons. There are manycases of critics of nuclear power—especiallyscientists and engineers—who have beenreprimanded, transferred, harassed, slanderedand dismissed.28 Another dimension to thisissue is the attack on alternatives to nuclearpower, such as cutbacks on funding for solarenergy.29

There are not so many examples of attackson critics within nuclear weapons programmes,probably because few weapons scientists are ina position to dissent openly and still have anychance of retaining their jobs. Andre Sakharovin the Soviet Union was a prominent criticwho was sent into internal exile as a result. Inthe United States, Hugh DeWitt, a theoreticalphysicist at Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory where nuclear weapons aredesigned, has spoken out against governmentweapons policies and come under attack withinthe lab several times as a result. The impor-


tance of such cases is not so much their effecton the individual dissidents, but the exampleprovided to others who might otherwise haveconsidered speaking out themselves. Even a fewcases of this sort send a strong message that it ismuch safer to work on the job as it is definedfrom above.30 In this way, conformity to mili-tary priorities is maintained.

Countervailing influences

Military shaping of technology is not all-powerful, otherwise every technology would beoriented to military purposes and we would allbe wearing combat boots and living in falloutshelters. It is worth outlining the main influ-ences that resist or challenge military prioritiesfor science and technology, namely civilianapplications, bureaucratic interests and popularresistance.

Civilian applicationsThis is undoubtedly the greatest influence,covering as it does influences from a host ofother factors from basic needs such as food andhousing to commerce and culture (includingart). Civilian interest groups, including corpora-tions, governments and consumers, usuallywant technologies to serve their immediatepurposes. In capitalist societies, cost in themarket is a key consideration. This explains,for example, why most industries are notdesigned to withstand a military attack. (Onlyin a few countries, such as Iraq, Sweden andSwitzerland, are some factories built under-ground or otherwise designed with militarythreats in mind.) In most countries, there arefew stockpiles of food, goods or strategic miner-als beyond what is dictated by the search forprofits. Most road and rail systems are designedprimarily for civilian purposes.

Military influences do have some influenceson all these areas, but civilian influences areusually much greater. Military influence ontechnology is greatest in areas where there islittle civilian interest, such as missiles.

Bureaucratic interestsWithin the military and within military indus-tries, officers, soldiers, managers and workershave jobs, status, authority, routines, standardways of thinking, and emotional commit-ments. In other words, the current way ofdoing things is a way of life. Changes in tech-nology also introduce the prospect of socialchanges. These social changes are likely to bewelcomed by some and opposed by others, inways that don’t necessarily correlate withmilitary efficiency. In other words, vestedinterests within various bureaucracies constituteone influence on technological development.

Sometimes the main vested interest can becalled conservatism, since it manifests itself asresistance to new technologies. For example,around 1900, when the new method of con-tinuous-aim firing from ships was proposed,bureaucrats within the US Navy at firstignored and then did everything possible todiscredit the method and delay its introduction,in spite of the fact that it was vastly superior tothe existing method. The reason for the resis-tance was that the new method entailedchanges in the organisation of tasks on board:it changed the arrangements in naval society.31

The introduction of the machine gunprovides another example of military conserva-tism. It was vastly more effective than riflesand, because of this, threatened to make obso-lete the traditional training and tactics basedon beliefs in the importance of courage andquality of troops. Plentiful evidence wasavailable of the superiority of the machine gunin various colonial wars, but these victorieswere attributed to white superiority over nativepeoples rather than to technological superior-ity. As a result, the implications of the machinegun for warfare were not grasped and inte-grated into military organisations and planninguntil well into World War I, when the suicidalimplications of infantry attacks on positionsdefended by machine guns eventually becameclear. Even in this situation, hundreds ofthousands of soldiers were killed before


commanders were willing to recognise thefailure of standard methods.32

Another example is the US-produced M-16rifle, which was the result of prolonged bureau-cratic manipulation. Another rifle had beendeveloped, the AR-15, which attained a highreputation among soldiers. However, EugeneStoner, the designer of the AR-15, workedoutside the Army’s arsenal system, and thusthis rifle was a threat to the bureaucratic statusquo. The AR-15 was subject to numerousdesign changes imposed by rigid specifications,many of which were irrelevant to practicalconditions, such as performing in freezingtemperatures. The design changes led to the M-16, which was much heavier, inconvenientand failure-prone, and led to more deaths inaction. Soldiers who were aware of the prob-lems with the M-16 wrote to their parents whoin turn put pressure on Congress. As a result,the sabotage of the AR-15 was exposed inhearings of Congress.33

These examples are distinctive becausestrong bureaucratic interests favoured a clearlyinferior technology for the purposes of warfare.However, bureaucratic interests are present atall times, and on many occasions they favoursuperior technology. This means that theadoption of a technology, whether technicallysuperior or inferior, may have occurred in partbecause of bureaucratic considerations.

More generally, it is a reasonable assump-tion that military leaders will not voluntarilyadopt any technology that undermines theneed or rationale for their existence. As will bediscussed later, even when nonviolent methodsof struggle are superior in terms of reducing thethreat from an enemy, militaries favour mili-tary methods. Military strength creates its ownnecessity, by posing a threat to other societiesand stimulating military races.

Without actual war, military technologieswould not need to be efficient for warfare, butcould serve other functions, such as maintain-ing current bureaucratic systems, creatingprofits for industry and providing symbols ofpower and masculinity. During the Cold War,

it has been argued, western military weaponrybecame more and more “baroque,” namelyexcessively expensive and complicated andhence not likely to be particularly effective.34

The Cold War confrontation provided thejustification for massive military expenditures,but there was no practical testing of weaponsdesigned for war between major industrialpowers.

Popular resistanceAnother key factor in technological develop-ment for the military is the unwillingness ofpeople to support certain methods of fighting.“People” here includes civilians, politicians,soldiers, military commanders and engineers.

The role of civilians has been considerable.Peace movements have campaigned againstvarious sorts of weapons and, in some cases,against any form of organised violence. Therehave been campaigns against nuclear, biologi-cal, chemical and antipersonnel weapons,among others. In many cases these campaignsare supported by government leaders. Theresults can be seen in the limited use of biologi-cal, chemical and nuclear weapons in warfareand in treaties against these weapons. Thepopular revulsion against certain types ofweapons and warfare is a powerful factor. Butthis popular revulsion is subject to change.Before World War II, aerial bombing wasthought to be totally outrageous; the 1937bombing of Guernica by the German-sup-ported fascists in Spain generated intenseanguish. Yet aerial bombing was adopted byboth sides in World War II. Through a gradualprocess of expansion from military to civiliantargets, aerial bombing became a much more“acceptable” method of warfare. In the future,it is quite possible that biological, chemical ornuclear warfare may become seen as standardprocedure, most likely as a result of all-out war.Many people have worked and continue towork to ensure that this does not occur,through publicity, international law, and de-struction of stocks of weapons.


Soldiers and officers also have ideas aboutwhat is acceptable in warfare, and these ideashave an important impact on technologicaldevelopment. In previous centuries, armiesfaced each other in set-piece confrontations, inways that, by present-day standards, seemincredibly restrained. Then, relatively fewcivilians were killed; technologies were designedmainly for killing soldiers. Today, many morecivilians are killed in wars than soldiers;weapons of mass destruction are designed forthis purpose.

Most people are highly reluctant to hurtothers. Soldiers have to be trained to kill,especially when the enemy is confronted face-to-face. There is evidence that most front-linesoldiers in World War II and other wars did notfire their rifles, and that many of those whodid fire intended to miss. In many countries,armies cannot be filled by volunteers; conscrip-tion is needed. Technological development hasmade it easier to kill at a distance, withoutrecognising the enemy as a person. Engineerswho design bombers and pilots who fly themcan maintain a psychological distance fromthe people who are being attacked. It is possibleto see much of modern weapons developmentas a response to a pressure to use fewer peoplein fighting and to reduce the need for face-to-face combat. In this way, the repulsion mostpeople feel towards killing is sidestepped.Another way to overcome this repulsion is to

train soldiers using highly realistic simulationsso that responses become automatic. This hasbeen done increasingly in the US military sinceWorld War II, with correspondingly greaterpsychological impacts on those soldiers whoengage in “intimate” killing, such as in theVietnam war.35

With modern poisons and other smallweapons, it is now possible for one individualbehind enemy lines—especially an agent whohas joined the other side’s armed forces—to bemore potent than a whole battalion of front-line soldiers. By planting poisons in watersupplies or in the food of individuals or by justslitting throats, one agent could kill hundredsof soldiers and cause a crisis in morale. Tech-nological developments could aid such anapproach to warfare. But this has not been amajor R&D focus compared to conventionalweapons. One reason is that it would be diffi-cult to recruit soldiers to undertake this sort ofkilling. Also, if adopted by both sides, it wouldbe a threat to the military command, sinceagents would target officers who, in conven-tional warfare, are least likely to be killed.

Taking into account these various counter-vailing influences, it is possible to present amore complicated picture of military shaping ofscience and technology. Figure 3 shows some ofthe influences and some of the connections.

government

technologies

scientific knowledge

applications

military funding

military bureaucracy

enemies

popular resistanceFigure 3. A model of military shaping showing a variety of specific influences on science and technology.


Deeper links

So far in this discussion of military influenceson the development and use of technologies, ithas been assumed that the purpose of themilitary is simply to defend societies againstaggression. This is the usual picture drawn bymilitaries and governments and widely believedby members of the public. But there is anotherviewpoint: that the military is tied in funda-mental ways to social structures, especially thestate, capitalism, bureaucracy and patriarchy.In this picture, the military both supports andis supported by these structures. This has impli-cations for understanding military-relatedtechnology.

Only occasionally are contemporary mili-tary forces used to engage in combat againstmilitary forces of another country. It is actuallymuch more common for a country’s military tobe used against the people of the country itself,most obviously in military dictatorships. Thissuggests that militaries have as much to dowith social control—in the interests of certaingroups in a society—as with defence againstforeign threats. At the global level, militaryforces and alliances such as NATO serve toprotect dominant groups from challenge. Forexample, NATO troops help to sustain globaleconomic inequality.

The state, in a sociological sense, can bedefined as a community based on a monopolyover organised violence within a territory, thisviolence being considered “legitimate” by thestate itself.36 In modern societies, organisedviolence is only considered legitimate whenexercised by the police or the military. Thestate is more commonly thought of as beingcomposed of the government (includingnational and local officials), governmentbureaucracies, the legal system, the military,and government-run operations such asschools. The state maintains itself financiallymainly through taxes, administers services andregulations through government bureaucracies,and maintains order through the police andthe legal system. In any major challenge to the

system—such as refusal to pay taxes—thepolice and, if necessary, the military areavailable to maintain state power. War is aprimary impetus behind the rise of the state.Indeed, war-making and state-making aremutually reinforcing.37

The state must defend against externalthreats, to be sure, but internal threats aremore frequent and more complex. Mostcontemporary states administer unequalsocieties, with wealth, status and privilegedistributed very unevenly, usually accompaniedby systematic methods to maintain thisinequality, such as class structure and sexualand ethnic discrimination. The pervasiveinjustice of societies stimulates challenges to thestatus quo. In societies with representativegovernments, the usual methods of socialcontrol are schooling, manipulation of percep-tion through the mass media, systems oflegitimacy such as parliaments and courts, andthe economic system. But when these systemsare not sufficient to protect the interests ofdominant groups, the police and the militarymay be deployed, for example to arrest demon-strators or break strikes.

During the cold war, the superpowers couldjustify their massive arsenals by pointing to thethreat posed by the enemy. The cold war isover but military spending, though somewhatcut back, continues at a very high rate. It hasbeen widely remarked by commentators thatthe US Department of Defense and spyagencies have been desperately searching fornew legitimations for their existence—favouriterationales are “rogue states,” terrorism and thedrug trade. The lack of an overt justificationfor a continuing military megamachine pro-vides added weight to explanations referring tothe military’s role in maintaining systems ofinequality.

The links between the military and the statealso have implications for technology. A largeproportion of funding for R&D comes from thestate. This includes many nominally civilianareas, such as transport systems, communica-tions, sewerage, energy and industry. Planners


within the state are likely to prefer technologi-cal systems that ensure continuation of statepower.

For example, central provision of energy,through oil and natural gas supplies andthrough electricity produced at large powerstations, is ideally suited for allowing statecontrol or regulation. Taxes can easily beimposed on such energy operations, sinceconsumers must obtain their energy from a fewlarge suppliers. Contrast this with a communityin which building design eliminates the needfor most energy for heating, town planningallows most people to walk or ride bicycles, andsmall local enterprises provide for energy fromthe sun, wind and biofuels. With such acommunity, there is much less need for strongstate intervention. The energy system is lowrisk: there is no hazard from nuclear reactoraccidents, large oil spills, or sabotage of elec-tricity generating plants. There is less depend-ence on external supplies, and hence resourcecontrol—and struggles over this control—is notso vital an issue. There is no great need forheavy investment in automobile manufactureor freeway construction, and hence less needfor central regulation or funding in these sortsof areas. Because the community is largely self-sufficient in energy, there is less justification fortaxing the energy sector.38

As will be discussed in chapter 6, theconventional high-energy-use system, with itshigh risks, high vulnerability to disruption andlarge economic investments, also makes it atarget for military attack. Thus, military forcesare needed to defend such a system. Bycontrast, the low-energy self-reliant system hasmuch less need for military defence.39 Thisexample shows the mutually consistent andreinforcing roles of the state and the military.The energy system that provides a convenientvehicle for state intervention and extraction ofresources (taxes) for the state is also one thatrequires and justifies the military. Part of thestate’s extraction of resources is to provideenergy supplies for the military itself. Central-ised provision of energy is convenient for this

purpose. By contrast, a system built aroundenergy efficiency, solar heaters and townplanning to reduce transport doesn’t providemuch scope for supporting an energy-hungrymilitary.

From the point of view of the state, thetraditional dichotomies between “peace” and“war” and between “civil” and “military” areincreasingly irrelevant. The military capacityof a state depends on systems of education andtraining, R&D and industry, all ostensibly“civil” arenas. Especially since World War II,the states of industrial societies have pursuedpolicies concerning knowledge and productionthat lay the basis for technological warfare.40

Monopoly capitalism—built around largecorporations with active intervention by thestate in support of these corporations—favourstechnologies that also tend to be useful for themilitary. The automobile industry is anexample. A transport system based on largeproduction plants is relatively easy to adapt formilitary purposes. This is partly because theplants can be converted to produce militarygoods, but more because the plants are con-trolled by a few people through large corporatebureaucracies. This organisational structure iseasily influenced to serve military ends, eitherthrough military contracts or through directadministration in wartime.41 By contrast, aproduction system based on smaller enterprisesproducing more bicycles and fewer heavyvehicles, with a great deal of worker control, isless subject to central control either by capital-ists or military administrators.

The economic system commonly calledcommunism—but better described as statesocialism, bureaucratic socialism or statecapitalism—serves military imperatives evenmore directly and easily than monopolycapitalism.42 In the case of both capitalism andstate socialism, the large scale of production,the role of the state in regulation and thesystem of bureaucratic management of enter-prises all favour technological systems that arecompatible with military purposes.


Similar considerations apply to the role ofbureaucracy, which can be defined as a way oforganising work built around the principle thatworkers are replaceable cogs.43 Bureaucraciesare hierarchical, based on a division of labourand operate using standardised procedures.Most government bodies are organised asbureaucracies, but so are large corporations,political parties, churches, trade unions andmany other organisations. The military isperhaps the ultimate in bureaucracies, with itsrigid hierarchy (the ranks) and system ofcommand. Bureaucracy is the basic organisingprinciple of the state, monopoly capitalism andthe military. The technological systems fa-voured by bureaucratic elites are ones thatensure them a continuing role and position ofpower. They tend to favour large systemsrequiring centralised control, such as centralisedwelfare systems and large hospitals. The previ-ous examples of transport and energy illustratethe interests of bureaucratic elites.

Yet another important social structurelinked to the military is patriarchy, the organ-ised social domination of men over women.Patriarchy is a pervasive set of relationships,including male violence against women,control over reproductive choice, discrimina-tion in employment, devaluation of childrearing, different social expectations for menand women, and many other dimensions. It ispossible to argue that any system of unequalpower, such as systems of central governmentand corporate management, are patriarchal inthemselves; in any case, they are highlycompatible with patriarchy, since men controlmost of the elite positions and regularly usetheir positions to maintain male privilege.

Militaries are notoriously patriarchal.44

Most soldiers and almost all top commandersare men, and most military forces stronglydenigrate human characteristics that areconsidered feminine. On the other hand,militaries are designed for fighting against othermen. Women are victims, to be sure, both ascivilian casualties and through being raped inwartime and within the military itself. But, it

may be argued, the function of patriarchy is toallow some men to dominate other men (aswell as women). If men are mobilised to defendmale privilege and male identity againstwomen, it becomes easier to maintain the roleof elites (who are mostly men).

The overt influence of patriarchy on scienceand technology can be found in a number ofareas, such as reproductive technologies andtheories of brain lateralisation. In terms ofmilitary technology, though, perhaps the great-est—if rather diffuse—influence is the built-inpreference for violence and technology, whichgoes to the core of the military role in society.Violence is commonly associated with mascu-linity, whereas nonviolence is seen as stereo-typically feminine. (This helps explain thecommon but quite false presumption thatnonviolence means being passive.) Also, it is acharacteristically masculine trait to be unemo-tional and aloof. Technology that allowskilling at a distance thus meshes with acommon conception of masculinity.

In recent decades, traditional forms of maledomination in the military have come underthreat as women seek equality within thearmed services in some countries. Furthermore,some military women—seeing themselves asfeminists—argue that they bring a differentsensibility to the military role, with theirgreater ability to relate to local people, espe-cially women, in UN intervention missions.This suggests that the conventional picture ofmilitaries as composed of men exhibiting atraditional masculinity may no longer beadequate.45 Women can adopt masculinevalues and men can adopt feminine values,and both types of values can be expressed ineither positive or damaging ways. Thus, womencan enter the military with the aim of makingit less oppressive, but at the risk of themselvesbecoming acculturated to the military ethos ofcompetitiveness, hierarchy, domination andviolence. This struggle between military andfeminist values will also be played out instruggles over choices and uses of militarytechnology.


This discussion of deep links between themilitary and the state, capitalism, bureaucracyand patriarchy, and implications for scienceand technology, has only introduced a fewideas from a topic with many dimensions.46

The issues are complex and seldom addressed.Nevertheless, a few key points are worthstating again. The military and military-in-spired technology are not designed just fordefence against foreign enemies, but are morecentrally involved in maintaining social con-trol. This control is at the service of the state,of economic elites (in today’s societies, mostcommonly capitalists), of elite bureaucrats, andof the system of male domination. Under-standing the shaping of science and technologyfor military purposes thus is not a simple under-taking, since it ultimately involves analysis ofall social institutions. A possible picture is given

in figure 4. Although this figure encompassesmore of the processes involved, its vaguenessreduces its usefulness. For many purposes figure1, for example, is more helpful. Models shouldbe chosen because of their value in providinginsight, and sometimes simple—and henceinaccurate or incomplete—models are morehelpful.47

In this chapter I have focussed on militaryinfluences on and uses of technology. Anotherperspective is that technology is shaped moregenerally by the structures of the state, capital-ism, patriarchy, etc., with which the military islargely compatible. So even without a directmilitary influence, technology might still be“militarised”—oriented to military purposes—toa considerable extent. This model is compatiblewith figure 4. I’m not sure whether it is a betterway to understand what’s going on.

context of the state, capitalism, bureaucracy, patriarchy, etc.

government

military funding

military bureaucracy

technologies

enemies

scientific knowledge

applications

popular resistance

Figure 4. A model of military shaping showing a variety of specific influences on science and technology inthe context of social structures. There are no arrows because the various items are mixed together in a

“soup” of mutual interactions.


Notes1. Theories of technology are discussed in the

appendix. The general model adopted here is thatmilitary and other social factors influence but donot determine technology, and that any specifictechnology is easier to use for some purposes thanothers.

2. General treatments of the influence of themilitary on science and technology include J. D.Bernal, The Social Function of Science (London:George Routledge & Sons, 1939), chapter VII;Robin Clarke, The Science of War and Peace(London: Jonathan Cape, 1971); Paul Dickson,The Electronic Battlefield (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1976); Everett Mendelsohn,“Science, technology and the military: patterns ofinteraction,” in Jean-Jacques Salomon (ed.),Science War and Peace (Paris: Economica, 1990),pp. 49-70; Everett H. Mendelsohn, Merritt RoeSmith and Peter Weingart (eds.), Science, Technol-ogy and the Military (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988);Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society inSeventeenth Century England (New York: HowardFertig, 1970 [1938]); John U. Nef, War andHuman Progress: An Essay on the Rise of IndustrialCivilization (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1950); Merritt Roe Smith (ed.), Military Enterpriseand Technological Change: Perspectives on the AmericanExperience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).References to specific areas are given later. Onarms production and trade, see William W.Keller, Arm in Arm: The Political Economy of theGlobal Arms Trade (New York: HarperCollins,1995); Keith Krause, Arms and the State: Patterns ofMilitary Production and Trade (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992).

3. See for example Matthew Evangelista,Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United Statesand the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technolo-gies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988);Wim A. Smit, John Grin and Lev Voronkov(eds.), Military Technological Innovation and Stabilityin a Changing World: Politically Assessing and Influenc-ing Weapon Innovation and Military Research andDevelopment (Amsterdam: VU University Press,1992).

4. Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Paul N.Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and thePolitics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Paul Forman,

“Behind quantum electronics: national security asbasis for physical research in the United States,1940-1960,” Historical Studies in the Physical andBiological Sciences, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1987, pp. 149-229; Brian Martin, “Computing and war,” Peaceand Change, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1989, pp. 203-222.

5. Donald MacKenzie, “The influence of theLos Alamos and Livermore National Laboratorieson the development of supercomputing,” Annalsof the History of Computing, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1991,pp. 179-201.

6. Robert DeGrasse, “The military andsemiconductors,” in John Tirman (ed.), TheMilitarization of High Technology (Cambridge, MA:Ballinger, 1984), pp. 77-104.

7. Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi,“The technological impact of a defence researchestablishment,” in Richard Coopey, Matthew R.H. Uttley and Graham Spinardi (eds.), DefenceScience and Technology: Adjusting to Change (Chur,Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers,1993), pp. 85-124.

8. John H. Perkins, “Reshaping technology inwartime: the effect of military goals on entomo-logical research and insect-control practices,”Technology and Culture, Vol. 19, No. 2, April 1978,pp. 169-186.

9. Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion:Communication Research and Psychological Warfare1945-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press,1994). I thank Mary Cawte for drawing this bookto my attention.

10. Douglas D. Noble, The Classroom Arsenal:Military Research, Information Technology, and PublicEducation (London: Falmer Press, 1991).

11. Susan Wright and Stuart Ketcham, “Theproblem of interpreting the U.S. biologicaldefense research program,” in Susan Wright (ed.),Preventing a Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 1990), pp. 169-196.

12. Mark Diesendorf, “On being a dissidentscientist,” Ockham’s Razor 2 (Sydney: AustralianBroadcasting Corporation, 1988), pp. 9-14, at p.10.

13. Quoted in Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold Warand American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York:Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 238.

14. Joseph O’Connell, “Metrology: thecreation of universality by the circulation of


particulars,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 23, No.1, February 1993, pp. 129-173. Andreas Speckgives the additional example that standards forGerman roads and airport runways—such as thewidth and the strength of the base—are set bymilitary criteria.

15. Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of PureScience (New York: New American Library, 1971);Gregory McLauchlan, “The advent of nuclearweapons and the formation of the scientific-military-industrial complex in World War II,” inGregg B. Walker, David A. Bella and Steven J.Sprecher (eds.), The Military-Industrial Complex:Eisenhower’s Warning Three Decades Later (NewYork: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 101-127.

16. On university-military links, see Annals ofthe American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,Vol. 502, March 1989; David Dickson, The NewPolitics of Science (New York: Pantheon, 1984),chapter 3; Jonathan Feldman, Universities in theBusiness of Repression: The Academic-Military-Industrial Complex and Central America (Boston:South End Press, 1989); Daniel S. Greenberg, ThePolitics of Pure Science (New York: New AmericanLibrary, 1971); Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold Warand American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York:Columbia University Press, 1993); ChristopherSimpson (ed.), Universities and Empire: Money andPolitics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War(New York: New Press, 1998); ClarkThomborson, “Role of military funding inacademic computer science,” in David Bellin andGary Chapman (eds.), Computers in Battle—WillThey Work? (Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1987), pp. 283-296.

17. Bruno Vitale, “Scientists as militaryhustlers,” in Issues in Radical Science (London: FreeAssociation Books, 1985), pp. 73-87.

18. David Cortright, Peace Works: The Citizen’sRole in Ending the Cold War (Boulder: WestviewPress, 1993), pp. 179-186; Steve Nadis, “Afterthe boycott: how scientists are stopping SDI,”Science for the People, No. 20, January-February1988, pp. 21-26.

19. Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler:Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). Ithank Mary Cawte for mentioning this reference.

20. On scientists as a reserve labour force seeChandra Mukerji, A Fragile Power: Scientists and the

State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1989).

21. Eric Schatzberg, “Ideology and technicalchoice: the decline of the wooden airplane in theUnited States, 1920-1945,” Technology and Culture ,Vol. 35, No. 1, January 1994, p. 34-69.

22. James William Gibson, The Perfect War:Technowar in Vietnam (Boston: Atlantic MonthlyPress, 1986).

23. Vincent Mosco, “The military informationsociety and ‘star wars’,” in The Pay-Per Society:Computers and Communication in the Information Age(Toronto: Garamond, 1989), pp. 131-172, alsopublished in revised form as “Strategic offence:star wars as military hegemony,” in Les Levidowand Kevin Robins (eds.), Cyborg Worlds: TheMilitary Information Society (London: Free Associa-tion Books, 1989), pp. 87-112.

24. Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World:Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold WarAmerica (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

25. Hilary Wainwright and Dave Elliott, TheLucas Plan: A New Trade Unionism in the Making?(London: Allison and Busby, 1982).

26. David Dickson, The New Politics of Science(New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 141-145.

27. Lance J. Hoffman (ed.), Building in BigBrother: The Cryptographic Policy Debate (New York:Springer-Verlag, 1995).

28. Leslie J. Freeman, Nuclear Witnesses (NewYork: Norton, 1981); Brian Martin, “Nuclearsuppression,” Science and Public Policy, Vol. 13, No.6, December 1986, pp. 312-320.

29. Daniel M. Berman and John T. O’Connor,Who Owns the Sun? People, Politics, and the Strugglefor a Solar Economy (White River Junction,Vermont: Chelsea Green, 1996); Ray Reece, TheSun Betrayed: A Report on the Corporate Seizure ofU.S. Solar Energy Development (Boston: South EndPress, 1979).

30. Brian Martin, “Suppression of dissent inscience,” Research in Social Problems and PublicPolicy, Vol. 7, 1999, pp. 105-135.

31. Elting E. Morison, Men, Machines, andModern Times (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966),chapter 2.

32. John Ellis, The Social History of the MachineGun (London: Croom Helm, 1975).

33. James Fallows, “The American Army andthe M-16 rifle,” in Donald MacKenzie and JudyWajcman (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology


(Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985),pp. 239-251.

34. Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal (London:Andre Deutsch, 1982).

35. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychologi-cal Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society(Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).

36. There is a large amount of writing aboutvarious forces that have weakened the power ofthe state, including transnational corporations,international organisations and social movements.Undoubtedly the state is no longer hegemonic, ifit ever was. When it comes to examining themilitary, the state remains the dominant influ-ence, but there is an increasing role being playedby mercenaries, militias and international“peacekeeping” forces. Mary Kaldor, New and OldWars: Organized Violence in a Global Era(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999) provides aninsightful analysis of the recent transformation ofwar from state-based invasion-and-defence modeto a postmodern form with state, paramilitary,criminal and international actors involved in amixture of war, organised crime and mass humanrights violations.

37. On the state and the military, see EkkehartKrippendorff, Staat und Krieg: Die Historische LogikPolitischer Unvernunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1985), as reviewed by Johan Galtung, “The state,the military and war,” Journal of Peace Research,Vol. 26, No. 1, 1989, pp. 101-105 (I thank MaryCawte for this reference); Bruce D. Porter, Warand the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations ofModern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994);Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States,AD 990-1992 (Cambridge MA: Blackwell, 1992).For the case of the US, see Gregory Hooks,Forging the Military-Industrial Complex: World WarII’s Battle of the Potomac (Urbana: University ofIllinois Press, 1991).

38. Andreas Speck notes that an alternativeinterpretation is that centralised energy systemsare more a result of capitalist interests, with bigcompanies using their control to keep competi-tors small and dependent.

39. A self-reliant system is much more usefulin an actual war, since it cannot be destroyed aseasily. The point here is that centralised systems,through their very vulnerability, provide astronger justification for military defence.

40. Maurice Pearton, The Knowledgeable State:Diplomacy, War and Technology since 1830 (London:Burnett Books, 1982).

41. For a nice treatment of different relation-ships between the state and war industry in theUnited States, see Gregory Hooks and GregoryMcLauchlan, “The institutional foundations ofwarmaking: three eras of U.S. warmaking, 1939-1989,” Theory and Society, Vol. 21, 1992, pp. 757-788.

42. See for example Carl Gustav Jacobsen,“Arms Build-ups under Socialism: The USSR andChina,” in N. P. Gleditsch and O. Njølstad,(eds.), Arms Races: Technological and PoliticalDynamics (London: Sage, 1990), pp. 285-294.

43. Fred Emery (personal communication)provided this convenient encapsulation ofbureaucracy.

44. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? TheMilitarisation of Women’s Lives (London: Pluto,1983); Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: SexualPolitics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1993); BettyReardon, Sexism and the War System (New York:Teachers College Press, 1985); Jeanne Vickers,Women and War (London: Zed Books, 1993). Onchallenging this situation, see Birgit Brock-Utne,Educating for Peace: A Feminist Perspective (NewYork: Pergamon, 1985).

45. I thank Ellen Elster for suggesting thesepoints.

46. Brian Martin, Uprooting War (London:Freedom Press, 1984). It is possible to go furtherand argue that science and technology havealways been linked with warfare and that thisconnection is integral in western societies. See,for example, Jacques Grinevald, “The greening ofEurope,” Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 22, No. 1,1991, pp. 41-47. I thank Mary Cawte for findingthis reference.

47. Models are always simplifications of theobject or situation modelled, and hence inaccu-rate and incomplete to a greater or lesser degree.Simple models usually are easier to understandand work with. The question is, which simplica-tions should be made? See Brian Martin, Informa-tion Liberation (London: Freedom Press, 1998),chapter 8.


Chapter 3

Nonviolent struggle

Having looked at militarised technology, it isintriguing to ask, “what would technology belike if it was motivated by an entirely differentgoal?” There are, of course, many possiblenonmilitary goals. The relevant one here isnonviolent struggle.

To many people it may seem that militaryweapons are so sophisticated and powerful thatit would be impossible to stop them except byother weapons. This line of thought is sensibleso far as the weapons are concerned. Its flaw isthat weapons do not operate themselves.1

To win a battle or a war, humans mustcooperate. To begin, victory requires that “theenemy” stops resisting. The enemy army maybe defeated and disarmed, but the populationcan continue resisting. What then? The peoplecan simply be killed until they agree to cooper-ate. If they continue to resist, then all of themcan be killed. End of story. In reality, popula-tions do cooperate, at least to some degree, wellbefore total extermination.

But there is another sort of cooperationrequired: cooperation by the commanders,soldiers and civilians in the victorious power. Itis impossible to continue to kill “the enemy” ifno one agrees to do it. This is where nonviolentaction comes in. It works, in part, by promot-ing noncooperation.

Methods of nonviolent action includepetitions, slogans, rallies, marches, strikes,boycotts, fasts, sit-ins, setting up alternativeinstitutions, and many others. Any methodnot involving physical violence is a possibility.Nonviolent action can be used by workersseeking higher pay, women opposing maleviolence or local citizens opposing a freeway.When nonviolent action is used systematically

to obtain a particular objective, such as stop-ping arms shipments to a country or opposingracial harassment, this will be called nonvio-lent struggle or a nonviolent campaign.

As the term “nonviolent action” suggests,the emphasis is on action, not passivity. Butthe action has to be nonviolent, meaning thatit does not cause physical harm to others.2

Violent actions include imprisonment, beat-ings, maiming, torture and killing.

Like any distinction, the distinction betweenviolence and nonviolence is not always clear-cut. What about violence against property,such as sabotage? What about “emotionalviolence”? What about self-immolation? Whatabout a nonviolent technique that leads tophysical harm, such as a strike by maintenanceworkers that leads to people being hurt inaccidents? These and other issues have beenand need to be debated, since the answersderive as much from social values as from logic.In any case, the main distinction is clearenough. Military methods are based centrallyon threatening and using violence againstpeople and property. Nonviolent methods arebuilt on refusing to cooperate without causingphysical harm to others.

All the available evidence shows thathuman beings have no instinctual urge tophysically harm other people.3 Indeed, coop-eration is much more “natural” than competi-tion.4 Without day-to-day cooperation, what iscalled society would be impossible.

Military forces have to work hard to get overthe natural resistance that humans haveagainst killing each other. Most people do notwant to join armies, hence the need to promotenationalistic fervour and, if necessary,

Nonviolent struggle 27

introduce conscription, especially in wartime.To get a person to kill on command—as isrequired in armies—requires extensive training.To prevent soldiers from fleeing in the face ofbattle, stiff penalties, including summaryexecution, are used.

As the standard of living rises, people are lessand less willing to be conscripted, and manyarmies are becoming fully professional.5 In thissituation, the main motivation for joining up isno longer compulsion, patriotism or peerpressure, but jobs and careers. When most ofthose who join do so because they are unable toobtain other jobs, this can be called “economicconscription.”

Another factor is that most members ofhigh-technology armed forces do not engage inface-to-face combat. The vast majority remainbehind the lines as planners, mechanics, cooks,accountants and the like. Even many of thosewho are on the “front line,” such as pilots andtank drivers, do not see the eyeballs of thosethey are trying to defeat. Killing is much easierat a distance.6

On the front line, soldiers may kill becausethey have been trained to do so, to protecttheir buddies, to maintain their self-image orout of fear of being killed themselves.Dehumanisation and hatred of the enemymake this easier. They also make it easier torally civilians behind the military effort.Commanders—both politicians and militarychiefs—regularly create fear about the dangerfrom the enemy. Aggression by the “other side”is used as a justification for retaliation, even ifthe “retaliation” is vastly disproportionate towhat preceded it. German Führer Adolf Hitler,in justifying the invasion of Poland in 1939,created a fabricated attack by Polish troops.US President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 usedthe alleged Tonkin Gulf incident in Vietnam asthe excuse for a massive mobilisation of UStroops.

These examples illustrate that violence oftenprovides the justification for counterviolence.When one group or one country uses violence,the other side feels justified in using violence in

return, thereby justifying the original violence.This process is behind the familiar idea ofmilitary races. In the case of violence, theprinciple of fighting fire with fire simply leadsto a bigger fire.

Nonviolent action challenges and under-mines the cycle of violence. If one side in astruggle renounces violence, then soldiers onthe other side need not fear for their lives. Aswell, the justification for violence is greatlyweakened. This means that it becomes muchharder for the commanders on the side stillauthorising the use of violence to actually getsoldiers to obey orders to use it.

One of the most famous uses of nonviolentaction was the struggle for independence ofIndia from Great Britain, waged under theleadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Thisstruggle went on for several decades untilindependence was achieved in 1947. Some ofthe methods used were rallies, marches, boy-cotts of British textiles, Indian production ofcloth in villages as a symbol of autonomy, andcivil disobedience to laws prohibiting manufac-ture of salt. On the Indian side, the independ-ence campaign was largely, though notentirely, nonviolent. The British, in turn, diduse violence at times—there were some majormassacres of unarmed civilians, and thousandsof Indians killed overall—but were remarkablyrestrained.

Many people attribute this restraint to theBritish being particularly kind colonialists.Other evidence suggests a different view. InKenya, another British colony, the independ-ence movement in the 1950s—called the MauMau rebellion—had an armed wing. Britishsettlers carried out the most dreadful violenceon the native Kenyans, perpetrating massacresand setting up dozens of concentration campsin which anyone suspected of being a MauMau was liable to be tortured relentlessly,leading to numerous deaths.7 The obviousexplanation for the difference between Britishbehaviour in India and in Kenya is that thelimited armed struggle by the Mau Mauprovided a justification for massive British


violence. By maintaining nonviolent discipline,the Indian independence movement inhibitedBritish violence.8

In both cases, a key element was publicopinion in Britain itself. Within both Indiaand Kenya, more violence might have beenused against the independence movementsexcept for the political repercussions backhome. Massacres of unarmed civilians in Indiacaused outrage within Britain. However,massacres in Kenya created less impact becausethe struggle was—and was seen to be—violenton both sides. Even so, when reliable reports ofextensive torture and deaths in Kenyanconcentration camps became known inBritain, this was a key factor in the granting ofindependence. Significantly also, many Britishtroops and commanders in Kenya wereappalled at the violence perpetrated by theBritish settlers.

Nonviolent campaigns are largely strugglesfor loyalties. First is the loyalty of the peoplewaging the nonviolent struggle, such as theIndians under British rule. Initially, only somemay support the struggle and only a few maybe willing to take a stand. Using only nonvio-lent methods allows others to join in, sinceanyone can participate in nonviolent actions,unlike armed force where young fit men are themain participants. If the other side usesviolence against the nonviolent resisters, this islikely to create outrage in the community andgenerate increased support.

When the Palestine Liberation Organisationendorsed the use of violence to oppose Israelirule in the occupied territories, this limited thedegree of support from the Palestinians them-selves. Only a few Palestinians participated insecretly organised violent acts, often againstcivilians—commonly called “terrorism”9—intended to overthrow Israeli military occupa-tion. In 1987, a spontaneous unarmed opposi-tion to Israeli rule developed, called the inti-fada. Independent of the PLO, it involvedrallies, vigils, strikes, tax refusal, boycotts ofIsraeli businesses, shop closing, self-sufficiencythrough local gardens, home-based schooling

when schools were shut down, and many othertactics. Many Palestinians threw stones atIsraeli soldiers, but otherwise almost all themethods used were nonviolent. The range ofnonviolent methods used meant that everyonecould be involved, for example by observing aboycott. As a result of the nonviolence of mostof the methods, many more Palestiniansbecame involved in the intifada than had everbeen involved in terrorism, and many morePalestinians supported the resistance than be-fore, for example including rich Palestinians.10

Nonviolent action is also effective in win-ning the loyalty of soldiers on the other side. Ifthey are opposed only by nonviolent methods,they are less likely to be willing to obey ordersto beat or kill. The fear of being killed them-selves is largely removed, and the justificationfor killing is greatly weakened. Many Israelisoldiers were repelled by their commanders’orders or expectations that they beat unarmedresisters. Another example occurred in 1986 inthe Philippines during the popular nonviolentresistance to the Marcos dictatorship, in whatwas called “people power.” Hundreds of thou-sands of people lined the street in protest.Soldiers refused to fire on the demonstrators. Asmall contingent of troops declared their loy-alty to the popularly elected president CoryAquino. These troops were “defended” bymassive numbers of nonviolent demonstratorsin the surrounding streets. Pilots sent to bombthe rebel soldiers did not carry out their missionfor fear of harming the nearby civilians.

Nonviolent action thus can be effective inwinning the loyalty of two key groups: theparticipants or potential participants in thenonviolent struggle and the soldiers on theother side. It is also effective in winning theloyalty of a third group: people elsewhere in theworld, especially those in the country deployingthe troops against an unarmed population.Killing of unarmed civilians is a cause foroutrage; military action against a populationusing only nonviolent methods is likely tostimulate the creation of an opposition move-ment. The intifada quickly won the sympathy


of people around the world for the plight of thePalestinians, something that years of terroristactivity by the PLO had never achieved. Themassacre of civilians at Sharpeville in SouthAfrica in 1960 generated enormous oppositionto apartheid throughout the world. By con-trast, killings of far more people in the course ofguerrilla warfare seldom lead to any attentionor concern at all.

There are numerous historical examples ofthe use of nonviolent action, some of whichare mentioned in later chapters.11 For thepurposes here, it is only necessary to note thatnonviolent struggle is a possible alternative toarmed struggle. Rather than using violence tosubjugate or destroy the enemy, nonviolentstruggle works by building the will to resist andby undermining the will of the opponent.

Nonviolent methods are widely used insocial struggles. One famous example is the civilrights movement in the United States, led byMartin Luther King, Jr. Campaigns by envi-ronmentalists, feminists and many others arealmost entirely nonviolent, though sometimesviolence is used against them.

It is possible to imagine organised nonvio-lent action as an alternative to militarydefence. When a community makes systematicplans and preparations to use nonviolentaction to defend itself against aggression orrepression, this can be called social defence,nonviolent defence, civilian defence, civilian-based defence or defence by civil resistance.12

Social defence can be considered to be a specialapplication of nonviolent struggle, namely to

defend a community against military aggres-sion or repression. The community could be atown, an ethnic group, a country or a transna-tional organisation.

In reality, no sizeable community has everintroduced social defence, so discussions abouthow it would operate are based on what isknown about actual nonviolent struggles.There are some important differences in theway that nonviolent defence is conceived.Some see it as a functional replacement formilitary defence, focussing on national de-fence, with the rest of society pretty muchunchanged. This orientation is often associatedwith the name civilian-based defence.13 Adifferent orientation, indeed almost a differentdefinition, sees social defence as virtually anyform of nonviolent action against govern-ments, and aims at major social changethrough nonviolence. This orientation isadopted by many grassroots activists.

My preference is to define social defence asan alternative to military defence, but notrestrict “defence” to defence of the state.Rather, defence of “community” is the key,leaving considerable ambiguity in the termcommunity. This is compatible with the grass-roots orientation to social change but retainsan emphasis on defence against militaryaggression and repression.

Whatever the definition, there are someimportant differences between military defenceand social defence, as suggested by the follow-ing table.

Military defence Social defenceMeans of struggle Violent action Nonviolent actionParticipants Mostly professional soldiers,

especially young fit menPotentially everyone

Thing defended The state; ruling class Community; a way of lifeMethod of organisation Bureaucracy; chain of

commandNetwork, consensus and/orbureaucracy

Characteristic technologies Weapons Network communicationand community self-reliance


Why use nonviolent methods?

For those who do not have armies or sophisti-cated weapons, nonviolence is likely to be moreeffective than violence.14 Groups that oppose amilitary dictatorship, for example, have nochance of matching the firepower of the state.Militaries have planes, tanks, missiles andadvanced surveillance technologies. Guerrillaopponents often have little more than guns,and also usually far fewer soldiers.

Technological developments have increasedthe military advantage held by governmentsover opponents. In a direct military confronta-tion, guerrillas will almost always lose. Theironly chance is to use political means to winpopular support and undermine the cohesive-ness of the ruling group. Guerrilla warfare is inpractice mainly a form of political struggle withprecisely this aim. Guerrillas can win supportby promoting land reform, opposing exploita-tion by local elites, carrying out labour to helpthe people, and by being honest and frugalrather than corrupt.

However, the impact of guerrilla warfare asan oppositional strategy is limited by its use ofviolence. Nonviolent methods are more effec-tive in winning support from the uncommittedpopulation and in causing splits among thesupporters of the regime.15

Nonviolent methods are more participatoryand democratic. To use violence usually meansthat only small numbers can be involved andthat secrecy must be maintained. Nonviolentmethods allow nearly everyone to be involvedwho wants to be. Because less secrecy is re-quired, there can be more open discussion ofgoals and strategies, thus fostering a moredemocratic culture in the opposition move-ment. Thus, even if those cases where nonvio-lence does not undermine rulers as quickly inthe short term as violence, activists with apriority on participatory democracy have goodreasons for favouring nonviolent action.

By fostering greater participation anddemocracy in opposition movements, there is agreater chance that, after a dictatorial regime is

toppled, the new society will be an improve-ment. A great danger in successful guerrillastruggles is that the secrecy, centralisedcommand and violence—not to mentionruthless annihilation of factional oppo-nents—will usher in a new regime in whichsecrecy, centralised command and violencecontinue to be used against opponents.Nonviolence, by allowing women to participateequally and by fostering a model of couragewithout violence, helps to undercut themutually reinforcing package of violence andstereotypical masculinity. In addition, nonvio-lent methods provide a suitable means tooppose male violence against women.

Supporters of violence (even as a last resort)argue that the end—a better society—justifiesthe means. The contrary view is that themeans become incorporated in the ends andthat, for example, secrecy, centralised controland violence are likely to perpetuate ratherthan undermine themselves. Ensuring that themeans reflect or incorporate the ends is a saferstrategy for social change. If a nonviolentstruggle for change succeeds, the methods usedset a precedent for continuing their use in anongoing fashion. If the struggle fails, at least inthe short run, the process may still lay the basisfor future nonviolent struggles.

Finally, nonviolent struggle is less likely thanviolence to lead to death and suffering alongthe way. Those who practise nonviolence donot cause death and suffering by their ownactions, though it is always possible and some-times likely that violence will be used againstthem. But because nonviolent methods are lessof a threat and because it is harder to getsoldiers or police to attack nonviolent resisters,there is usually far less violence from the otherside. For example, in Algeria the guerrilla strug-gle for independence from France left a millionpeople dead. The death toll in the largelynonviolent struggle for Indian independencewas in the hundreds or thousands, out of a farlarger population than Algeria.

Pacifists refuse to engage in warfare becausethey believe it is morally wrong. To use


violence requires a certain arrogance, a belief inthe righteousness of one’s cause that warrantsthe irrevocable step of taking another’s life. Ifone accepts the possibility that people—including oneself—might change their mindsand that dialogue is a path for seeking thetruth, then nonviolence is a suitable process formoral struggle. Violence, on the other hand,undermines and overwhelms dialogue.

Nonviolent action is compatible with apacifist commitment, though not all pacifistssupport or engage in nonviolent struggle.16 Butto support nonviolent action it is not necessaryto be a pacifist. Probably the majority ofactivists who choose to use nonviolent methodsdo so for pragmatic reasons, namely becausethey are believe nonviolent action will be moreeffective and more compatible with the sort ofsociety they are seeking.

The question is, “what sorts of technologywould aid nonviolent struggle?” Existing tech-nologies have been massively shaped bymilitary priorities. What would they look like ifinstead they were shaped by a priority onnonviolent struggle?

Most of the debate about defence policy isbuilt around the assumption that defencemeans military defence, and usually thecapacity for military offence as well. Quite afew supporters of nuclear disarmament want toretain so-called conventional weapons, such astanks, submarines, aircraft and explosives. Inthe days of the cold war, a key decision inmany countries was whether to be aligned withone of the two blocs led by the superpowers(the United States and the Soviet Union),whether instead to become or remain non-aligned, or whether to become neutral (likeSwitzerland). Many debates were carried outconcerning these options. A few governmentsconsidered “defensive defence,” in which offen-sive weapons, such as bombers and long-rangemissiles, would be eschewed in order to reducethe threat posed to other countries. In theThird World, guerrilla struggles have beenwaged for decades and have been seen as a

model by some revolutionaries in the richcountries.

Although many types of defence systemshave been used and proposed, all but one ofthem ultimately rely on organised violence. Foreach of these, then, violence thus becomes akey motivator for technological development,as shown by the following table. Only socialdefence provides a fundamentally differentincentive.

Defence system Role of technologistsNuclear Making weapons of war,

including nuclear weaponsConventional,aligned

Making weapons of war

Conventional,nonaligned

Making weapons of war

Armed neutrality Making weapons of warDefensivemilitary defence

Making weapons of war(defensive only)

Guerrilla warfare Making weapons of war(mostly small scale)

Social defence Making tools fornonviolent struggle

The following chapters focus on technologythat can support a social defence system,namely a community defence system based onnonviolent action.

Sabotage

Sabotage includes such things as jammingfactory equipment, destroying computer filesand putting sand in a vehicle’s fuel tank. Thereis a long history of sabotage in the workplace,much of it due to workers being bored, alien-ated or seeking revenge on bosses.17 There isalso some use of sabotage in a more directedfashion to resist repression. For example, someworkers in Nazi-occupied Europe slowed downfactory production in various subtle ways,trying to hurt the Nazi war effort withoutbeing easily identified and consequentlypunished. There has been some debate amongnonviolent activists and scholars about


whether sabotage—violence against prop-erty—should be considered violent or nonvio-lent, as well as whether it is a good tactic. Here,though, I want to address a different issue: issabotage a useful way to push for changes intechnologies and the social arrangementsassociated with them?

A few writers and activists have supported astrategy involving sabotage.18 This approachhas the advantages of encouraging actionrather than passivity, of attacking the directmanifestation of oppression without hurtingpeople, and of causing economic harm to theowners of the technology. There are also somesevere limitations to this approach. Becausemost saboteurs do not want to be caught, usingsabotage fosters secrecy and individualism andmakes groups vulnerable to infiltration. It canalienate potential supporters. Opponents ofmonkeywrenching routinely claim that itcauses danger to life and limb, such as toworkers in timber mills at risk due to hiddennails in trees. This rhetoric highlights theimportance of not only being nonviolent but ofbeing seen to be nonviolent.

For the purposes here, a key problem is thatsabotage is negative: by itself, it offers nopicture of a desirable society. The idea oftechnology for nonviolent struggle, by contrast,is based directly on such a picture.

There are some principled saboteurs, such asthe peace activists who hammer missile nosecones, pour blood on military files or damagerail lines used to transport nuclear materials,and who after taking action then fullyacknowledge their responsibility and surrenderthemselves to police.19 These sorts of actionscan be thought of as a form of civil disobedi-ence, with the primary impact occurringthrough symbolism rather than economicdisruption.

It would be possible to investigate the mostappropriate technologies for engaging insabotage, whether carried out covertly oropenly, as part of a grassroots nonviolentstruggle against repression, aggression or oppres-sion—acknowledging the view by some activists

that sabotage is incompatible with theprinciples of nonviolent action. I have notdone this here, so this remains an area deserv-ing further investigation.

Notes1. Robots and other automatic devices do

operate themselves to some extent, and this maybe a future emphasis in warfare. But this onlymoves the discussion back to the design ofweapons. Robots do not design themselves—atleast not yet.

2. This is a narrow definition of nonviolence.Some activists and scholars prefer a broaderdefinition, such as the Gandhian conception ofnonviolence as a way of life and a principledmethod of challenging oppression and building aself-reliant and self-governing society. See RobertJ. Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: AGandhian Approach (Albany, NY: State Universityof New York Press, 1996).

3. Jeffrey H. Goldstein, Aggression and Crimes ofViolence (New York: Oxford University Press,1975); Ashley Montagu, The Nature of HumanAggression (New York: Oxford University Press,1976).

4. Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case AgainstCompetition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).

5. David Cortright and Max Watts, Left Face:Soldier Unions and Resistance Movements in ModernArmies (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1991).

6. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The PsychologicalCost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston:Little, Brown, 1995).

7. Robert B. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An AfricanCrucible (New York: Free Press, 1989).

8. This comparison of India and Kenya wasmade by Robert J. Burrowes, The Strategy ofNonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach (Albany,NY: State University of New York Press, 1996),p. 239.

9. Terrorism as normally defined refers only tosmall nonstate actors. Arguably, terrorism on a farlarger scale is carried out by governments. See forexample Edward S. Herman, The Real TerrorNetwork: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda (Boston:South End Press, 1982).

10. Souad R. Dajani, Eyes Without Country:Searching for a Palestinian Strategy of Liberation(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994);


Andrew Rigby, Living the Intifada (London: ZedBooks, 1991).

11. Numerous examples are given in GeneSharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston:Porter Sargent, 1973), the classic source in thefield. See also Jacques Semelin, Unarmed againstHitler: Civilian Resistance in Europe, 1939-1943(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).

12. Anders Boserup and Andrew Mack, WarWithout Weapons: Non-violence in National Defence(London: Frances Pinter, 1974); Burrowes, op.cit.; Theodor Ebert, Gewaltfreier Aufstand:Alternative zum Bürgerkrieg [Nonviolent Insurrection:Alternative to Civil War] (Freiburg: Rombach,1968); Gustaaf Geeraerts (editor), Possibilities ofCivilian Defence in Western Europe (Amsterdam:Swets and Zeitlinger, 1977); Stephen King-Hall,Defence in the Nuclear Age (London: VictorGollancz, 1958); Bradford Lyttle, National DefenseThru Nonviolent Resistance (Chicago, IL: Shahn-tiSena, 1958); Brian Martin, Social Defence, SocialChange (London: Freedom Press, 1993); MichaelRandle, Civil Resistance (London: Fontana, 1994);Adam Roberts (editor), The Strategy of CivilianDefence: Non-violent Resistance to Aggression (London:Faber and Faber, 1967); Gene Sharp, MakingEurope Unconquerable: The Potential of Civilian-basedDeterrence and Defense (Cambridge, Mass.:Ballinger, 1985); Gene Sharp with the assistanceof Bruce Jenkins, Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1990); Franklin Zahn, Alternativeto the Pentagon: Nonviolent Methods of Defending aNation (Nyack, NY: Fellowship Publications,1996).

13. Gene Sharp is the most prominentadvocate of this perspective.

14. Nonviolence can also be more effectivethan violence for those who do have armies. Manyof the points below apply.

15. Stephen Zunes, “Unarmed insurrectionsagainst authoritarian governments in the ThirdWorld: a new kind of revolution,” Third WorldQuarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1994, pp. 403-426.

16. Some pacifists oppose social defencebecause it perpetuates the idea of the enemy.They believe instead that the goal should be acooperative society. Supporters of social defenceaccept that it is impossible (or even undesirable)to eliminate conflict and argue instead that the

goal should be to wage conflict using nonviolentrather than violent methods.

17. Pierre Dubois, Sabotage in Industry(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). For numerousexamples see Martin Sprouse with Lydia Ely(eds.), Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotesof Dissatisfaction, Mischief and Revenge (San Fran-cisco: Pressure Drop Press, 1992).

18. The most notable are David F. Noble,Progress without People: In Defense of Luddism(Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1993) and the radicalenvironmental group Earth First!, for which keybooks are Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood(eds.), Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching(Tucson, AZ: Ned Ludd Books, 1988, secondedition) and Earth First! Direct Action Manual(Eugene, OR: DAM Collective, 1997). See alsoThe Black Cat Sabotage Handbook (Eugene, OR:Graybill, n.d.) and the magazine Processed World .

19. See for example Per Herngren, Path ofResistance: The Practice of Civil Disobedience (Phila-delphia: New Society Publishers, 1993); LianeEllison Norman, Hammer of Justice: Molly Rush andthe Plowshares Eight (Pittsburgh: PPI Books, 1989).I thank Andreas Speck for helpful commentsconcerning sabotage.


Chapter 4

Priorities for research and development

Suppose you have control over lots of moneyfor research and development and want tospend it in the best way possible to serve mili-tary purposes. What areas have priority? Theusual practice is simply to look at currentfunding and to assess which areas are produc-ing valuable results. Some unproductiveareas—unproductive for military purposes, thatis—can be dropped, and some new areas can beadded, drawn from new funding proposals.

Prior funding patterns provide little guidancein setting priorities for science and technologyfor nonviolent rather than military purposessince there has been almost no funding fornonviolent struggle, much less for relevantscience and technology. There has been a littlefunding for social analyses of the feasibility ofsocial defence, but that’s about all.

Another possibility is to examine the use ofscience and technology in actual nonviolentstruggles, and then to assess whether there aretechnological improvements that would aid thestruggle. This might involve looking at the useof radio in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the roleof agriculture and food delivery systems inPalestine during the intifada. This approach isvaluable in gaining a feeling for particularresearch projects, but it does not provide anoverview of the areas of science and technologymost likely to be useful for nonviolent struggle.

Research proposals

The next possibility is to look at proposals forresearch. To get an overview, it is useful to lookat the Dutch book Research on Civilian-BasedDefence, which describes in detail 24 areas formajor research projects into social defence.1

Here is a sketch of these projects.

• An inventory of organisations and socialstructures, such as government bureaucracies,corporations and pressure groups, examininghow an aggressor might seek to control themand how they might be strengthened to resisttakeover.

• An examination of centralised versusdecentralised coordination of social defence,surveying studies of resistance to the Nazisduring World War II, guerrilla warfare, militarystrategy and other areas.

• Collection of information about technolo-gies of repression and what can be done tooppose them. (This is discussed in chapter 8.)

• An examination of the influence of thenew information technologies on the capacityfor both repression and social defence. (This isa central theme in chapter 5.)

• An investigation of databases and per-sonal files, how they might be misused andprotected, and the social effects of measures fordealing with them. (This topic is dealt withbriefly in chapter 5.)

• An assessment of the value of instructionsfor workers in government bureaucracies onresisting occupation by an aggressor.

• An inventory of key people and positionsin government bureaucracies in relation tosocial defence.

• A study of the reception to the idea ofsocial defence, surveying social defence advo-cates, media, government bureaucracies, etc.

• A study of factors promoting psychologicalhealth, focussing on child rearing and theschool system, and their relevance to willing-ness to resist injustice.

Priorities for research and development 35

• A listing and examination of basic as-sumptions and unsolved questions in writingsabout social defence.

• A survey of theories and ideas of writers onnonviolent resistance and their relevance toaction.

• An analysis of Dutch nonviolent struggleduring the 1920s and 1930s and Dutch resis-tance to the Nazis.

• An assessment of Alex Schmid’s ten condi-tions needed for the success of social defence.

• An examination of the process of conver-sion from military defence to social defence,called “transarmament.” (An aspect of this isdiscussed in chapter 10.)

• An assessment of the value to socialdefence of Lazare Carnot’s method of studyingnew fields “by stating problems as doublenegating sentences to come to new knowledge.”

• An examination of the idea of the centreof gravity in a defence system, looking at boththeory and case studies.

• An inventory of means of confrontation,their relationships, their connection to thecentre of gravity, and their relevance to strate-gic goals.

• A study of different social defence securitysystems and how building each one up mightaffect social conditions after a war.

• An examination of Jürgen Habermas’sdistinction between strategic action andcommunicative action and the relevance ofthis distinction to social defence.

• An inventory of goals and weapons ofopponents of social defence, and an assessmentof likely conflicts.

• An examination of occupations by mili-tary forces since World War II and implica-tions for social defence.

• A study of the political effects of intro-ducing social defence, including effects ondiplomacy, the economic system and politicalstructures.

• An analysis of spying (“intelligence serv-ices”), how it might operate against a socialdefence system and how it might be resisted.

• An examination of what and how infor-mation might need to be collected as part of asocial defence system; in other words, anexamination of social defence intelligenceservices.

Most of these research projects would requireyears of investigation. Their scope is notrevealed by these brief descriptions. This listhints at the vast amount of research that couldbe carried out into social defence. Indeed, giventhat the military spends billions of dollars eachyear on research, it can be anticipated that afull-scale social defence system might spawn asimilar mass of research. Therefore, the 24projects listed here from de Valk’s book wouldonly be the barest beginning of a full-scalesocial defence research effort.

Most of the 24 projects are social ratherthan technological: they deal largely withhistory, psychology, politics, ideology, strategyand policy. Only three—the third, fourth andfifth as listed—provide any focus on technol-ogy. This gives an indication of the relativeneglect of the technological dimension in thenonviolence field. Indeed, searching throughwritings on nonviolence, there is remarkablylittle attention to technology, so it is worthmentioning those few writers who deal with it.

The earliest and most important was novel-ist and essayist Aldous Huxley, whose ideas aredescribed in the prologue. Then there is leadingpeace researcher Johan Galtung, who has madespecific suggestions for specific technologicaldevelopments that would aid a social defencesystem, especially in his 1968 paper “On thestrategy of nonmilitary defense: some proposalsand problems.” He suggests, for example, thatresearch could be done into how to design acountry’s physical equipment so that it can besabotaged appropriately. Since Galtung’s ideasare so insightful, it is worth quoting his entireaccount on this point.

The task would not be to blow up a factorycompletely, but to remove that minimum partwhich would cause maximum uselessness. Whichpart this is and how much will have to beremoved would be a subject of meticulous


calculation, where the availability of substi-tutes, or substitute uses of the remaining partsof the factory, would play a great role. Suchcalculations are well within the reach ofmodern, computerized societies. Thus, in anairplane it would probably not lead to theremoval of the propeller (since the enginecould then be used for other purposes), but ofsome small, highly specialized part of theengine, and so on. In the tertiary sectors ofsociety, it would generally be easier since thesesectors (except transport and communication)are mainly concerned with symbolic activity,so that the removal or destruction of files,codes, manuals of procedure, membershipfiles, population data, means of financialtranactions, etc., should cause a high degree ofuselessness. Transport and communication arealso relatively easily reduced in efficiency. Butin the primary sector it would generally be lesseasy, since the facilities here are more liketerritory. However, pits can be underminedand fields can be rendered useless by chemicalmeans—and better technology could makeboth strategies time dependent, so that eventhough the destruction would be irreversiblefor the time being, it would still only betemporary. It might be argued that all theenemy then would have to do, would be to sitdown and wait for usefulness to recur—but thecounter-strategy against that again would be tocalculate the timing of destruction as well asrecovery, or to have options for repeateddestruction.2

Richard Wendell Fogg raised a few relevantpoints, for example noting the importance ofbroadcasting to the population of an aggressor’scountry.3 Eminent nonviolence scholar GeneSharp devoted a page to general commentsabout the need to question standardassumptions about large technological scaleand centralised control over energy, food,production and transport; he suggested thatattention should be paid to technology withthe aim of diffusing social power.4 Aside fromthese authors, though, little had previouslybeen done before my own work. The contrastwith the enormous military research anddevelopment programmes is striking.

There are two obvious groups who mighthave been expected to undertake studies ofscience and technology for nonviolent struggle.The first is activists and scholars in the field ofnonviolent action. As far as activists go, therehave been untold millions of people who haveparticipated in nonviolent action, ranging fromworkers engaging in strikes to participants inmass rallies, but only some of these have seentheir action as part of a strategic method forsocial change. The number of reflectiveactivists and researchers who have striven toimprove the capacity for nonviolent action ismuch smaller, but is still quite considerable.Why haven’t they examined technologysystematically?

One important reason is that the mostimportant factors in making nonviolent actionsuccessful are psychological, social, organisa-tional and strategic. Technology seldom is acrucial factor. In warfare, by contrast, techno-logical factors are much more obvious andimportant. It makes sense to tackle the mostimportant factors first, and so supporters ofnonviolence have concentrated on non-technical dimensions of action. But this can’tbe the entire explanation, since technicalfactors sometimes are vital, as in the case ofcommunication technology in quite a numberof struggles.

Another factor may be that most peaceresearchers (like most other researchers) are cutoff from grassroots movements and moreoriented to standard belief systems. For careerand status reasons, as well as funding, they aremore likely to direct attention to militarytechnology than to nonviolent action, recon-ciliation and building peaceful societies, withtechnological facets of such topics being verylow in priority.5

Another reason is that few of those whohave pushed forward the frontiers of nonvio-lent action have been scientists or engineers.Peace research is seen primarily as part of thesocial sciences, and most writers on socialdefence have been trained as social scientists. Itis relevant that Galtung, who has dealt with


technical dimensions, was originally a mathe-matician.

Yet another possible reason stems from thecontrasting agendas of the two main ap-proaches to nonviolent action, the principledand the pragmatic approaches. Many of thosewho believe in nonviolence as a matter ofprinciple, irrespective of its immediate effec-tiveness, also adopt a critical analysis ofmodern technology and industry. Gandhiargued for technologies that allowed for localcontrol, for village industries rather than massproduction. This Gandhian approach containsa strong critique of technology but, because it isprimarily a rejection of sophisticated technolo-gies, doesn’t encourage thinking about select-ing, adapting and developing technologies thatmight support nonviolent struggle more effec-tively.

The pragmatic approach to nonviolence isbased on the view that nonviolent action ismore effective than the use of violence. Theapproach is, in many cases, joined with anacceptance—for the time being at least—ofmany features of current society: industrialism,the system of states, capitalism, etc. In otherwords, nonviolent action as a pragmaticmethod is commonly used as a method ofreform within the present system, with no planfor long-term transformation of social struc-tures except the military. As part of this,technology is not questioned in any funda-mental fashion, and hence its capacity forsupporting nonviolent action is not examined.

In this picture, the transformation of tech-nology to serve nonviolent action falls betweenthe agenda of principled nonviolence, whichrejects much of modern technology, and theagenda of pragmatic nonviolence, whichaccepts most nonmilitary modern technology.Undoubtedly, this picture is much too simple.There are, after all, many activists and scholarswho support principled nonviolence withoutrejecting modern technology and who supportpragmatic nonviolence as part of a programmefor fundamental change in social structures.But perhaps there is an element of truth here

that, along with other factors, has contributedto the neglect of technology for nonviolentstruggle.

Another way into this field is to begin as ascientist or engineer and to become involvedwith nonviolence. For decades, many scientistsand engineers have been involved in peacemovements, but this has led to little engage-ment with the nonviolence movement.

Just as importantly, few scientists havelinked their concerns about war and peace witha critique of science itself. Critics of sciencehave exposed the use of science for profit andsocial control.6 There are several reasons whythey have given so little attention to nonvio-lence.

The first reason is that nonviolence has avery low scholarly profile. As an intellectualtool, a critic of science might use politicaleconomy, Marxism, feminism or even post-modernism, but would be unlikely to be evenaware of nonviolence theory. Few of the criticsof science have been involved in campaignswhere ideas and writings about nonviolence areraised.

Another reason is that most critics of sciencestudy what exists and don’t spend much timeenvisioning alternatives. Exposés of the corpo-rate abuse of science abound, but there are fewinvestigations of what science would be likeunder cooperative economic structures.

Finally, much of the critique of science hasbeen undertaken from socialist perspectives,which are primarily built on a critique ofcapitalism. Socialists seek the end of capitalismthrough the capture of state power, whether ina revolution or through electoral politics. Ineither case, there is no rejection of the use ofviolence. Armed struggle—especially in ThirdWorld countries—is usually supported or reluc-tantly accepted as a necessity.

These are some of the reasons why there hasbeen so little investigation of nonviolence byscientists, engineers or critics of science. Thereasons presented here for the neglect of scienceand technology for nonviolent struggle are


somewhat speculative. All that is certain is thatthe topic has been neglected.7

Key factors approach

So far I have presented several ways for settingpriorities for science and technology fornonviolent struggle:

• look at previous funding priorities (notuseful, since there has been almost no priorfunding);

• look at actual uses of science and technol-ogy in nonviolent struggles (useful, but provid-ing little guidance for priorities);

• look at research proposals (useful, butlimited in scope).

Another way to proceed is to draw up a listof areas important for engaging in struggle andthen determine which scientific fields have thegreatest potential of contributing in thoseareas. Let me first consider military struggle, forwhich the most obvious area is weapons. Manybranches of the physical sciences and engi-neering are vital for this, from nuclear physicsand chemistry to molecular biology.

But there are other, less obvious, areas whereimproved knowledge may be helpful. Oneimportant area is recruitment and retention ofskilled personnel. For this, psychological andsociological studies might prove useful. Otherareas important for military strength are armsmanufacture, transportation, logistics, training,leadership and communication. By goingthrough all key areas, assessing needs and thenassessing which (if any) fields of science andtechnology might prove useful, a set of priori-ties can be set up for funding research anddevelopment.

Of course, there are other considerationsthat affect military funding for science andtechnology. These include financial con-straints, availability of skilled and willingscientists and technologists, political support oropposition, possible civilian spinoffs and armscontrol treaties, among others. But the generalapproach, namely of listing key areas and

seeing which technical fields are most useful tothem, still has merit.

This approach can now be applied to socialdefence. The first thing to do is to list key areasimportant to a social defence system. This isnot so easy! There is no generally accepted list,and certainly no list designed for this purpose.So, on the basis of my knowledge of socialdefence and in consultation with Mary Cawte,who had just read through many of the writ-ings on social defence, I wrote down a numberof areas. I then sent the list to a few socialdefence experts, who suggested additions.8 Hereis the list that resulted from this process.

Key factors in a social defence systemActive factors

Psychological and organisational factors• morale, unity, will• knowledge, education, understanding,analysis, strategy, tactics, evaluation• coordination, decision-making, organisation,leadership

Physical infrastructure• communication• survival: food, water, clothing, shelter,energy, transportation, health• industry, production, economics

Other factors• skills• self-reliance• allies• constructive programme (building anonviolent society)

Reactive factors (including directdisarmament9)• anti-nuclear weapons (countering the threatand effects of nuclear weapons)• anti-biological weapons• anti-chemical weapons• anti-conventional weapons.


It is impossible to give weights to thesefactors in terms of their importance, since thereis no theoretical framework available for thispurpose. Nevertheless, a general ranking ispossible by looking at studies of nonviolentstruggles. Undoubtedly the greatest attention isgiven to psychological and organisationalfactors, as suggested by the 24 Dutch socialdefence research proposals.

The priority given to psychological andorganisational factors also can be illustrated byexamining the views of writers on socialdefence who have examined the centre ofgravity, a key concept proposed by the classicmilitary strategist Carl von Clausewitz.10

Anders Boserup and Andrew Mack, in theirpioneering book War Without Weapons, applyClausewitzian strategic theory to socialdefence. The centre of gravity is the opponent’scentral source of strength, which should be themain target for destruction. The centre ofgravity of the defence is determined by themode of defence, which is the basis for Clause-witz’s idea of the superiority of the defenceover the offence. Boserup and Mack concludethat for a social defence system, the centre ofgravity is the unity of the resistance: “It isagainst this point that the whole thrust of theattack must be directed and to its preservationthat all efforts of the defence must tend.”11 Ifthe defence is able to absorb the attack, thenits next task is to mount a counterattackagainst the centre of gravity of the opponent.Boserup and Mack say that in the case ofmilitary attack against a social defence system,the centre of gravity of the offence depends onthe mode of attack and that, generally speak-ing, it will be those things that allow theoffence (for example, repression of thenonviolent defenders) to continue.

Other social defence theorists have built onBoserup and Mack’s analysis but differed aboutthe precise nature of the centre of gravity.Gene Keyes, who studied the Danish resistanceto the Nazis, concludes that the centre ofgravity for a social defence system is the moraleof the resistance.12 Robert Burrowes, in a far-

reaching Gandhian approach to social defencestrategy, argues that the strategic aim of thedefence is to “consolidate the power and will ofthe defending population to resist theaggression” and the strategic aim of thecounteroffensive is to “alter the will of theopponent elite to conduct the aggression, andto undermine their power to do so.”13 InBurrowes’ model, the centre of gravity is thesum total of social resources that support thestrategy; more specifically, it is the power of aparty to a conflict to conduct the struggle andits will to do so. Both Keyes and Burrowes saythat the centre of gravity for the offence is thesame as for the defence, namely morale forKeyes and power/will for Burrowes.

Although Boserup and Mack, Keyes andBurrowes differ concerning the location of thecentre of gravity of a social defence system,they agree that it lies primarily in the socialand psychological facets of the resistance,namely either unity, morale or will. It certainlyis not technology (weapons). However,technology can be used to bolster unity, moraleand will.

As for factors classified as physical infra-structure in the list of key factors in a socialdefence system, communication technology isprobably the most important because of itsclose link to psychological and organisationalfactors. Only seldom is survival of the popula-tion threatened in a nonviolent resistance,14

and industry only occasionally plays an impor-tant role. The capacity to understand, resist,and dismantle weapons of the aggressor is atopic seldom discussed in the nonviolenceliterature.

This list of key factors provides a prelimi-nary way to assess the importance of scientificfields to nonviolent struggle. For example,consider biology: it can offer some help in thetask of survival, for example via understandingof ecology, such as knowledge of species notrequiring pesticides or fertilisers (which mightbe unavailable in event of a blockade) or fruit-bearing species. Biologists could also provide


some insight into the capability of biologicalweapons and how to counter them.

Proceeding in this fashion for all the keyfactors leads to the following list.

Relevance of science and engineering tokey elements in a social defence system• biology: survival; anti-biological weapons• chemistry: anti-chemical weapons• earth sciences: survival• medicine: survival• agricultural science: survival• physics/mathematics: communication• computing/electrical engineering: communication• engineering: survival; industry, etc.; communi-

cation; anti-conventional weapons• psychology: morale, etc.• languages: communication• economics: industry, etc.• sociology, politics, philosophy, history, education:

knowledge, etc.; coordination, etc.

Although this list is not definitive, it gives agood indication of the relevance of variousfields to nonviolent struggle. It is apparent thata number of fields of science and engineeringcan contribute to survival (earth sciences,medicine, agricultural science, most branches ofengineering) and a number of them cancontribute to communication (computerscience, electrical engineering, mathematics).But aside from a few other areas (chemistrycan contribute to anti-chemical warfare;engineering has a crucial role in designingindustry for a social defence system), the bulkof science and engineering has little to offer tononviolent struggle.

This conclusion needs an immediate qualifi-cation. Aside from contributions to survivaland communication, the bulk of present-dayscience and engineering seems to offer little tononviolent struggle. It is quite possible thatthese fields could be more relevant if they wereredirected—for example through a change infunding patterns—from military to nonviolent

goals. In terms of present systems of knowledge,skills and hardware, the social sciences have amuch more important role to play insupporting social defence than do the naturalsciences and engineering.

In summary, a comparison of researchpriorities for military and nonviolent endsshows some dramatic differences at a numberof levels. Research into improving nonviolentstruggle would lead to a much greater emphasison social science than does military-relatedresearch. Within individual disciplines, a prior-ity on nonviolent struggle would mean greaterattention to particular fields, such as telecom-munications. Finally, within particular fields,such as telecommunications, a nonviolence-oriented research agenda would lead to empha-sis on different puzzles.

Implications

A science and technology policy based onpromoting social defence would be dramaticallydifferent from one based on promoting militarystrength. The following changes would beamong the most significant.

(1) There would be much greater emphasisgiven to social sciences compared to naturalsciences and engineering. The implication isthat the present situation in which naturalscience and engineering receive the bulk ofresearch monies is, to some degree, a product ofmilitary priorities operating in the past century,and that quite a different balance between the‘soft’ and ‘hard’ sciences might eventuate ifsocial defence received the same investmentsand priority now given to the military.

Complaints by scholars in the humanitiesand social sciences that they are shortchangedin the struggle for research money typicallymake appeals to intellectual worthiness or theimportance of culture. The analysis hereprovides quite a different argument: that socialscience—or, more precisely, particular branchesof social science—are central to the develop-ment of the capacity of a society to defenditself using nonviolent methods. (It should be


noted that present-day social science has beenshaped by military priorities and that a socialscience shaped by social defence prioritiesmight look quite different.)

(2) The effort given to different researchfields would be shifted considerably. Forexample, particle physics would be a muchlower priority whereas telecommunications andsocial psychology would be much higherpriorities.

(3) Different particular projects in any fieldwould be emphasised. Examples will be given inthe following chapters.

(4) Research would be responsive to andinvolve the participation of a wide range ofcommunity interests, unlike the present situa-tion where military interests predominate. Thispoint will be discussed further in chapter 9.

Notes1. Giliam de Valk in cooperation with Johan

Niezing, Research on Civilian-Based Defence(Amsterdam: SISWO, 1993). The background tothis book is described in chapter 10.

2. Johan Galtung, “On the strategy ofnonmilitary defense: some proposals andproblems,” in Johan Galtung, Peace, War andDefense. Essays in Peace Research, Volume Two(Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, 1976), pp. 378-426, 466-472, quote at pp. 390-391.

3. R. W. Fogg, “A technical equivalent of war,”in H. Chestnut (ed.), Contributions of Technology toInternational Conflict Resolution (Oxford: PergamonPress, 1986), pp. 113-120.

4. Gene Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom(Boston: Porter Sargent, 1980), pp. 403-404.

5. I thank Ellen Elster for this point. SeeBerenice Carroll, “Peace research: the cult ofpower,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 16, No.4, December 1972, pp. 585-616.

6. See for example Hilary and Steven Rose(eds.), The Political Economy of Science: Ideology of/inthe Natural Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1976)and The Radicalisation of Science: Ideology of/in theNatural Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1976); andthe journals (all now defunct) Science for the People,Science for People and Radical Science Journal.Unfortunately, the critique of engineering doesnot boast an extensive literature.

7. The reasons are harder to pin down,because there are few definite actions or motiva-tions to investigate, as in all cases where the issueis lack of interest and lack of investigation. Ithink that the reasons mentioned above areplausible, and have some basis in the writings andactivities of activists and scholars (though Ihaven’t gone into this sort of detail). By searchingfor explanations for neglect, it may be possible tofind ways to stimulate greater interest in thetopic.

8. I thank Robert Burrowes in particular foruseful comments.

9. Direct disarmament is the disabling anddismantling of weapons by people without thepermission of governments and commanders.

10. Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege [On War](Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1832). The follow-ing paragraphs on the centre of gravity are takenfrom Brian Martin, “Social defence strategy: therole of technology,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol.36, No. 5, 1999, pp. 535-552.

11. Anders Boserup and Andrew Mack, WarWithout Weapons: Non-violence in National Defence(London: Frances Pinter, 1974), pp. 148-182,quote at p. 163.

12. Gene Keyes, “Strategic non-violentdefense: the construct of an option,” Journal ofStrategic Studies, Vol. 4, 1981, pp. 125-151, at p.133.

13. Robert J. Burrowes, The Strategy ofNonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach (Albany,NY: State University of New York Press, 1996),p. 209.

14. One case is the Palestinian intifada,though the resistance is better described asunarmed than nonviolent.


Chapter 5

Communication

An effective military depends heavily on effec-tive communication, including transmission ofcommands, coordination of actions, transmis-sion of information about enemy activities andabout the progress of battles, among others. Toserve the needs of military communication,massive investments are made into research,development and production of communica-tion systems. For example, specially designedsatellites are used to collect information aboutenemy installations. Massive computer systemsare used to decipher foreign and domestictelecommunications. Satellites are also used todetect enemy missile launches, and specialfacilities are ready to transmit orders to launchnuclear attacks. Military communications aredesigned to be highly secure and to enabletransmission of commands even when somechannels have been incapacitated.

Communication is even more central tononviolent struggle, but the type of communi-cation most useful for nonviolent struggle isquite different than for military purposes. Inthe military, the role of the commanding offi-cer is central: that person must have reliableinformation and be able to issue commands.This explains why there is so much attention tomaintaining secure communications to thecommander-in-chief in the face of attack.Extraordinary efforts—bomb shelters, specialtelephones, personal guards—are used toprotect commanders, especially in times ofcrisis. Ordinary soldiers are trained to obey, notto take independent initiatives. Soldiers whodisobey orders are usually subject to severepenalties; in wartime, they may be executed.

In a nonviolent struggle, participation mustbe voluntary: there is no way to force people to

join in. Therefore, the struggle cannot havecommanders in the military sense, since obedi-ence to orders cannot be enforced. A nonvio-lent struggle can, however, have leaders. Notedexamples include Mohandas Gandhi, MartinLuther King, Jr. and Aung San Suu Kyi. Inthese and other cases, leaders have influencethrough their example, intelligence, commit-ment and charisma. But it is not wise todepend too strongly on such individuals toprovide guidance. Many nonviolence leaderstake a front-line role, participating in civildisobedience and other confrontations with theopponent. They may be arrested, imprisoned orkilled. In general, they are much morevulnerable than military commanders, whousually stay away from the fighting. Therefore,nonviolent activists must be prepared to con-tinue the struggle effectively in the absence oftheir most experienced and knowledgeablemembers. All of this means that as manypeople as possible should be ready and able toanalyse the situation, initiate action, makedecisions and in general carry on the struggle.

For these reasons, nonviolent struggle is bestserved by a decentralised, interactive andcooperative system of communication, deci-sion-making and action.1 This provides a verydifferent set of priorities for science and tech-nology than military agendas.

The following sections examine a number ofcommunication media: television, radio, cas-settes, newspapers, leaflets and the under-ground press, telephone and fax, the post,conversations and meetings, and computernetworks. In each case, I comment on thevalue of the medium for nonviolent struggleand on ways in which this value might be

Communication 43

increased. When giving case studies, I try toprovide some context for the role of communi-cation technology which, in every case, is onlyone component of a complex struggle in whichsocial factors are of central importance. Thechapter concludes with a general assessment ofthe types of communication technology mostlikely to be useful for nonviolent struggle,drawing on theoretical considerations as well asthe case studies.

Television

Television is an enormously powerful medium.Most people in western societies watch it formany hours each week. Furthermore, there is agreat deal of trust in the image of reality pre-sented on the TV screen, more than in news-papers for example.

There is very little opportunity for participa-tion in the production of broadcast television.It is essentially an autocratic medium. A veryfew people make decisions about content,which is then transmitted to a large audience.Furthermore, the television image is quite anartificial and manipulated production. Fewpeople are aware of the tremendous effort thatgoes into shaping each moment on the screen.Producing a high-quality television programmerequires a lot of skill, equipment and money.This means that experienced professionalsproduce most programmes, especially the onesthat most people prefer to watch.

For these reasons, television is ideal forrulers. They can influence popular perceptionsby appointing or controlling a small number oftelevision executives and producers. Dictator-ships are only willing to allow television that isunder their control. It is no surprise, then, thatone of the prime targets in military coups istelevision stations.2 Precisely because it is anundemocratic medium, it is highly useful toaggressors. Hence, it is important to developways to subvert or disable it when a hostiletakeover occurs. Many television journalists,producers and technicians are sympathetic topopular movements. If they are aware of

methods for nonviolent struggle, they mightwell be willing to participate by hinderingefforts by aggressors to control television andby enabling popular concerns to be broadcast.

Redesigning broadcast facilities and makingadvance preparations could aid the use (orinterruption) of television in a nonviolentstruggle. For example, broadcast facilities couldbe designed so that technicians, staff or evenviewers could interrupt transmission in case ofa hostile takeover. Some means would benecessary to prevent use of this facility in“normal” times, such as the need for a consid-erable number of people to enter codes. Broad-cast facilities could be designed so that, in caseof emergency, a special signal indicating ahostile takeover was transmitted along with thepicture. Special tapes could be produced—dealing with methods of nonviolence, ways toundermine control of television by aggressors,etc.—and stored safely for transmission in caseof emergency.

Heavy consumption of broadcast televisionmakes a society more vulnerable to takeover.For long-term security based on nonviolenttechniques, the role of television should bereduced. If most people are active transmittersrather than just receivers of messages, thenthere is less possibility for manipulation andcentral control.

Occasionally, television broadcasts inadver-tently aid nonviolent struggle, as in EastGermany. From 1945, East Germany wasruled by a communist dictatorship. Secretpolice monitored activity in all spheres of life.However, West German radio and televisionbroadcasts were readily received throughoutEast Germany, giving an attractive—indeedperhaps unrealistically attractive—picture oflife under capitalism. In 1961, the border withWest Germany was walled off to preventemigration.

Under the Soviet Union’s new policies inthe late 1980s, there was no longer a guaran-tee of armed intervention to support clientstates in Eastern Europe. On 11 September1989, Hungary opened its borders with


Austria. East Germans, by going “on holiday”to Hungary, could escape to the west. As wordspread, including via news on West Germanradio and television, the initial trickle ofemigration became a torrent. At the same time,there were public rallies against the regime inEast German cities. Initially attracting only afew people, in the space of weeks the rallieswere attended by hundreds of thousands. Newsof the growing open dissent was again providedby West German mass media. In the face ofmassive emigration and enormous protests,East German leaders resigned. The regimecollapsed in the face of nonviolent expressionof opposition.3

If television is produced locally for smallaudiences, its vulnerability to takeover isreduced, especially if there are numerous inde-pendent channels. For the purposes of nonvio-lent resistance, a multitude of locally controlledbroadcasts is the direction to go.4 But thetechnical skills and costs to produce highquality programmes are significant obstacles tosuch a goal.

Radio

In an examination of nonviolent struggle, largeand powerful radio stations with many listenersare similar to television stations. They areprime targets for an aggressor, since they can becontrolled by a few people and have anenormous influence. A long-term goal in devel-oping a social defence system should be toreplace such radio stations by interactivecommunication media. In the meantime,preparations should be made to be able tobroadcast resistance messages or, if necessary,shut down big stations in the event of a threat.

Looking over some of the historical in-stances of nonviolent struggle suggests a morepositive role for radio. One case is the collapseof the Algerian generals’ revolt in 1961. InAlgeria, an armed struggle for independencefrom France was waged from the mid 1950s. Itwas met by severe repression by French troops.French president Charles de Gaulle, seeing that

independence for Algeria was inevitable, begannegotiations with the independence move-ment. French generals in Algeria, bitterlyopposed to this course of action, staged a coupon the night of 21-22 April 1961. There waseven the possibility that they might lead aninvasion of France.

Opposition to the coup was quickly demon-strated in France. There was a national one-hour strike and massive rallies. After vacillatinga few days, de Gaulle made a passionate pleafor troops to refuse to join the rebels. Mean-while, in Algeria the rebelling generals failed togain the support of the troops, many of whomwere conscripts. Troops heard de Gaulle’sbroadcast on transistor radios that they hadrefused to turn in as instructed. Many soldiersjust stayed in their barracks. Others reportedfor duty but purposely failed to do it. Aboutone-third of the fighter aircraft were flown outof the country, never to return. The coupcollapsed after four days without a shot beingfired against it.5

The most prominent example showing thepower of radio for nonviolent struggle is theCzechoslovak resistance to the Soviet-ledinvasion in 1968. During 1967 and 1968,communist rule in Czechoslovakia was rapidlyliberalised, a process supported throughout thecountry. This was a severe threat to the Sovietrulers, who organised an invasion of the coun-try in August. Military resistance would havebeen futile and there was no help from theWest. Instead, there was a spontaneousnonviolent resistance to the invasion. Peoplepoured out onto the streets. They talked to theinvading soldiers and quickly convinced manyof them that the Czechoslovak cause was just.

The Czechoslovak military had set up asophisticated radio network to be used in theevent of a NATO invasion. It was used insteadby citizens to broadcast messages of resistance,to warn about impending arrests, to counsel theuse of nonviolent methods, to tell where troopswere headed, and to call a meeting of theCzechoslovak communist party. It took a weekbefore the radio resisters could be shut down.

Communication 45

But the Soviets did not obtain their initialobjective—setting up a puppet government—until April 1969.6

The Czechoslovak radio network had beenset up by the Czechoslovak military to survivean invasion from Western Europe; this net-work was put at the service of the people’snonviolent resistance, with spectacular results,especially given that the full story of the strug-gle could be heard on the airwaves in nearbycountries. How is it that a technological systemdesigned by the military for centralised controlturned out to be so useful for nonviolentstruggle?

The answer to this question is that a cen-tralised communication system such as radio,television or the press can be useful to anonviolent resistance when there is virtuallycomplete support for the resistance and, ofcourse, the system is controlled by the resis-tance. The Czechoslovak people were united,from workers to top party officials, against theSoviet invasion. Therefore, the radio system, inthe hands of the resistance, was a powerfultool. It didn’t matter too much which particu-lar Czechoslovaks were making the broadcasts,because there was such widespread agreementabout the aims and methods of resistance. Forexample, when the Soviets brought in jammingequipment by rail, this information was passedto the radio stations, which then broadcast anappeal to halt the rail shipment. Rail workersshunted the equipment onto a siding. It isobvious that if even a single person listening tothe broadcasts had alerted the Soviets, theycould have avoided this delay. Eventually theybrought in jamming equipment by helicopter.

Although a centralised communicationmedium such as radio can be useful to anonviolent resistance in these special circum-stances, the technology of electronic broadcastremains a vulnerability for the resistance. Oncethe Soviets took over the Czechoslovak radionetwork, this brought the active, public phaseof the nonviolent resistance to a rapid end.The occasional value of central radio broad-casts to a resistance can be misleading about

the general value of radio, which is likely to beof more value to an aggressor.

The strengths and limitations of radio arealso suggested by the long history of clandestineradio.7 In countries where governments controlall mass communication, it is commonplace fordissident groups to set up their own radiostations, sometimes broadcasting from anearby country or sometimes from secret—andmoveable—locations within the country.Clandestine radio of this sort is an indicationof the lack of free communication. But thereare many more clandestine radio stations runby governments, usually by spy agencies. Manyof these are “black” stations, pretending to befrom a resistance movement and aiming todestabilise a government. This means that alarge proportion of clandestine broadcasting isdisinformation. Much more can be said aboutclandestine radio, and there are somefascinating stories. The important point hereconcerns radio stations: sometimes they can beuseful for a nonviolent resistance, but oftenthey seem of greater use to powerful groupsseeking to manipulate public opinion ratherthan respond to it.

Big radio—large, powerful stations withmany listeners—is only one sort of radio. Thereare also a number of other possibilities.Community radio, in which a station is runwith a great deal of participation from localpeople, and in which the power and range ofthe broadcast is limited, is much more suited toa resistance.8 If a city has thousands ofcommunity radio stations rather than a dozendominant stations, it is much better situated toresist a takeover. The greater the diversity ofstations, the more likelihood that some ofthem will be willing to take a stand.

Even more valuable for nonviolent struggleare radio systems that are cheaper and thattransmit to only a few people. Citizens band orCB radio is mainly used for person-to-personcommunication, and is ideal. Even morevaluable is short-wave radio, since it can bereceived thousands of kilometres away. Itwould be impossible to shut down communica-


tion out of a country if every household had ashort-wave radio, supplemented by many“public short-waves,” namely short-wave radiosavailable for anyone to use, like publictelephones.

Short-wave radio was important in theresistance to the Fiji coups in 1987. Fiji becameindependent of Britain in 1970. The AllianceParty, led by Ratu Kamisese Mara, controlledparliament until 1987. In that year, acoalition of the National Federation Party andthe newly formed Labour Party won theelection. Six weeks later, there was a militarycoup led by Lieutenant Colonel SitiveniRabuka. The coup was justified by the falseclaim that the rights of the majority Melane-sian Fijians were under threat; the real effect ofthe coup was to check the challenge to thechiefs of Eastern Fiji who had exercised powervia the Alliance Party. But by using therhetoric of ethnic problems, Rabuka was ableto justify the coup in the eyes of many Fijiansand outsiders.

Censorship of the media within Fiji wasimposed. However, since Fiji is composed ofmany islands, short-wave radio is widely usedand, after the coup, provided direct access toforeign news. In the complicated political situa-tion after the coup, the loyalties of the Fijianpeople, and also of governments and peopleoverseas, were wooed. For example, Australiantrade unions banned the loading or unloadingof ships going to or from Fiji. The Rabukaregime applied pressure on the Fiji trade unionleaders to say that their rights were protected;after a few assurances were provided, theAustralian bans were suspended. Meanwhile,Fiji Labour Party leaders tried to mobilisesupport from other governments, to littleavail.9

One potential limitation of radio is that it ispossible for anyone to listen in. Therefore,using short-wave radio to send a message couldlead to the sender being tracked down andarrested. But this is more likely if only a fewpeople have access to short-wave transmitters.The more people who have access and skills to

use the technology, the less likely anyone is tobe targeted. The introduction of public short-waves would reduce the risk still further.

Even better protection is possible usingpacket radio. A computer is attached to a radiotransmitter. A message is typed into thecomputer, which is then transmitted in digitalform to a receiver. No one can simply “listenin.” To decipher the message, a suitablecomputer programme would be required. Evengreater security would be provided by puttingthe message into code. The packet radiotransmission can be sent up to a ham radiosatellite, which saves the message and trans-mits it later, perhaps halfway around theworld. Packet radio has enormous potentialvalue to a nonviolent struggle.

One other vulnerability of radio is electric-ity. All large transmitters and most smalltransmitters and receivers depend on electricity,usually delivered through the grid. For thesmaller systems, this vulnerability can be easilyreduced. Electricity can be provided by genera-tors—such as an automobile engine—orbatteries. For example, a laptop computer andtransmitter for packet radio can easily run onbatteries. There is also the possibility of radiosrunning on very tiny amounts of power, thatcan be supplied by batteries, solar energy, orjust a wind-up spring such as for a manualalarm clock.10 In the 1960s, Victor Papanekand Richard Seeger designed a cheap (9 cent)radio receiver for the Third World, based on aused juice can and parafin wax.11

In summary, there are a number of ways tomake radio facilities more useful to nonviolentstruggle. As with television, radio broadcastfacilities could be designed so that technicians,staff or even viewers could interrupt transmis-sion in case of a hostile takeover. Broadcastfacilities could be designed so that, in case ofemergency, a special signal was transmittedalong with the normal signal indicating ahostile takeover. Special tapes could beproduced—dealing with methods of nonvio-lence, ways to undermine control of televisionby aggressors, etc.—and stored safely for

Communication 47

transmission in case of emergency. Informa-tion and kits for building small radio transmit-ters and amplifiers can be disseminated. Cheap,simple-to-use, durable and reliable CB andshort-wave radios could be designed and massproduced. The short-wave radios in particularcould be designed for smuggling into countrieswith repressive governments. Encryption forperson-to-person radio transmissions can bedeveloped.

Cassettes

Use of audio and video cassettes creates less ofa vulnerability than broadcast radio and televi-sion, since people use different cassettes.Cassettes are similar to books, in that a rela-tively few people produce them, but there is aconsiderable diversity and lack of centralcontrol over producing them. With inexpensivevideo cameras, it is now possible for manymore people to produce video cassettes.

Audio cassettes played a role in the Iranianrevolution of 1978-79. The Shah of Iranbegan his rule in 1953. His regime seemedinvincible. With enormous oil revenues, hecreated a massive military machine. Secretpolice terrorized the population through tortureand killings. The regime was actively supportedby the United States government and was notopposed by the governments of Israel, theSoviet Union or most Arab countries. Thisapparently overwhelmingly powerful govern-ment was brought down by mass nonviolentaction, triggered by religious opponents. Thespeeches of Ayatollah Khomeini, in exile, werecirculated on cassette tapes. Funerals, held fortydays after deaths, became protests. Whenpolice opened fire and killed mourners, furtherfunerals were held. Opponents burned picturesof the Shah in front of spy cameras of thesecret police. Tens of thousands of nonviolentdemonstrators were shot dead by troops.Eventually sections of the military defected,and the regime quickly collapsed.12 (It shouldbe said that although the Shah’s regime wastoppled largely by nonviolent methods, the

successor theocratic regime led by Khomeiniwas also highly repressive.)

In 1991, a video cassette, combined withtelevision, helped expose Indonesian atrocitiesin East Timor. The former Portuguese colonyof East Timor was invaded and occupied by theIndonesian military regime in 1975. There wascontinued resistance to the occupiers, bothnonviolent civilian resistance and an armedguerrilla struggle. Indonesian troops were highlybrutal. As well as torture and killings of civil-ians, the search and destroy missions againstthe guerrillas led to widespread starvation. TheUnited Nations condemned the invasion andoccupation, but never took any action againstthem.

Indonesian authorities controlled almost allcommunication channels. News of resistanceand atrocities against the civilian populationonly reached the outside world via travelers oremigrés. A short-wave transmitter in northernAustralia, used to communicate with the EastTimorese guerrillas, was shut down by theAustralian government.

In November 1991, foreign journalistsobserved a massacre of hundreds of EastTimorese engaged in a nonviolent protest inDili, the capital of East Timor. One of thejournalists, British film-maker Max Stahl,recorded the events on videotape, which wassmuggled out of the country. This documenta-tion caused an international scandal. Althoughthere had been many previous massacreswitnessed by East Timorese who later left thecountry, these did not lead to much publicity,partly because of categorical denials by Indone-sian authorities. It was the testimony offoreign, independent journalists and of video-tape which turned the 1991 Dili massacre intoa public relations disaster for the Indonesianoccupiers.13

Newspapers

Large daily newspapers are enormously influ-ential. Authoritarian governments normallycontrol newspapers directly or subject them to


censorship. This is illustrated by the case of theEmergency in India. The Indian governmentled by Indira Gandhi was widely seen ascorrupt and unresponsive. A mass movementdeveloped around the popular figure ofJayaprakesh Narayan, and this appeared toprovide a political threat to the government.On 26 June 1975, Indira Gandhi declared anEmergency. Thousands of people were impris-oned, parliament was muzzled, and the presswas censored. For the first few days, the elec-tricity supply to key newspapers was cut off.Financial pressures were applied to those thatrefused to toe the government’s line.

Control of information was a key feature ofthe Emergency. There was enormous resistanceto the government, but groups in different partsof the country knew little of each other. Majordemonstrations, with up to half a millionpeople, were not reported and hence unknownelsewhere. Some newspapers capitulatedquickly to the censorship requirements, whereasothers resisted in various ways. Theinternational press was a key force of opposi-tion; correspondents found innovative ways ofgetting around censorship. When foreign digni-taries refused to visit India, this hurt theregime; visits by British political figuresMargaret Thatcher and Michael Foot wereused for propaganda purposes by the regime.

In 1977, Mrs Gandhi called elections,perhaps believing her own government’scensorship-created propaganda about hersupport. In spite of continued (though relaxed)censorship, the opposition Janata Party waselected. Thus the Emergency came to an end.14

Because large newspapers are so easilycontrolled by a few owners and editors, theyare not a good communication medium for asocial defence system. In the long term, itwould be better to aim at systems of dispersedpublication. For example, wire service storiesmight be directly received, at low cost, innumerous small communities. There, anyinterested person could select a bundle of sto-ries, compile and edit them if necessary, andmake them available to others—in printed or

electronic form. Thus there might be manythousands of “editors” from whom a personcould select. As well, the skills required would bemade straightforward enough so that newpeople could step in without too much trouble.With such a system, an aggressor could noteasily take over the press. It is also necessary forwire services to be diversified. At the moment,four international services provide most storiespublished by the western press. If, instead, therewere thousands of small international services,control over the orientation of stories, bywhatever means, would be much more difficult.

However, large newspapers will not beabandoned or replaced easily or quickly, so inthe meantime it would be useful to have waysto resist aggressors. Printing presses could bedesigned so that they could be shut down byoperators in the face of a takeover and so thata special symbol is printed on every pagewhenever the press is used against the wishes ofthe editors and printers. Wire service terminalscould be designed so that messages go auto-matically to a range of other locations.

Leaflets and the underground press

It is easy for an aggressor to take over a fewlarge printing presses, because only a few peopleare required at crucial locations in the process.By contrast, small local means for printingleaflets, posters and newsletters are difficult tocontrol. Anyone with a microcomputer andprinter can produce high-quality leafletsquickly and easily. The photocopier is evenmore powerful. A handwritten notice can bereproduced in the hundreds or thousands.

The power of dissident publications in theresistance to the Nazis in occupied Europe isdescribed by Jacques Semelin:

The central role of the underground pressin the general development of institutionalresistance must be emphasized. The exis-tence of the underground press must not beconsidered as just one element amongothers in resisting Nazism. It does notbelong in the same category as sabotage,

Communication 49

intelligence activities, protest marches, andso on; nor was the underground press asimple instrument of counter-propaganda inthe psychological war carried on by rivalpowers. This press was the central axisaround which internal resistance move-ments could organize and develop. It was asif the resistance needed an initial ideologi-cal basis in order to develop combatstructures. Early resisters therefore distrib-uted pamphlets, bulletins, and variousnewspapers to formulate the values forwhich they were fighting Nazism. Theunderground press operated out of convic-tion rather than from the desire to dissemi-nate information. Its function was not onlyto address those whom it wanted to rally toits cause, but even more to convince andassert a collective self on the basis of whichthe new ideological order—that of theoccupation—could be rejected.15

One vulnerability of small printing opera-tions is electricity. One solution is to havereserve power through generators. Another ismanual typewriters and hand-operated copiersusing specially-prepared originals, which werequite common until the 1980s.

In rich countries, photocopiers are found inalmost every office and in a number of homes.Their role as a basis for community resistanceto aggression could be fostered by setting upcommunal printing facilities in every street orapartment block, with access to a number ofmeans of producing and copying leaflets andnewsletters. The more people who have usedequipment to produce information for localuse, the more difficult it becomes for anyaggressor to control communication centrally.

In highly authoritarian states, such as theold Soviet Union, freely available photocopy-ing was a mortal danger to the state. Guardswere posted over photocopiers to ensure that nounauthorised copying occurred. This sort ofcontrol inhibited free communication andconsequently prevented development in anumber of fields, from science to the economy.By making production and distribution ofinformation a part of everyday life—whether

to produce a leaflet for a political meeting, asports event or a sale of goods—the communityis very well prepared to continue communi-cating in a crisis.

To aid nonviolent struggle, cheap, durableand reliable copiers could be designed for use inpoor countries. In the case of countries underrepressive rule, such copiers could be smuggledinto the country in various ways, by tourists orthrough commercial trade. Copiers could bedeveloped that can be operated even withoutmains electricity. This might be throughbatteries or through an optional muscle-powered system.

Some governments and companies, con-cerned about the leaking of vital documents,have sought the development and introductionof photocopiers that leave some mark on eachcopied page indicating its source. Generallyspeaking, such technology is far more useful toan aggressor than to the nonviolent resistance.

Telephone and fax

The telephone is, in many respects, an idealcommunication medium for nonviolent strug-gle. It cannot be used by a single person to sendmessages to a large number of passive recipi-ents, but rather it is most suited for conversa-tions between two people. True, it’s possible tohave conference calls, but these becomeunwieldly with more than a handful of people.

Since telephone is so useful for communica-tion in a nonviolent struggle, the general aimshould be to keep the system going. Aggressorsare unlikely to shut down an entire telephonesystem because society depends on it somuch—including the aggressors. There aresome important vulnerabilities in telephonesystems that deserve attention.

First, it is possible to cut off certain phones,either an individual phone or all those in awhole building or suburb. Aggressors mightwant to cut off telephones used by the resis-tance, and the resistance might want to cut offtelephones used by the aggressors. In mostcases, it would not be so difficult to get around


this problem: people can find other phones.Furthermore, with mobile phones the linesbecome less important. Generally, resisters seekto keep open lines of communication, includingcommunication with the aggressor, so it is notdesirable to cut off telephones. It would beimportant to keep in contact with techniciansto encourage them to oppose attempts to shutdown phones.

Second, and more important, is the possi-bility of telephone surveillance.16 This is quiteeasy to do, especially with new electronicswitching systems. Surveillance of conversa-tions, however it is done, is labour-intensive:someone has to listen to the conversations longenough to make sense of them. This applieseven when there are computer systems withvoice recognition that are programmed to keeptrack of conversations only when certain keywords are mentioned. Furthermore, the systemcan be easily foiled if people know the keywords and agree not to use them—or to usethem all the time!—in their conversations.

If there are only a few resisters, surveillancecan be used to keep track of them. If, on theother hand, large numbers of people join theresistance, mass surveillance becomes impossi-ble.

Surveillance becomes even less useful if theresistance operates without secrecy, as manynonviolent activists recommend. If rallies andcivil disobedience actions are announced to theauthorities beforehand, surveillance is ratherpointless.

Nevertheless, telephone surveillance, evenwhen it is quite infrequent and gains littleuseful information, is very important psycho-logically. Many people are frightened enoughto reduce their activism. Therefore, antisur-veillance measures are important. Cordless andcellular phones should be avoided, since theirtransmissions can easily be picked up by radioscanners, as some public figures have discoveredto their embarrassment.17 One easy method isto use other telephones, especially publictelephones. Another is to use the “call forward”mechanism on some phones, to bounce a call

to a different phone and thus hide the locationor identity of the caller.

As well as such practical on-the-spot tech-niques, there are a number of technologicalapproaches worthy of investigation. Securemethods of putting telephone messages intocode—encryption—would make surveillancemore difficult. Telephone systems could bedesigned so that taps are impossible withoutalerting the callers. They might also bedesigned so that, in an emergency, no singleperson could cut off phones. (In ordinary times,technicians often need to cut off phones forquite legitimate purposes.)

Another issue is caller number identification:the ability of the person called to see andcapture electronically the phone number of thecaller. Arguably, in some cases in an emergencyit is useful for people to be able to makeanonymous phone calls. On the other hand,the aggressor may try to disrupt the resistanceby feeding lots of misleading information intothe resistance networks, in which case callernumber identification would be useful to theresistance. More investigation and the runningof simulations would help in deciding in whatcircumstances caller number identificationwould be an advantage for a nonviolent resis-tance.18

Fax machines run on telephone lines, butare different in two ways: they transmit aprinted document rather than sounds, and therecipient does not need to be there for thetransmission to occur. Fax is a decentralisedcommunication system and has many similari-ties to both the post and computer networks.Generally speaking, fax is quite useful to theresistance. “Secure” transmissions—sending afax that can only be printed when the receiverputs in a code—are now possible with some faxmachines. The main improvement for faxwould be encryption, so that messages cannotbe intercepted en route.

The post

Communication 51

The postal system is a global communicationnetwork which is generally quite useful fornonviolent activists. A government seeking tomonitor the post cannot hope to open andinspect every piece of mail without largeamounts of labour and considerable disruptionof everyday life. Therefore the usual procedureis selective monitoring of mail: intercepting,reading and sometimes confiscating mail sentby or to particular targeted individuals ororganisations. In order to achieve this, it ishelpful for all mail in a country or region to berouted through a single central post office.

To get around monitoring of the post mostlyrequires organisational rather than technologi-cal means. The more that collection, sortingand distribution of mail are done locally, themore difficult it is for any group to monitor orintercept the post. Also, the more decentralisedare the authority structures within the postalservice, the more difficult it is for an aggressorto take control using only a few trusted staff. Ifthere are several, rather than just one, postalservices—such as competing private carriers—then it becomes more difficult to take centralcontrol.

It is significant in this regard that mostgovernments have tried to monopolise postaldelivery by outlawing, heavily taxing or tightlyregulating private delivery services. In thehistorical development of the post, this wasdone in order to raise revenue and to preventenemies from communicating without theruler’s knowledge.19 This shows that secure andreliable postal delivery—not easily monitoredcentrally—is of great value to nonviolentopponents of tyranny.

More fundamental than formal ownershipof postal services is the attitude of postalworkers. If they are sympathetic to the resis-tance, then they can ensure that importantletters or parcels are delivered without inspec-tion. They are also in a good position to delivermessages from the resistance along their deliv-ery routes. It’s also possible for the resistance toavoid interception by using false names and

addresses, putting one letter inside another, andvarious other techniques.

There are a few technological systems thatare relevant. One is automatic sorting of lettersby postcode. If this is used in some way to helpmonitor the post, the machines could easily bedisabled. In any case, it would be an interestingproblem to design such equipment so that itprovided no advantage for any group wishingto monitor the post. Another issue is the sur-veillance of postal workers using videocamerasand other apparatus. Such surveillance couldbe used by agents of an aggressor to detectpostal workers supporting the resistance. Forthe purposes of nonviolent resistance, it wouldbe best to get rid of technology that putsworkers under surveillance.

Conversations and meetings

In spite of all the technological advances, face-to-face conversations remain one of the verybest means of communication. Also quiteuseful are meetings, whether this involves 3, 30or 300 people. The smaller the number ofpeople in a meeting, generally, the more eachperson can contribute and the fewer opportuni-ties there are for manipulation or domination.It may be worthwhile for an aggressor to sendobservers or arrange for surveillance of massmeetings of hundreds or thousands of people.But monitoring of hundreds or thousands ofsmall meetings becomes impossible.

It might seem that technology is largelyirrelevant to face-to-face conversations, butthis is not so. Modern technology has greatlyincreased the capacity for surveillance, forexample by electronic listening devices.20 Inves-tigations are needed into convenient, low-costways of avoiding or foiling such surveillance.

Computer networks

Computer networks are a powerful means ofcommunication most suitable for nonviolentstruggle.21 Such networks are interactive andcannot easily be dominated by a small number


of users. Information on the network is trans-mitted by telephone lines and, indeed, com-puter networks are very similar to telephonesystems. There are several major differences.First, computer networks deal mainly with textrather than voice. Second, it is much easier tosave, copy and distribute text via computernetworks than via phone. Third, the skills andinvestment required to become a skilled user ofcomputer networks are much greater than tobecome a proficient user of the telephone.

The first two factors generally make com-puter networks a more powerful means ofcommunication, from the point of view ofnonviolent struggle, than the telephone. Thethird factor considerably reduces its value. Asthe price of computers declines and the soft-ware for hooking into networks becomes moreuser-friendly, computer networks will becomemore and more valuable as a people’s commu-nication technology.

Computer networks—collectively called“cyberspace”—will undoubtedly play an in-creasing role in communication in crisissituations. They have been used to send alertsabout human rights violations, to mobiliseopposition to vested interests and to provideinformation to activists opposing repressiveregimes. For example, computer networks havebeen used for communication by the peacemovement in former Yugoslavia,22 to resist the1991 Soviet coup23 and to organise publicityabout persecution of minority groups in Iran.

Computer networks have several vulnerabili-ties, again similar to the telephone. If thetelephone system is shut down, so is mostcomputer communication. But this is not solikely because, like the telephone system,computer networks are used more and more forfunctions such as commercial transactions.Therefore, anyone who shut down the net-works would risk alienating a large proportionof the population, including powerful organisa-tions.

Another key problem with computer net-works is surveillance, namely logging intoparticular accounts or intercepting particular

electronic messages. The system administratorin charge of local networks has the capacity tomonitor or cut off the accounts of individuals.Hackers are able to surreptitiously enter otherpeople’s computer files or to read their mes-sages.24 There is also the less elegant method oftapping telephone lines and decipheringcomputer-generated data that is being trans-mitted.

System administrators are key individuals incomputer networks. If they support the resis-tance, then the networks become a powerfultool for resistance. But system administratorscould also serve the aggressor, whether as aresult of sympathy, bribery or intimidation, forexample by monitoring messages from certainindividuals or by closing down their accounts.Therefore, it would be useful to design networksso that the power of system administrators islimited, either permanently or just in emergen-cies.

Another solution to the problem of surveil-lance is encryption of messages, namely puttingthem into code. There are various ways to dothis, including some extremely powerfulencryption techniques that also give a highlyreliable way of verifying the sender’s identity:an electronic signature.

There was an enormous controversy overthe US government’s promotion of a system ofencryption designed by the National SecurityAgency (NSA), a multi-billion dollar spyingenterprise focussing on electronic communica-tion. The NSA’s proposed encryption system—commonly associated with one of its compo-nents, the Clipper Chip—relied on a system ofcoding that could be deciphered using informa-tion obtained from two specified organisations,given the permission of legal authorities. Somesceptics, though, did not trust the claims of theNSA, and believed that the agency designedthe algorithm and Clipper Chip so that allmessages could be read by the NSA.25

Generally speaking, secure communicationis valuable to a nonviolent resistance, whichtherefore would be better served by unbreakableencryption. The most popular system outside

Communication 53

the government is called Pretty Good Privacyor PGP.26 It reportedly has been used byguerrillas in Burma and dissidents in Russia.

There may seem to be some contradictionhere, in that many proponents of nonviolenceargue against secrecy. For example, they informpolice and other relevant authorities aboutdetails of their planned nonviolent actions.They argue that openness reduces fear andhence the possibility of violence by authorities,and that this approach is the best way to winmore supporters.

However, this opposition to secrecy is quitecompatible with support for confidentiality andprivacy in other circumstances. The point isthat the nonviolent activists choose tocommunicate their plans for rallies, strikes oroccupations to others. This is quite differentfrom eavesdropping on friends having apersonal conversation. Encryption of telephoneor computer communication is roughly similarto ensuring the confidentiality of a private talk.

There are quite a number of developmentsthat would make computer networks evenmore effective for nonviolent struggle. Com-puter systems could be designed so that certainpowers of the system administrator are over-ruled when a certain percentage of users enter adesignated command designed for emergencies.Computer systems designed for business orscientific purposes could be adapted so that, inthe event of emergency, resistance messagescould be hidden within the usual data. Princi-ples and methods of nonviolent resistance oncomputer networks can be developed.

Computer networks can be prepared forresistance. For example, important data can bestored in remote locations. Names and ad-dresses of key activists can be protected, forexample by being embedded in larger lists.Contingency plans to use other computers,other accounts and other networks can beprepared. Emergency messages and sequencesof action can be prepared. Simulations of resis-tance communication in emergencies can berun, and the results used to redesign systems formore effective operation in such situations.

Communication in nonviolent action

The acknowledged pioneer of nonviolentaction was Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi wasnot a systematic theorist, but rather developedhis ideas in conjunction with his campaigns,first in South Africa and then in India.Gandhi’s writings and practice provided muchof the inspiration for later development ofnonviolent action theory and practice.27

Gandhi believed in the power of truth.28 Hefelt that truth could communicate directly tothe heart of an oppressor. He called his methodof struggle “satyagraha,” which literally meanstruth-force but can also be translated asmeaning nonviolent action.29

It is possible to go so far as to argue that theessence of satyagraha is communication:whereas violence, as a form of communication,is a monologue, nonviolence tries to turn aconflict situation into a dialogue.30 Althoughthis is only one interpretation of satyagraha, ithighlights the close connection betweencommunication and nonviolence. The connec-tion can also be argued directly in terms of aGandhian theory of nonviolent communica-tion.31

For Gandhi, truth was not just a linguisticconstruction. It had to be present in the lives ofits advocates, through their humility, compas-sion, good works and willingness to suffer forthe cause of justice. The key issue here is thepower of such truth, or truth-in-life, to achievea better society.

How can such truth be communicated? Inhis campaigns, Gandhi was always careful tofirst try conventional channels, such as makingpolite requests of officials to change theirpolicies which were causing suffering or lack offreedom. If this did not work, he would then,quite openly, initiate a campaign utilisingnonviolent methods, such as marches, boy-cotts, or undertaking illegal activities. Thesemethods might be interpreted as a form ofcoercion, albeit nonviolent coercion. Gandhi,though, conceived nonviolent action as amethod of conversion, of “melting the heart”


of the opponent. When the oppressors saw thesuffering that was willingly accepted by thenonviolent activists—known as satyagrahis—they would recognise the satyagrahis’ com-mitment to their cause and be converted toit.32

This was Gandhi’s theory, but his cam-paigns did not always work this way in prac-tice. Thomas Weber analysed the 1930 “saltsatyagraha” to see if suffering led to conversionas Gandhi claimed.33 In this campaign,Indians challenged the British colonial regime’smonopoly on salt manufacture by marching toDharasana to take possession of the salt worksthere. As they approached the salt works andattempted to enter, they were arrested orbeaten. Over a period of days, hundreds ofnonviolent activists approached the salt works,and were met by force. The beatings were sobad that hundreds were taken to the hospital,most with serious injuries. Far from softeningthe hearts of the lathi-wielding police, thebrutality became worse. However, the colonialgovernment denied any violence by the police,saying that the protesters were faking theirinjuries. Weber concludes that direct conver-sion of opponents was a failure.

Nevertheless, the campaign was a successbecause of a different process of conversion.Observing the operation was a journalist forthe United Press in the US, Webb Miller. Hismoving reports reached an enormous interna-tional audience, challenging the disinformationof the official reports. Public opinion in manycountries was turned against the British role inIndia. It was this conversion process thathelped achieve India’s independence.

Johan Galtung’s idea of a “great chain ofnonviolence” is quite relevant in this connec-tion,34 as noted by Weber. Galtung argues thatnonviolence can work to persuade opponentsvia intermediaries: a chain of people, eachsimilar enough in social location, whocommunicate the social concerns. In the caseof the salt satyagraha, Webb Miller provided alink between the satyagrahis and white

westerners; in turn, some of the latter had linkswith British colonial decision-makers.

An interesting connection can be madebetween Gandhi’s idea of satyagraha andJürgen Habermas’s theory of communicativeaction, in particular his “ideal speech situa-tion.”35 Habermas’s ideal speech situationbuilds on the capacity of all humans tocommunicate, to enter dialogue and reachintersubjective agreement (rather than indi-vidually find truth in nature). In other words,truth for Habermas is obtained through ra-tional discussion in the absence of domination.This theory, though, provides little guidance forcommunication in situations of unequal power.The confrontation between the satyagrahisand the police at Dharasana in 1930 was veryfar from an ideal speech situation.

However, the relationship between thesatyagrahis and Webb Miller was closer to anideal speech situation: neither had significantpower over the other. The cultural gap betweenMiller and his western readers was far less thanbetween the satyagrahis and the Britishcolonial rulers. So it might be said thatGaltung’s great chain of nonviolence operatesin practice like a chain of “reasonable speechsituations” which, while certainly not ideal,provide better prospects for the sharing andcreating of truths than the two end points ofthe chain.

Thus, Gandhi’s idea that the willing suffer-ing of nonviolent activists can communicatedirect to the hearts of oppressors requiresconsiderable modification. Communication oftruth works better when there is no powerimbalance, and this means that communica-tion via intermediaries is often more effectivethan direct communication between unequals.

Assessment ofcommunication technologies

These considerations suggest that communica-tion technologies that foster or enable dialogueare more useful for the purposes of nonviolentaction than those that inhibit dialogue. If one

Communication 55

side in a dispute controls television and radiostations, there is no dialogue. Even if a sub-stantial proportion of the population refuses tolisten, the communication imbalance contin-ues. There is little or no opportunity for listen-ers to present their points of view. It is notsurprising, therefore, that dictatorships nor-mally exercise complete control over one-direc-tional electronic communication media. Thevalue of radio and television to oppressors ishighlighted by the fact that they are often thefirst targets in military coups.

The same considerations apply to commu-nication among those who resist an oppressor.With a one-directional means of communica-tion, resistance leaders can certainly get theirmessages to supporters with minimumeffort—but these leaders become quite vulner-able to both repression and cooption. Evenmore importantly, without dialogue, the resis-tance cannot take into account the views ofcurrent and possible supporters, and cannotfoster the capacities of others to use skills andtake initiatives.

If the only means of communication in asociety were interactive, network systems—face-to-face discussion, telephone, short-waveand CB radio, and computer networks—thenan aggressor or oppressor would have the great-est difficulty in controlling the population.Network communication technologies do notby themselves eliminate hierarchy and exploi-tation, but they do aid resistance. The tele-phone can be used to issue orders, but it is fartoo labour-intensive for controlling largepopulations. Also, the subordinate can alwaystalk back.

James C. Scott’s idea of public and hiddentranscripts is relevant here.36 In situations ofdomination, such as slavery, aristocrat-peasantrelations and landlord-tenant relations, thepublic record or transcript tells the story of thedominators. There is also a hidden transcript inwhich the side of the oppressed is revealed.According to Scott, the oppressed are wellaware of their oppression: the concept of falseconsciousness is false. The hidden transcript

can be a rehearsal for a challenge to power-holders, a challenge that can develop quicklywhen the mechanisms holding back resistanceare weakened.

In the modern world, mass media are a formof public transcript. The mass media underdictatorships omit the perspective of theoppressed, who therefore must use othermedia—covert discussions, graffiti, leaflets andclandestine radio, as well as symbolic commu-nication at funerals, concerts and other“legitimate” events—to share experiences. Thisalso applies to some aspects of life in societieswith representative government: for example,police treatment of stigmatised minorities, oroppression and alienation in working life, areseldom portrayed in the mass media. Thus,mass media are useful tools for dominators,whereas network media are useful for develop-ing the voices of the weak.

Galtung’s “great chain of nonviolence”provides another way to explain the advantageof network media for nonviolent resistance.With mass media, the chance of a chain ofreasonable speech situations between theoppressed and the oppressors is limited. Withnetwork media, the chance is increased, andthe denser the interlinkings of the communica-tion network, the greater the ease of dialogicalcommunication.

Several of the examples given in this chaptersupport the conclusion that mass media areselectively useful for oppressors. For example,control over the mass media was crucial togovernment and military control in the shut-ting down and censoring of the press during theEmergency in India, in the cutting off of elec-tronic communication during the military coupin Poland and throughout the continuingoccupation of East Timor. Similarly, controlover the mass media was a crucial factor in theFiji coups and in the Shah’s Iran. But in thesetwo cases the opposition had access to alterna-tive sources of information, via short-waveradio in Fiji and cassette tapes in Iran.

On the other hand, some of the cases seemto contradict the idea that mass media are


selectively useful for oppressors. Radio broad-casts were vital to nonviolent resistance in theAlgerian generals’ revolt, the Czechoslovakresistance to the Warsaw Pact invasion, andthe collapse of the East German communistregime. In each of these cases, a one-directionalmedium served a nonviolent resistance torepression. What made this possible was ashort-term congruence between those whocontrolled the medium and a dialogue-basedmass movement. French conscripts in Algeria,through their own experiences and interactions,were already predisposed to refuse cooperation.De Gaulle’s broadcast made them aware thatthey were supported by the French governmentand the French people.

In the case of Czechoslovakia, the liberali-sation of communist rule during 1968 was amass-based process that challenged the normalcontrol—including control of the media—bythose following the Soviet line. The Czecho-slovak radio system was temporarily a powerfulforce for the nonviolent resisters, in a situationwhere there was a high intensity of face-to-facedialogue, both among the population andbetween Czechoslovaks and invading soldiers.It is also worth noting that capture of the radionetwork by the Soviet army decisively endedthe active phase of the resistance.

In East Germany in 1989, the CommunistParty retained control over the local massmedia. West German radio and televisionprovided a window into alternative views,including news of events in East Germanyitself, that fed into the protest by EastGermans, which itself was based on a com-monality of experience.

These cases suggest that one-directionalmedia can sometimes be useful to a nonviolentmovement against repression, but only undercertain conditions. There must be a strongunderlying unity of purpose, itself the out-growth of common experience and dialogue.Also, the one-directional media are used in achallenging mode, against an even morepervasive or powerful system of persuasion orcontrol.

This conclusion can be summarised bysaying that one-directional media are selec-tively useful for oppression and network mediaare selectively useful for resistance to oppres-sion.37 Technologies are not neutral, but norare they tied to certain uses only. Technologiesare stamped by the social groups and goalsinvolved in their creation and application. Butthe uses of technologies are not fixed by theircreators: users can adapt them to some extent.For example, the US military originally set upthe computer network that later evolved intothe Internet which has become one of the mostparticipatory media available.

Generally speaking, the greater the opportu-nity for users to choose, use and modify thetechnology, the greater its potential for foster-ing popular participation and the more likely itis to be useful for nonviolent action againstrepression. Interactive network media can aidnonviolent action most of all when they aregenerally accessible, easy to use, difficult fordominators to control, and when they encour-age widespread development of appropriateskills.

Notes1. Andreas Speck notes that this same list of

values—decentralised, interactive, cooperative—can also be obtained by starting from the valuesof a just society.

2. T. E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role ofthe Military in Politics (London: Pall Mall Press,1962); D. J. Goodspeed, The Conspirators: A Studyin the Coup d’État (London: Macmillan, 1962);Edward Luttwak, Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook(London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1968),pp. 111-116.

3. Roland Bleiker, Nonviolent Struggle and theRevolution in East Germany (Cambridge, MA:Albert Einstein Institution, 1993). Andreas Speckpoints out that there was also a negative side tothe role of West German television. Many leadingEast German activists wanted to turn EastGerman into a democracy, even a genuinepeople’s democracy (as opposed to a dictatorshipcalling itself a people’s democracy). However,West German television did not broadcast theideas of this East German opposition, instead

Communication 57

pushing for German unification under the WestGerman model.

4. Tony Dowmunt (ed.), Channels of Resistance:Global Television and Local Empowerment (London:British Film Institute in association with ChannelFour Television, 1993) provides a number ofuseful case studies.

5. Adam Roberts, “Civil resistance to militarycoups,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 12, 1975,pp. 19-36.

6. Royal D. Hutchinson, Czechoslovakia 1968:The Radio and the Resistance (Copenhagen: Institutefor Peace and Conflict Research, 1969); H.Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s InterruptedRevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1976); Joseph Wechsberg, The Voices(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969); PhilipWindsor and Adam Roberts, Czechoslovakia 1968:Reform, Repression and Resistance (London: Chattoand Windus, 1969).

7. Lawrence C. Soley and John S. Nichols,Clandestine Radio Broadcasting: A Study of Revolution-ary and Counterrevolutionary Electronic Communication(New York: Praeger, 1987).

8. Bruce Girard (ed.), A Passion for Radio: RadioWaves and Community (Montreal: Black RoseBooks, 1992); Ron Sakolsky and Stephen Dunifer(eds.), Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook(Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998); Lawrence Soley,Free Radio: Electronic Civil Disobedience (Boulder,CO: Westview, 1999).

9. Brian Martin, “Lessons in nonviolence fromthe Fiji coups,” Gandhi Marg, Vol. 10, No. 6,September 1988, pp. 326-339.

10. On micropower radio, see Ron Sakolskyand Stephen Dunifer (eds.), Seizing the Airwaves: AFree Radio Handbook (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998);Lawrence Soley, Free Radio: Electronic Civil Disobe-dience (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999).

11. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World:Human Ecology and Social Change (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1985, second edition), pp. 224-227.

12. David H. Albert (ed.), Tell the AmericanPeople: Perspectives on the Iranian Revolution(Philadelphia: Movement for a New Society,1980); F. Hoveyda, The Fall of the Shah (London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980).

13. Andrew McMillan, Death in Dili (Sydney:Hodder and Stoughton, 1992), pp. 163-164, 230-232. On the role of nonviolent action in the EastTimorese struggle, see Chisako M. Fukuda,

“Peace through nonviolent action: the EastTimorese resistance movement’s strategy forengagement,” Pacifica Review, Vol. 12, No. 1,2000, pp. 16-31.

14. Michael Henderson, Experiment withUntruth: India under Emergency (Delhi: Macmillan,1977).

15. Jacques Semelin, Unarmed against Hitler:Civilian Resistance in Europe, 1939-1943 (Westport,CT: Praeger, 1993), p. 85.

16. Patrick Fitzgerald and Mark Leopold,Stranger on the Line: The Secret History of PhoneTapping (London: Bodley Head, 1987).

17. Thomas Icom, “Cellular interceptiontechniques,” 2600, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1995,pp. 23-27.

18. Caller number identification also raisesissues concerning protection of personal data.Thus, it is possible that there could be frictionbetween priorities on privacy and on nonviolentresistance. For a discussion of potential problemswith surveillance in a social defence system, seeBrian Martin, “Possible pathologies of futuresocial defence systems,” Pacifica Review, Vol. 7,No. 1, 1995, pp. 61-68.

19. On the early history of the British postoffice, including attempts to shut down alterna-tive posts, see Herbert Joyce, The History of thePost Office from its Establishment down to 1836(London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1893). Onpostal worker struggles in Britain, see H. G. Swift,A History of Postal Agitation from Fifty Years Ago tillthe Present Day (London: C. Arthur Pearson,1900). For a comprehensive history of disputes inthe US Congress over what things should beallowed to be mailed, censorship and wartimecontrols, see Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, Unmail-able: Congress and the Post Office (Athens: Universityof Georgia Press, 1977). On government attemptsto monopolise the post, see Carl Watner,“‘Plunderers of the public revenue’: voluntaryismand the mails,” The Voluntaryist, No. 76, October1995, pp. 1-7. A pilot study of the post inrelation to social defence is reported in AlisonRawling, Lisa Schofield, Terry Darling and BrianMartin, “The Australian Post Office and socialdefence,” Nonviolence Today, No. 14, April/May1990, pp. 6-8.

20. See, among others, Ann Cavoukian andDon Tapscott, Who Knows: Safeguarding YourPrivacy in a Networked World (New York: McGraw-


Hill, 1997); Simon Davies, Monitor: ExtinguishingPrivacy on the Information Superhighway (Sydney:Pan Macmillan, 1996); David H. Flaherty, Protect-ing Privacy in Surveillance Societies: The FederalRepublic of Germany, Sweden, France, Canada, and theUnited States (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1989); Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., ThePanoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Informa-tion (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993); SimsonGarfinkel, Database Nation: The Death of Privacy inthe 21st Century (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly &Associates, 2000); David Lyon, The Electronic Eye:The Rise of Surveillance Society (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1994); Gary T. Marx, Undercover: PoliceSurveillance in America (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1988).

21. There is a vast body of writing about thenet. Useful treatments of net culture includeWendy M. Grossman, Net.wars (New York: NewYork University Press, 1997); Howard Rheingold,The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in aComputerized World (London: Secker andWarburg, 1994).

22. David S. Bennahum, “The Internetrevolution,” Wired, Vol. 5, No. 4, April 1997, pp.122-129 and 168-173.

23. Bob Travica and Matthew Hogan,“Computer networks in the x-USSR: technology,uses and social effects,” in Debora Shaw (ed.),ASIS ’92: Proceedings of the 55th ASIS AnnualMeeting, Vol. 29 (Medford, NJ: Learned Informa-tion, 1992), pp. 120-135.

24. On hacking see the magazine 2600 andThe Knightmare, Secrets of a Super Hacker (PortTownsend, WA: Loompanics, 1994).

25. For the dabate over government-sponsoredencryption, see Whitfield Diffie and SusanLandau, Privaacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretap-ping and Encryption (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1998) and Lance J. Hoffman (ed.), Building in BigBrother: The Cryptographic Policy Debate (New York:Springer-Verlag, 1995).

26. See for example Simson Garfinkel, PGP:Pretty Good Privacy (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly &Associates, 1995).

27. Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence(New York: Schocken Books, 1966); KrishnalalShridharani, War without Violence: A Study ofGandhi’s Method and its Accomplishments (London:Victor Gollancz, 1939).

28. M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Storyof my Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad:Navajivan Press, 1927).

29. According to a constructivist perspective,“truth” is always based on human interests ratherthan objective reality, and hence is moreproblematical than Gandhi believed. But for thisoutline of his ideas, “truth” is used withoutquotes.

30. See V. V. Ramana Murti, “Buber’sdialogue and Gandhi’s satyagraha,” Journal of theHistory of Ideas, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1968, pp. 605-613. I thank Tom Weber for pointing out thisreference.

31. Robert A. Bode, “Gandhi’s theory ofnonviolent communication,” Gandhi Marg, Vol.16, No. 1, April-June 1994, pp. 5-30.

32. Note that feminists have criticised theGandhian emphasis on suffering by nonviolentactivists.

33. Thomas Weber, “‘The marchers simplywalked forward until struck down’: nonviolentsuffering and conversion,” Peace & Change, Vol.18, No. 3, 1993, pp. 267-289.

34. Johan Galtung, Nonviolence andIsrael/Palestine (Honolulu: University of HawaiiInstitute for Peace, 1989).

35. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communica-tive Action, Vol. 1. Reason and the Rationalization ofSociety (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); JürgenHabermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol.2. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of FunctionalistReason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987).

36. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts ofResistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1990).

37. In the appendix, this terminology isexplained in the context of theories oftechnology.


Chapter 6

Survival

For a society to engage effectively in a struggle,whether violent or nonviolent, it must be ableto maintain the necessities of life, such as foodand shelter. In industrialised societies, manyimportant systems, including agriculture,energy, water, transport and housing, havebecome highly vulnerable to either militaryattack or sabotage.

Take the electricity system, for example: afew bombs or just some calculated breaches ofproper procedures could put large generatingplants and transmission stations out of action.If computer programs that ensure a balancebetween electricity supply and demand wereintentionally altered, a system breakdowncould easily be triggered.

Fuel supplies are only somewhat moresecure. Oil refineries are perhaps the mostvulnerable point: a few knowledgable workerscould put them out of commission. Oil pipe-lines and ocean tankers are also easy targets fordetermined saboteurs.1

Water supplies for many cities are quitevulnerable to attack. All it would take is de-struction of a few large dams or poisoning ofthe water supply.

Food supplies are far more vulnerable todisruption than just a century ago. Productionis now heavily dependent on fertilisers andpesticides; factories producing these could beput out of action. Biologically sophisticatedsaboteurs might be able to spread pests anddiseases to major crop areas. Few people stilllive on the land; city populations depend onshipment of large quantities of food fromagricultural areas.

Then there is the transport system. Disrup-tion of electricity and fuel supplies would be

devastating. Another approach would betampering with transport computer systems.City traffic would be reduced to a crawl if traf-fic lights were out of action, and air trafficwould become much more risky if automatedsystems were disrupted.2

For a military system, these vulnerabilitiesmean that an effective defence must preventthe enemy from entering the country’s terri-tory. A single bomber or missile can causeenormous havoc. The vulnerability of moderntechnological systems thus is a justification forso-called “forward defence,” namely powerfuloffensive capacities, including nuclear weaponsas deterrents. Vulnerability is also a justifica-tion for tight internal security, to guard crucialfacilities from saboteurs and to keep informa-tion about both military and civilian facilitiessecret. Thus, vulnerable technological systemsplay a role in promoting two of the worstfeatures of the warfare society: offensive mili-tary capacity and internal repression.3

These considerations in themselves shouldbe enough to motivate investigation into lessvulnerable systems. In the case of nonviolentstruggle they become overwhelming. Withoutmilitary forces, there is nothing to physicallystop enemy troops from entering the commu-nity, taking over key facilities such as powerstations, cutting off supplies or even destroyingthe facilities. Given this possibility, developingresilient systems is essential.

Actually, the problem of survival is seldom atelling factor in major struggles. In most wars,even the most ferocious, no attempt has beenmade to starve the enemy population to death.Nevertheless, there are some instructiveexamples where survival has played a key role.


After Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait in August1990, international sanctions were applied toIraq, preventing most imports and exports.Even after the defeat of Iraq military forces bythe US-led coalition in March 1991, theblockade was continued. The bombing of Iraqin early 1991 destroyed much of the country’sinfrastructure, including water purificationplants, electricity generating plants and indus-try. The continuation of the blockade—whichalso prevented import of food and medicines,in contravention of international humanitar-ian agreements—has led to enormous sufferingand increased mortality and perhaps a millionor more deaths as a result.4 This example illus-trates the high vulnerability of a westernisedsociety.

Although economic “sanctions”—restraintson trade—are commonly seen as a nonmilitaryalternative to war, they rely on armed force forimplementation and definitely cannot beconsidered a method of nonviolent action.Sanctions often are ineffective or counterpro-ductive.5

Beginning in 1975, the Indonesian gov-ernment enforced an effective blockade againstEast Timor in order to combat guerrilla andpopular resistance. Since East Timor is half ofa remote island, the other half of which isIndonesian territory, enforcing the blockadewas not difficult, given that no other govern-ment did much to challenge the Indonesianoccupation in spite of repeated United Nationsresolutions.6 Direct killings and starvation dueto the blockade led to the deaths of perhapsone third of the East Timorese population. Inthis case, the blockade has been a potent toolagainst a largely rural society.

In 1988, people of the island of Bougain-ville in the southwest Pacific declared theirindependence from Papua New Guinea. ThePNG government mounted a military opera-tion against the Bougainville RevolutionaryArmy, supplementing this with a blockade. Theblockade was intended to be total, preventingeven medicines from being brought in. As

might be expected, this has led to considerablesuffering on the island.

In the cases of Iraq, East Timor andBougainville, blockades were used to helpsubjugate an armed resistance and, in eachcase, caused hardship and death in the popula-tion. The existence of an armed resistancehelped to provide a public justification for theseblockades, however inhumane and illegal theymay be. If the resistance is totally nonviolent,it becomes more difficult to justify a blockade.Perhaps the best example of such tactics usedagainst an unarmed resistance is the Israelioccupation of Palestine, mentioned in chapter3. During the intifada, from 1987 to 1993,the Palestinian resistance to the Israelis waslargely nonviolent, though it is more appropri-ate to call it unarmed since it was mostly a lackof arms rather than a principled position thatrestricted the use of violence. (The throwing ofstones was a commonly used tactic.) The Israelioccupiers used a variety of harsh methods toquell the resistance, including beatings,destroying houses and shops, enforcing curfews(often for days at a time), closing down schoolsand universities, and preventing travel. The neteffect of these measures made survivalproblematic for many Palestinians, for examplewhen economic sanctions reduced familyfinances to minimal levels and curfewsprevented movement out of houses for all but afew hours per day. The Palestinian case isdifferent from that of Iraq, East Timor andBougainville both in the lack of a resistancearmed with more than slingshots and stonesand in the enormous international sympathyand support generated by the struggle.

Although a population waging a nonviolentresistance—at least one with a capacity tocommunicate to the rest of the world—isunlikely to be starved to death or otherwisefind its very survival at stake, it is prudent to beprepared for the worst. This is a task for engi-neers.

Historically, the engineering professionbegan with military applications. When abranch of engineering developed that was

Survival 61

concerned with nonmilitary applications, itwas called civil engineering to emphasise thecivilian orientation. Today, there are manybranches of engineering, from mechanical tocomputer engineering, all of which can be usedfor military or nonmilitary purposes. Asdescribed in chapter 2, even ostensibly non-military engineering can often be adapted formilitary purposes. There are very few engineerswho have even considered what it would meanto direct their specific engineering talents topromoting peace.7 Presented here are a fewpreliminary ideas about redesigning technologi-cal systems to make them more suitable fornonviolent struggle.8 It would only take a fewdedicated engineers or other experts to test anddevelop these ideas.

The water supply, especially one based onlarge dams, is highly vulnerable to disruption.Dams could be designed so that, in an emer-gency, the water could be released quickly butsafely. In a number of countries that are stilldeveloping their infrastructure, choosingmicrohydro rather than large dams wouldgreatly aid resilience against attack. Anotherapproach is using water tanks and dry toilets toreduce water requirements from a centralsupply system which might be destroyed by anaggressor.

Similarly, producing steel at numerousminimills, geographically dispersed, providesgreater resilience than having a few large inte-grated steelworks. Installing solar and windpower systems throughout the country wouldmean that the population could not be heldhostage by control over electricity generatingplants. The challenge is to develop technologiesthat are efficient and require little mainte-nance. Of course, economic incentives areimportant in promoting such alternatives.

Bridges are often attacked by aggressors.Building a bridge that would survive any attackwould be impossibly expensive, though designsallowing easy rebuilding would be possible. Also,bridges might be designed so that saboteurscould easily be detected. Laser detectors,perhaps?

Similar considerations apply to housing. Inorder to be able to reconstruct destroyed build-ings, designs should be simple and straightfor-ward, relying on readily available materials.Portable homes might be useful for movingpeople around the country. There is someresearch on cheap, effective housing for theThird World which may be applicable.Research could be done on materials to maketents long-lasting. Combined with telecommu-nications, tent-based activists would be hard totrack down.

In the case of manufacturing, aggressorsoften take over plants for their own purposes.To resist, workers could go on strike, but tortureagainst workers or their families could be usedto break the strike. Another approach is to goslow and make “inadvertent” mistakes, as donein some factories taken over by the Nazis inWorld War II. A technological solution—raisedby Johan Galtung, quoted in chapter 4—is todesign the factory so that vital pieces ofequipment can be removed or destroyed.Replacements could be kept in a safe place,such as another country. Torture would bepointless, since it couldn’t get the factory goingagain. Actually, in many modern factories, thetechnological sophistication is so great thatoutsiders would not know whether the workerswere resisting or not.

When hierarchies are flattened and groupsof workers can operate without a boss, theworkforce is better equipped to resist a takeover.Therefore, manufacturing systems that are tiedto empowering the workers may be the best fornonviolent struggle.

Large-scale monocultures are vulnerable todisruption. A more resilient food system wouldinclude many local gardens and food-bearingtrees. Relevant research here includes seedvarieties robust to lack of fertilisers and pesti-cides, nutritious diets from wild natives, andmethods for long-term storage of food.9

A transport system highly resilient to attackcan be achieved by designing communities sothat most travel can be accomplished bywalking or cycling, in contrast with systems of


roads or rail which can be interrupted by cut-ting off fuel. Powered vehicles are very usefulfor shipping goods, so it would be valuable todesign vehicles that are simple to build andrepair, use fuels that can be easily produced orstored throughout the community and, per-haps, in an emergency could be powered byhuman muscles.10 There is likely to be a trade-off between the convenience of maintainingsome forms of motorised transport and theirvulnerability. Thus there is a general challengeto develop motorised transport technologiesthat cannot be easily disrupted by an aggressor.

Health

Many doctors and health workers have beeninvolved in peace activism over the years,11 butonly some of this involvement is directly rele-vant to nonviolent resistance to aggression andrepression. One of the ways that health profes-sionals today help to oppose repression is bydocumenting cases of torture or execution.Governments routinely deny that they areinvolved in torture and extra-judicial execution;investigations and authoritative pronounce-ments by medical and forensic experts can helpto expose such abuses. Some of the activities ofphysicians and medical researchers concernedabout violations of human rights include:

• assessing cases of alleged torture;• exhuming bodies (sometimes buried

months earlier) and determining the cause ofdeath;

• using genetic tracing to track down rela-tives of orphans whose parents have disap-peared, presumed murdered;

• estimating the number of casualties inwars;

• carrying out psychiatric assessment oftorture survivors;

• examining conditions in prisons;• training health workers in skills related to

the topics above and in the ethics of collabo-rating with regimes using torture.12

Technologies used for torture are mostlyfamiliar: batons for beatings; electricity for

shock; cigarettes to cause burns. Occasionallythere is some innovation in torture, such asbeatings on the soles of feet (falanga) in orderto inflict pain without leaving physical traces.In such cases there is a place for research todevelop new means of detecting torture.Turkish physician Veli Lök helped develop amethod of detecting falanga using bone scinti-graphy. Courts have used medical reports basedon this method as proof of torture.13

As well as exposing abuses by repressionregimes, another and bigger task for healthworkers is to promote a healthy society. Asociety in which people are healthy and self-reliant in health care is undoubtedly betterprepared to resist aggression and repression.Maintaining health in the face of attack is atall order. Aggressors might

• assault nonviolent protesters or bystand-ers;

• engage in forced labour and torture;• impose a blockade that cuts off food and

medical supplies;• destroy power supplies or sanitation facili-

ties, increasing the risks of disease;• lay landmines;• spread diseases, inadvertently or purpose-

fully;• launch military attack, including bomb-

ing.When a population uses only nonviolent

methods of resistance, full-scale military attackis less likely than when there is violent resis-tance. Nevertheless, it is important to beprepared for serious health consequences ofaggression. In such a situation, it is unlikelythat the conventional medical system couldcope. A large influx of casualties would over-whelm hospitals. Emergency procedures,familiar to doctors working in theatres of war,are appropriate.14 Disaster planning—usuallythe province of civil defence managers—isneeded for the health sector as well as others.

More generally, many members of thecommunity need to develop skills in diagnosisand treatment. Simple first-aid measures areoften sufficient, even for some serious injuries.

Survival 63

A society prepared for the adverse healthconsequences of aggression might:

• make first-aid training a regular part ofnearly everyone’s continuing education;

• run medical disaster simulations, analo-gous to fire drills;

• provide subsidised packages of basicmedical materials to every household andbuilding;

• make widely available handbooks de-scribing basic medical procedures;

• set up decentralised production facilitiesfor basic medical items such as anaestheticsand antibiotics;

• promote a simple, nutritious, locallyobtainable diet;

• support use of effective alternatives toconventional medicine15;

• engage in ongoing discussion and debateabout self-help and low cost methods ofpromoting health.

These sorts of initiatives towards self-reliance in health care often conflict with thepriorities of industrialised medicine, with itsreliance on expert professionals, expensivetechnology and drugs provided by transna-tional corporations. Industrialised medicine isvulnerable in the face of attack, whereas self-reliant health care is resilient.

Miriam Solomon, a researcher into healthand democacy, has thought about these issues.She draws attention to the rhetoric of theWorld Health Organisation (WHO) “onprimary health care and health promotion, asembodied, for example, in the Ottawa Charter.That document urges a range of strategies,including political ones, for developing personalskills, strengthening communities, improvingthe social and physical environments, reori-enting health services (away from the medicalmodel), and incorporating health sensitivepublic policies in all sectors.” She notes that thesame principles that apply to food, energy andso forth also apply to health.

The decentralisation of service provision,the shift away from high technology,specialised, institutionalised curative

oriented care, towards community andindividual control over social, political andphysical environments, as well as beingconsistent with health promotion andprimary health care strategies, wouldprobably also be the best preparation forsocial defence. Thus the uncorrupted inter-pretation of the New Public Health and theWHO interpretation of Health Promotionare what is needed for preparing for socialdefence. They are about giving peoplecontrol of their own lives, empoweringindividuals and communities, learning skillsfor becoming politically and socially aware,and building community cohesion andpolitical constituencies, with adequatesensitivity to the needs of other environ-ments and communities.16

Appropriate technology (AT)

Generally speaking, the entire body of work oncommunity self-reliance is relevant to the taskof building technological systems to ensure thesurvival of the population in the face of aggres-sion. Much of this work goes under the title of“appropriate technology,” “alternative tech-nology,” “intermediate technology” or variousother names. There are various definitions ofAT and a host of arguments about AT-relatedstrategies for technological and social change.17

It’s not necessary to traverse these definitionsand arguments here, since my aim is to pointout some commonalities and differencesbetween AT and technology for nonviolentstruggle.

According to one typical source, AT coverstools and techniques that:

“1) require only small amounts of capital;“2) emphasize the use of locally available

materials, in order to lower costs and reducesupply problems;

“3) are relatively labor-intensive but moreproductive than many traditional technologies;

“4) are small enough in scale to be afford-able to individual families or small groups offamilies;


“5) can be understood, controlled andmaintained by villagers whenever possible,without a high level of special training;

“6) can be produced in villages or smallworkshops;

“7) suppose that people can and will worktogether to bring improvements to communi-ties;

“8) offer opportunities for local people tobecome involved in the modification andinnovation process;

“9) are flexible, can be adapted to differentplaces and changing circumstances;

“10) can be used in productive ways withoutdoing harm to the environment.”18

AT for the Third World includes simpletools for working sheet metal, organic garden-ing, simple-to-construct ox carts, small farmgrain storage methods, techniques of growingtropical fruit trees, methods of fish farming,hand-dug wells, inexpensive water filtrationtechniques, local production of fuel alcoholfrom agricultural wastes, self-built stoves,simple windmills, small hydropower, passivesolar design, biogas generators, inexpensivetechniques for house building, low-cost vehicles,community health care techniques, andmanagement skills for small businesses.19 Thislist highlights the important point that AT isnot just about implements but includes tech-niques for using them and fitting them into awider programme of community development.

It is straightforward to examine these tencriteria to see whether they are also relevant totechnology for nonviolent struggle.

1) If only small amounts of capital arerequired, then technology can more readily bereplaced after destruction by an aggressor. Bycontrast, hugely expensive fertiliser plants,electricity generating stations or dams areobvious targets to be destroyed or taken over.

2) If materials are locally available, then anaggressor cannot cut off supply. For example,most oil supplies are imported from anotherpart of the country or world and hence consti-tute a source of leverage for an aggressor.

3) Being relatively labour-intensive does notdirectly aid nonviolent struggle. There may bean indirect advantage, though. If more labouris required and much of it does not requirehighly specialised skills, then it is more likelythat there will be work for anyone who wantsit, with a reduction in alienation and socialdivisions. This in turn would help unify acommunity in the face of attack.

4) Affordability to families seems similar topoint 1.

5) If ordinary people can understand,control and maintain technology, then it ismuch harder to hold them hostage via thetechnology. For example, most people can learnhow to ride and fix a bicycle. Most can drivebut not many can fix more than a fewproblems with cars. Few can drive a train or flyan aeroplane, much less fix them. The greaterthe number of people who can keep thetechnology going if necessary, the less vulner-able the community is.

6) Local small-scale production is lessvulnerable to attack than centralised large-scale production. Water tanks to collect rain-water can be produced locally; large damscannot and hence are a vulnerability in theface of aggression.

7) Bringing people together to work aids thepotential for nonviolence resistance by foster-ing social cohesion. Working together incommunity gardens seems more likely to fostersolidarity than buying food in a supermarket.

8) Having local people involved in techno-logical adaptation and innovation builds skillsand commitment that become highly valuablein case of a threat.

9) Flexibility is an obvious advantage if anaggressor tries to subjugate a populationthrough control over technological systems.

10) Low environmental impact seems tohave no direct relevance to survival of apopulation waging nonviolent struggle, at leastin the short term. For example, if centrallygenerated power is not available, local coal orwood supplies might be used, causing lots ofpollution but not necessarily weakening the

Survival 65

resistance. On the other hand, local solar andwind power might be an alternative withoutthe same environmental impact.

Thus, most of the ten criteria for AT arealso suitable for selecting technology fornonviolent struggle and none is incompatiblewith requirements for nonviolent struggle. Thissuggests a high degree of overlap between thesetwo ways of approaching technological choice.There are a few differences, though. The tencriteria are mainly aimed at poor countries. Inrich countries, there are some technologies thatdo not fit AT criteria but may still be highlyuseful for nonviolent struggle. For example, asophisticated system of telecommunicationswill aid nonviolent struggle, especially if de-signed so that it cannot be readily controlled ormonitored centrally. There are enough techni-cally trained people in rich countries to allowfor some degree of community control oftelecommunications, though in practice manychanges would be necessary to bring this about.

When it comes to the major systems neces-sary for survival—agriculture, energy, manu-facturing, transport—rich countries mostlyhave been moving away from criteria for ATand instead becoming more vulnerable todisruption and takeover. The AT movementprovides a direction for change, and manyindividuals and groups have made valiantefforts to move in this direction, but they havenot been very successful in the face ofdominant forces, including the military—military technology is seldom AT.

The connection between AT and technol-ogy for nonviolent struggle almost seems tooeasy. If AT advocates had been more successfulover the years, then technological systemswould be set up for effective nonviolent resis-tance. Why should the convergence be so neat?To begin, further study is needed to determinewhether the connection is really asstraightforward as it seems from a preliminaryanalysis. But there are some general reasons forthe convergence. AT can be considered to bethe technological component of a generalstrategy of community self-reliance, which can

be treated as a strategy for development.20 Thestrategy of self-reliance challenges the usualapproach of development from above, whichtypically involves centralised governments(often dominated by the military) and harsheconomic control by international agencies, allof which make local populations subject toboth repression and international economicexploitation. Self-reliance is thus a strategythat aims at liberation from both repressionand oppression. In as much as AT fits into thisstrategy, it provides support for nonviolentstruggle against repression and oppression. Ofcourse, AT won’t provide everything useful fornonviolent struggle, but it’s a good place tobegin.

In poor countries, most people have tradi-tionally lived on the land. With their integra-tion into the world economy, there have beenstrong pressures to produce cash crops forexport. No longer being self-sufficient in food,this makes the people more vulnerable to localdictators as well as foreign aggressors. This formof “development” thus works hand-in-handwith military systems. In this context, landreform becomes a measure to foster thecapacity for nonviolent struggle. The technol-ogy of local food production is one aspect ofthis issue, but the key is self-reliance and localcontrol.


Notes1. On energy vulnerability see Wilson Clark

and Jake Page, Energy, Vulnerability, and War:Alternatives for America. New York: Norton, 1981;Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, BrittlePower: Energy Strategy for National Security. Boston:Brick House, 1982; James L. Plummer, ed., EnergyVulnerability. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1982.

2. See Colin Kearton and Brian Martin,“Technological vulnerability: a neglected area inpolicy-making”, Prometheus, vol. 7, no. 1, June1989, pp. 49-60; Peter G. Neumann, Computer-Related Risks (New York: ACM Press, 1995).

3. Brian Martin, “Technological vulnerability,”Technology in Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1996, pp.511-523.

4. Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions,Law and Natural Justice (Basingstoke: Macmillan,1998, 2nd ed.); Nikki van der Gaag (ed.), “Iraq:What United Nations sanctions have done”(theme issue), New Internationalist, No. 316,September 1999.

5. David Cortright and George A. Lopez(eds.), Economic Sanctions: Panacea or Peacemaking in aPost-Cold War World? (Boulder: Westview Press,1995).

6. The contrast between UN inaction overIndonesia’s invasion and occupation and UN-sponsored action over Iraq’s invasion andoccupation is striking.

7. One who has done so is David Paterson,“Peace and engineering,” in Sandra Sewell,Anthony Kelly and Leonie Daws (eds.), Professionsin the Nuclear Age (Brisbane: Boolarong Publica-tions, 1988), pp. 201-212.

8. Many of these ideas come from engineers atthe University of Wollongong interviewed byMary Cawte and me.

9. Methods used by farmers to survive theimpact of warfare are relevant here. For example,in Angola farmers intensively cultivated tiny plots,grew the very hardy grains millet and sorghum,took up hunting and fishing, saved seeds to sowthe next year’s crop and adopted mutual aidsystems for planting, weeding and harvesting.Although some of these practices, such aschoosing hardy grains and saving seed, reducedyields, they were more resilient in times of intensethreat and stress. See David Sogge, SustainablePeace: Angola’s Recovery (Harare, Zimbabwe:Southern African Research and Documentation

Centre, 1992), pp. 39-41. I thank RebeccaSpence for providing this reference.

10. Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity (London:Calder & Boyars, 1974), argued that in anequitable society, transport speeds should be nogreater than about 15 miles per hour. Hefavourably referred to the example of a slow-but-efficient goods vehicle used in Mexico. AlthoughIllich’s strict limit on speeds can be criticised, hisbasic analysis is relevant to the task of building atransport system for nonviolent struggle.Arguably, an equitable system, in which nosegment of the population obtains transportprivileges at the expense of others, is likely topromote the sort of community solidarity sonecessary for waging nonviolent struggle. As wellas fostering solidarity, is it also the case that “slowis beautiful” when it comes to developing atransport system resilient against attack?

11. Nick Lewer, Physicians and the PeaceMovement: Prescriptions for Hope (London: FrankCass, 1992).

12. An excellent compendium of materials isCarola Eisenberg and Susannah Sirkin (directors),Human Rights and Medicine: The Uses of MedicalSkills in Documenting Abuses and Treating the Victims(conference proceedings) (Department of SocialMedicine, Harvard Medical School and Physiciansfor Human Rights (100 Boylston Street, Suite#702, Boston MA 02116, USA), 10-11 April1992). These proceedings include, among others,copies of the following publications: ClydeCollins Snow, Eric Stover and Kari Hannibal,“Scientists as detectives: investigating humanrights,” Technology Review, Februrary/March 1989,pp. 43-51; Paul Wise, Nancy D. Arnison, GreggBloche and Jane G. Schaller, “Operation JustCause: a case study in estimation of casualtiesafter war,” PSR Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3,September 1991, pp. 138-144; Anne E. Goldfield,Richard F. Mollica, Barbara H. Pesavento andStephen V. Faraone, “The physical andpsychological sequelae of torture,” Journal of theAmerican Medical Association, Vol. 259, No. 18, 13May 1988, pp. 2725-2729; Kenneth S. Pope andRosa E. Garcia-Peltoniemi, “Responding tovictims of torture: clinical issues, professionalresponsibilities, and useful resources,” ProfessionalPsychology: Research and Practice, Vol. 22, No. 4,1991, pp. 269-276.

Survival 67

13. Veli Lök, letter to Brian Martin, October1994.

14. An excellent practical reference is HansHusum, Swee Chai Ang and Erik Fosse, WarSurgery Field Manual (Penang: Third WorldNetwork, 1995). The authors provide informa-tion for emergency operations in forward clinicsand argue that in war zones surgery can be doneby people without formal medical qualifications.

15. Robert Burrowes suggested the pointsabout diet and alternatives to conventionalmedicine.

16. Miriam Solomon, letter to Brian Martin,20 January 1992.

17. A penetrating examination of this area isgiven by Kelvin W. Willoughby, Technology Choice:A Critique of the Appropriate Technology Movement(Boulder: Westview Press; London: IntermediateTechnology Publications, 1990). See also GodfreyBoyle, Peter Harper and the editors of Undercur-rents (eds.), Radical Technology (London: WildwoodHouse, 1976); David Dickson, AlternativeTechnology and the Politics of Technical Change(London: Fontana, 1974); Romesh K. Diwan,“Total revolution and appropriate technology,”Gandhi Marg, Vol. 4, No. 7, October 1982, pp.631-645; Romesh Diwan, “Appropriate technol-ogy: political and economic obstacles,” GandhiMarg, Vol. 5, No. 2, May 1983, pp. 65-74; IvanIllich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Calder &Boyars, 1973); George McRobie, Small is Possible(London: Jonathan Cape, 1981); Willem Riedijk,Technology for Liberation: Appropriate Technology forNew Employment (Delft: Delft University Press,1986).

18. Ken Darrow and Mike Saxenian (eds.),Appropriate Technology Sourcebook: A Guide to PracticalBooks for Village and Small Community Technology(Stanford, CA: Volunteers in Asia, 1986), p. 7.

19. These examples are taken at random fromDarrow and Saxenian, ibid.

20. Johan Galtung, Peter O’Brien and RoyPreiswerk (eds.), Self-Reliance: A Strategy forDevelopment (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture, 1980).


Chapter 7

The built environmentby Helen Gillett, Brian Martin and Chris Rust

Architecture and town planning have a bigimpact on the willingness and capacity ofpeople to engage in nonviolent struggle.1 Bythe design of workplaces, people may find iteasy to get together to talk or they may find iteasier to remain separate. For example, if thereis an attractive and convenient place to eatlunch, workers are more likely to get togetherthen; if not, they are more likely to eat sepa-rately. Similarly, the design of housing andlayout of streets have a big impact on commu-nication patterns, such as whether people speakto their neighbours or visit other people’shomes.

Cultural traditions play a big role in socialbehaviour, but town planning and architectureare quite influential. In high-rise blocks ofapartments, without convenient communalfacilities, there is little sense of community. Intypical US suburbs, the dispersed physicallayout encourages families to mostly interactwith themselves and perhaps a few neighbours.In the Israeli kibbutzim, by contrast, thebuildings are originally designed to foster highsocial interaction, for example in the commu-nal child rearing. At intermediate possibility is“co-housing,” found for example in Denmark,which combines private living quarters withsome collective facilities such a dining hall.2

Transport systems have an importantimpact on the capacity for nonviolent strugglethrough their effect on community solidarity.The automobile is a major problem in thisregard, since a dispersed, car-dependent societytends to separate people from each other,putting them in suburbs remote from work,shops and leisure. Freeways are notorious forbreaking up communities. Automobility for

those with access to cars reduces mobility forthose without, causing social inequality andreducing social solidarity. The transport modesmost likely to foster a sense of community arethose which cater for everyone, includingchildren, the poor and people with disabilities.This means walking and low-priced publictransport.3

In facilitating nonviolent resistance it isdesirable that members of a community inter-act and communicate with each other in amanner that produces a “sense of community”which also facilitates organisation of theirdefence. One way in which the built environ-ment is likely to aid this is through the provi-sion of “meeting places.” A number of publicarenas can be meeting places, including foot-paths and pavement cafes, market squares,shopping malls, community centres and townhalls, fair and sporting grounds, gardens, parks(especially those containing water sites), play-grounds, and commons. Though many citiesincorporate such places in their layout, thenumber, location, design, and style of publicspaces influence community solidarity.

To achieve this, meeting places should beabundant enough to be easily accessible bymembers of the community, preferably withina short walk by local residents. The provisionof meeting places in this way could make highdensity housing much more enticing. Suburbanhousing blocks tend to emphasise individualsmore than communities. Where space consid-erations limit housing to high rise apartmentbuildings, meeting places (similar to office teaor staff common rooms) could also be con-tained near, and open to, the stairwell of eachbuilding floor or level.

The built environment 69

A preference for higher density housing isechoed by Edmund Fowler when he discussesdeconcentrated housing. Higher density hous-ing environments foster neighbour interaction,which can cause tensions and culture clashes,but also can be valuable toward solving socialproblems. In contrast, physically segregatedcommunities lead to diminished social andpolitical skills and responses, and hence reducedcivic participation. Contact between people isgreater with mixed land use and building age,and short blocks with concentration of use.Under such combination of private and publiclife, residents tend toward “looking after theirstreet,” and developing networks of trust andconfidence. These conditions deter vandalismand similar problems. Unfortunatelycontemporary urban environments are“justified” by supposedly “objective” economicindicators, such as household incomes and thenumber of owner-occupied houses, though,Fowler argues, servicing and supplying decon-centrated housing costs more.4

Though meeting places may be instrumentaltoward nonviolent struggle, when they are inthe hands of private developers, they may be ahindrance to social action. Owners of enclosedshopping centres may control such things asopening hours, entry and exit locations, whocan lease shops, what notices can be put onpublic display, and even who uses their centre.Likewise, whole sections of the community canbe similarly affected if private developers aregiven the go-ahead to control walled suburbs orapartment blocks with security entries. Townplanners and other relevant authorities need tokeep these points in mind if they wish to usemeeting places and town layout to promotecommunity solidarity.

The rise of consumerism and the growingaffluence of western societies have enabled vastnumbers of people to leave the inner city areasfor the perceived peace, security and clean airof the suburbs. Instead of living with theeveryday problems encountered in these innercity areas, such as poverty, crime, and pollu-tion, and perhaps doing something about

them, many could now afford to simply escapethem. The ultimate form of escape is to be ableto buy into one of the walled, permanentlypatrolled security estates which are becomingincreasingly common.

Another problem associated with manycontemporary meeting places arises out ofpublic space “misuse” by street gangs andvandals. One possible way to help solve thisproblem is offered by Colin Ward under theterm of “unmake.” This concept suggests that,instead of providing youths with just tradi-tional meeting places such as playgrounds andparks, more subtle meeting places such as safe“construction sites” or “adventure playgrounds”are needed to redirect the energies of would-betrouble-makers. The trick to this idea seems tobe the nonobvious association with conformityand intervention of authority.5

Closely related to design for nonviolentstruggle is design to reduce crime, somethingthat has been studied and implemented incities in a number of countries. Factors thatreduce crime, and the fear of it, include light-ing, sightlines, activity generators and visibilityby others.6 It seems plausible that many of theapproaches used to improve safety in publicplaces will also help build community interac-tions and a sense of individual security that willenhance the capacity to wage nonviolentstruggle.

John Turner argues that a key issue iswhether people build, control or manage theirown housing. He provides many examples fromboth rich and poor countries. When housing iscentrally planned, specified and built, it is likelyto be more expensive, wasteful of resources,hard to adapt and socially inappropriate.Expensive, centrally built housing is vulnerableto vandalism. Centrally controlled housing ismore susceptible to takeover by an aggressor.When people choose and manage their ownstyles of housing, they are likely to be moresatisfied with it, even when it is materially farpoorer than centrally provided housing.7

Autonomy in housing is linked to greaterflexibility, which is good for nonviolent strug-


gle. The skills that people develop from build-ing, controlling and managing their ownhousing provide resilience in the face of attack.People will know what to do in case housing isdestroyed or services such as electricity andwater are interrupted.

As mentioned in the previous chapter,having a surplus of housing is a good idea for acommunity wishing to defend itself nonvio-lently. If some dwellings are destroyed, thenthere are places for occupants to stay. Moreimportantly, though, a surplus of housingshould mean that no one need be homeless. Asociety that ensures housing for everyone is lesslikely to be divided socially. Generally speaking,community solidarity is greater when there isgreater equality. This applies to housing asmuch as to anything else.

There are numerous examples of peopletaking control of their own destinies andcreating the type of neighbourhood or com-munity in which they desire to live. Urbanrenewal programs, formulated and imposedfrom above, have generally been very expensiveand spectacularly unsuccessful. Fowler listsseveral examples of people living in run down,depressed, inner city areas successfully insti-gating their own urban renewal programs.These range from the establishment ofcommunity gardens to the renovation ofderelict buildings—whereby the inhabitantscontribute labour rather than capital, which isgenerally in short supply—to secure an im-proved standard of living. These cooperativeefforts can generate a genuine sense ofcommunity. The renewed sense of pride intheir environment and themselves reducescrime rates and other social problems.8

This chapter has provided a number ofexamples of the sorts of building design andtown planning that seem likely either to hinderor help nonviolent resistance. A key factor iscommunity solidarity. Designs that fostercooperative interaction are the most helpfulones, whether the points of congregation areinside office buildings, in co-housing complexes,at street corners or in village squares.

Notes1. This chapter is adapted from Helen Gillett,

Brian Martin and Chris Rust, “Building innonviolence: nonviolent struggle and the builtenvironment,” Civilian-Based Defense, Vol. 11, No.3, Fall 1996, pp. 1, 4-7, which also describesmilitary influences on the built environment.

2. Kathryn McCamant, Cohousing: A Contempo-rary Approach to Housing Ourselves (Berkeley, CA:Habitat Press, 1988).

3. Donald Appleyard, Livable Streets (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1981); Ivan Illich,Energy and Equity (London: Calder and Boyars,1974); K. H. Schaeffer and Elliot Sclar, Access forAll: Transportation and Urban Growth (Hasmonds-worth: Penguin, 1975).

4. Edmund P. Fowler, Building Cities that Work(Montreal: McGill/Queen’s University Press,1992). Fowler discusses a number of issues alongthese lines; see also Jane Jacobs, The Death and Lifeof Great American Cities (New York: The ModernLibrary, 1969).

5. Colin Ward, Connexions: Violence—Its Nature,Causes and Remedies (England: Penguin Education,1970).

6. Gerda R. Wekerle and Carolyn Whitzman,Safe Cities: Guidelines for Planning, Design, andManagement (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,1995). I thank Nichole Dusyk for suggesting thisreference. Designing the built environment toreduce crime does not preclude efforts to addresspoverty, discrimination and social policies thatcreate crime.

7. John F. C. Turner, Housing by People:Towards Autonomy in Building Environments (NewYork: Pantheon Books, 1977).

8. Edmund P. Fowler, Building Cities that Work(Montreal: McGill/Queen’s University Press,1992).


Chapter 8

Countering attack

A population, even one using no violence itself,is vulnerable to attack using conventional,biological, chemical, nuclear and other weap-ons. A well-designed system for nonviolentstruggle therefore must also incorporate civildefence, namely protection against militaryattack. There is a large literature on civildefence, especially against nuclear attack. Thiscan include fallout shelters, stockpiles ofpreserved food, emergency plans, drills, backupsystems for electricity and water supply, etc. Inonly a few countries, notably Sweden andSwitzerland, is civil defence planning carriedout in a systematic and comprehensivefashion, for example to the extent of havingsome factories underground to survive attack.Most civil defence planning is carried out bygovernments; in few countries today is theremuch popular participation in planning orgenuine enthusiasm for civil defence prepara-tions.

In wartime, civil defence measures are takenmost seriously. Most civilians are willing to useair raid shelters and to observe blackouts. In asociety organised for nonviolent struggle, somesuch measures also make sense. However,many peace activists have been hostile to civildefence preparations—especially planning tosurvive nuclear attack—because they are partof a wider military mobilisation of society. Thelogic goes like this: a government may be morewilling to threaten or launch a nuclear attack ifthe country’s population is protected by civildefence and able to survive a counterattack;therefore, civil defence preparations should beopposed since they make the likelihood ofnuclear war greater. In short, civil defencepreparations by an armed state can be pro-vocative and increase the possibility of war.

The situation is quite different for a societythat renounces the means for warfare. Civildefence preparations then are clearly only ameans for increasing survival in the face ofattack, not for preparing for war. As noted inchapter 6, using self-reliant systems is a highlyeffective way to increase the chances of sur-vival. Adding civil defence to self-reliance inenergy, water, agriculture and the like makes alot of sense.

There is another aspect to the peace move-ment’s hostility to civil defence: it undercutsthe common belief in the movement and thewider society that nuclear war is not survivable.In peace movement circles it has long been anarticle of faith that global nuclear war wouldmean at least the destruction of “civilisation”and possibly the extermination of the humanspecies. On the other hand, most civil defenceand military planners believe that nuclearwar—while being a major and perhaps un-precedented disaster—could be waged withoutkilling the majority of the world’s population ordestroying the capacity of societies to continuefunctioning. My own view is that the civildefence and military planners are probablyright. Peace movement exaggerations of theconsequences of nuclear war may serve tomake people more worried in the short term,but can actually be paralysing and certainlymake it more difficult to mobilise people for thelong-term struggles to build alternatives to themilitary system. Needless to say, these viewsare controversial.1 My main point here is thatsupporters of nonviolent struggle should bewilling to consider taking and adapting ideasfrom the field of civil defence without being putoff by its usual associations with militaryplanning.


As noted before, most civil defence planningis undertaken by governments. Furthermore, itis designed against “foreign” aggression. Whatis really needed for nonviolent struggle isdefence against any aggressor, including thegovernment itself. It should be no surprise thatgovernments do not spend much time helpingtheir populations develop the means to resistand survive the government’s own repressiveacts. Nor is there much study of this. There ismuch to learn from people’s improvised resis-tance to attack.

The best study I know of this sort is BartonMeyers’s article “Defense against aerial attackin El Salvador,”2 which gives many specificinsights. To survive bombing from El Salva-dor’s air force, both civilians and guerrillasdeveloped and used a range of methods. Nosophisticated warning systems were available,so people had to develop their own skills indetecting and identifying aircraft. Whenspotter planes were seen, people froze in placeso they wouldn’t be seen; any moving targetwas subject to attack. When the spotter planechanged course, people would seek shelter,sometimes setting off a firecracker to warnothers.

Concealment was widely used. Leafy treeswere grown next to houses to hide them.Houses that were partly destroyed were leftunrepaired to hide the fact that they were stillbeing lived in. At the sound of aircraft, fireswere quickly doused; alternatively, undergroundovens were used with long tunnels to absorbsmoke. Radio transmissions were not used byguerrillas to avoid being intercepted. Peasantswore dark clothing to avoid detection. Theygrew crops whose colour was not readilynoticeable from the air and crops that werehidden by other plants.

Shelters were built and disguised. Naturalfeatures, such as forests and ravines, were alsoused for shelter. Guerrillas built extensivetunnel systems. In areas subject to frequentattack, shelter drills were carried out. When thegovernment army invaded following air attack,

guerrillas often would lead an evacuation of thepopulation, returning later.

The guerrillas, in the face of heavy airattack, dispersed their forces to groups of 4 to15 fighters spread out over hundreds of meters.Larger units would have been more vulnerableto air power. The dispersed fighters wereconcentrated only for attacks or briefly atnight. Another tactic was to deploy the guer-rillas very near to government troops, whereaerial attack might harm the government’sown soldiers.

As well as methods of surviving attack, othertechniques of struggle were used, such as broad-casting reports of deaths or injuries of civiliansdue to air attack. Such human rights appealswere highly effective, and would be even moreso in the context of a purely nonviolent resis-tance.

There is a great need for many more studieslike that of Meyers, as well as a need to circu-late the findings to people who can use them.Unfortunately, the contemporary field ofdisaster studies has neglected the study of waras a disaster. One factor behind this may bethat most war disasters occur in poor countrieswhereas disaster studies are largely carried outin the rich countries which sponsor and provideweapons for these wars.3

As well as knowing how to respond to aerialattack, there are many other areas in need ofinvestigation, including firearms, landmines,biological agents, chemical weapons andnuclear weapons. A first step would be toprovide basic technical information that isaccessible to nonspecialists and which can beused to provide a realistic assessment of dangersand possibly to expose uses of the weapons.4

Yet another entire field is “repression tech-nology,” which includes instruments of re-straint, intimidation, torture and surveillance,ranging from plastic bullets, chemicals such asmace, leg irons, thumbscrews, drugs for causingtrauma, assassination rifles, batons, electro-shock equipment, telephone taps, vehicleidentification, and execution chambers. Thereis a large industry devoted to producing and

Countering attack 73

selling such technologies, yet very little in theway of analysis.

Repression technologies can be used bypolice as well as military personnel. While someof these technologies are designed to kill, othersare intended to hurt or restrain people withoutkilling them. These are referred to as“nonlethal weapons.”5 Some of these nonle-thal weapons are designed to disable lethalweapons and their support systems, such asbugs to put in fuel to eat away linings, hydro-gen embrittlement of weapons, antitractiontechnologies, supercaustics, combustion modifi-ers and computer viruses. These could be used,in principle, as part of nonviolent sabotage.However, the larger category of nonlethalweapons is aimed at personnel and are designedfor riot control or counterinsurgency.

The term “nonlethal” can be misleading,since these weapons can kill on occasion, suchas when rubber bullets enter the brain throughan eye or when chemical sprays trigger a fatalallergic reaction. The term “nonlethal” serves apolitical function, suggesting that the weaponsare a more peaceful alternative to lethal ones.In practice, nonlethal weapons typically serveas a supplement to lethal ones, especially incircumstances when deaths would boomerangon the side causing them. For these reasons, theterm “repression technologies” is frequentlymore appropriate.

Steve Wright, a leading authority on repres-sion technologies, believes there is considerableinsight to be gained about how to respond tothem, for example by contacting people whohave been sprayed by riot control chemicalsand finding out practical ways of avoiding orminimising the effects.6 For example, hesuggested that

The scientific material on riot agents oftenincludes advice on decontamination whichcould be applied. There is also the work onIRA [Irish Republican Army] countermea-sures which contains a vast store of possibletechnology which could be used withouttheir violent ethos. This includes materialon interception of signal intelligence mate-rial using adapted black and white televi-

sions; blocking of surveillance devices usingfield animals; detection of helicopters andSAS squads using stolen NATO infra-redbinoculars; etc.7

Yet there has been almost no systematiceffort devoted to investigating such techniques.Information about responses remains frag-mented and dispersed. Then there is the widertask of opposing these technologies at a politi-cal and economic level, by exposing theireffects and uses and organising to stop them.Only a relatively few researchers and activistshave taken up this vital task.8

When an aggressor is seen to use violenceagainst a population that has no weapons,public outrage is likely to be enormous. Hence,attacks on civilians are often disguised ordenied. This points to the need for systems tomonitor, record and disseminate informationshowing where the attack comes from andwhat the consequences are. (This is similar tothe medical issue of detecting and verifyingtorture.) It may be—contrary to my argumentsabove—that not seeking protection may bemore effective in exposing the unscrupulousnessof the attackers. But how many people shouldbe willing to risk or sacrifice their lives in suchan endeavour?9 Does it make sense to refuseprotection when the attacks come from high-altitude bombers whose crews can’t even seetheir human targets? Perhaps measures toprotect against attack could be available tothose who want to use them, while volunteerstake more heroic stands. More examination isneeded of this challenging issue.

Another important topic is the effect ofrepression, including torture, on those who arenot direct victims. When fear is induced, thiscan weaken nonviolent struggle. Further inves-tigation is needed into how to overcome thepsychological effects of repression, includingthe potential role of technology in achievingthis.10


Notes1. See Brian Martin, “Critique of nuclear

extinction,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 19, No.4, 1982, pp. 288-300; Brian Martin, “How thepeace movement should be preparing for nuclearwar,” Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 13, No. 2,1982, pp. 149-159 (revised versions of thesearticles appear in Brian Martin, Uprooting War(London: Freedom Press, 1984), chapters 15 and16); Brian Martin, “Politics after a nuclear crisis,”Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall1990, pp. 69-78. See also Michael Curry,“Beyond nuclear winter: on the limitations ofscience in political debate,” Antipode, Vol. 18, No.3, 1986, pp. 244-267; Barry Richards, “Civildefence and psychic defence,” Radical Science 15,1984, pp. 85-97.

2. Barton Meyers, “Defense against aerialattack in El Salvador,” Journal of Political andMilitary Sociology, Vol. 22, Winter 1994, pp. 327-342. I thank Mary Cawte for pointing out thisreference.

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

4. Examples of useful sources of this sort areChristopher T. Carey, “Defense against the poorman’s nuclear bomb: biological protection anddecontamination,” American Survival Guide, Vol.20, No. 6, June 1998, pp. 32-33, 58-59 and 68;Hugh D. Crone, Banning Chemical Weapons: TheScientific Background (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992).

5. John B. Alexander, Future War: Non-LethalWeapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare (NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Malcolm Dando,A New Form of Warfare: The Rise of Non-LethalWeapons (London: Brassey’s, 1996); Nick Lewerand Steven Schofield, Non-Lethal Weapons: A FatalAttraction? Military Strategies and Technologies for21st-Century Conflict (London: Zed Books, 1997);David A. Morehouse, Nonlethal Weapons: WarWithout Death (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996).

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

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

8. Steve Wright, “The new technologies ofpolitical 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). TheCampaign Against Arms Trade, among others, hastargeted the repression trade. See for example“Campaigner’s guide to the internal repressiontrade,” Peace News, March 1996, pp. 7-10.

9. The dilemmas involved when nonviolentresisters “accept casualties” are dealt with byGene Keyes, “Heavy casualties and nonviolentdefense,” Philosophy and Social Action, Vol. 17, Nos.3-4, July-December 1991, pp. 75-88.

10. I thank Andreas Speck for this point.


Chapter 9

Research methods

The content of science and technology fornonviolent struggle—that is, the fields studied,the ideas and the artefacts developed—is dif-ferent in a range of ways from the content ofmilitary science and technology, as illustratedin previous chapters. There is also another andperhaps more profound difference involved. Toeffectively serve the purposes of nonviolentstruggle, there must be fundamental changes inthe method of doing science and of testingtechnologies.

To talk of “scientific method” immediatelyraises images of formulating hypotheses andundertaking experiments to test them. Acommon view of scientific method draws onKarl Popper’s idea of conjectures and refuta-tions, in which the constant aim is to falsifyexisting theories.1 There are also many otherimages associated with “scientific method,”including objectivity of the scientist, rejectionof deceit, open publication of results, andprinciples such as Ockham’s razor (finding thehypothesis that requires the fewest arbitraryassumptions).

It is appropriate to talk of “images” associ-ated with “scientific method” because, on closerscrutiny, “scientific method” turns out to be aconvenient myth. It is a myth because the wayscience actually proceeds often bears littleresemblance to the official principles of “scien-tific method.”2 For example, scientists seldomreject an established theory because there isevidence that contradicts it, although this iswhat is specified by Popper’s falsificationism.When careful experimenters found an aetherdrift that should have falsified the specialtheory of relativity, the results were simplyassumed to be wrong and ignored for decades.

The much touted trait of scientific objectivity isscarce on the ground: many scientists, par-ticularly elite scientists, are passionatelycommitted to their pet theories and will go toamazing lengths to maintain their views in theface of disconfirming evidence.3 The subjectiveaspects are quite apparent to most practisingscientists.

“Scientific method” is a convenient mythbecause it portrays science as above andbeyond the ordinary failings of normal society,in which personal biases, corruption, vestedinterests, and social structures are seen to play asignificant role. Why should science be dif-ferent? The “scientific method” promises totransmute the activities of fallible humans intoTruth. Without the blessing of “scientificmethod,” science becomes simply one morehuman enterprise, with all the possibilities forserving the purposes of either domination orliberation. That of course is a central theme inthis book. Science can be shaped to serve eitherviolent or nonviolent methods of struggle—justas it can be shaped to serve commercial,democratic or other values—and in practice ithas been massively shaped to serve violentends.

So how would the practice of science bedifferent with priorities for nonviolent struggle?If the usual idea of “scientific method” is amyth, then it is necessary to describe whatactually goes on in the doing of science. For mypurposes here, only a broad description isnecessary. Most scientific research is under-taken by full-time professional scientists, mostof whom are employees of governments, corpo-rations or universities. The practice of science issomething that happens among these profes-


sionals in laboratories or on field trips. Veryseldom are non-scientists involved in the doingof scientific research, except as the subject ofexperiments.

In the case of military research, the endproduct is usually a piece of technology oroccasionally an idea such as a behaviouraltechnique. Technologies are tested by engineersin laboratories and then by military personnelin special facilities. The ultimate test is in war.Note that in the applied end of military R&D,the process moves out of the hands of theengineering professionals and into the hands ofmilitary professionals. The rest of the popula-tion is normally not involved. There are excep-tions, though, such as fallout shelters forsurvival of nuclear attacks. Building falloutshelters makes little sense unless people arewilling and able to use them, and this requireseducation and training of the entire popula-tion.

There are also many cases where skills andexperience are relevant to both civilian andmilitary tasks, as in the case of pilots who canfly either civilian or military aircraft and elec-trical engineers who can set up either civilian ormilitary power systems. In the case of rifles,some civilians have an indirect input intomilitary design, since they use the weapons, orrelated ones, for nonmilitary purposes such ashunting. Nevertheless, as a rough generalisa-tion it can be said that military R&D is largelyan in-house process, with minimal involve-ment by people other than military scientists,engineers and personnel. This is because themilitary enterprise—at least in the form it hastaken in western high-technology profession-alised forms—does not require active participa-tion by the rest of the population. In the caseof fuel-air explosives, for example, no “membersof the public” are involved, except as casualties.

Nonviolent struggle is quite a differentproposition. It is founded on popular supportand involvement. Although not everyone hasto participate, a considerable level of participa-tion is essential to its success. Whereas mostcombat soldiers are young, fit men, anyone

who wants to, regardless of age, sex or abilities,can participate in some form of nonviolentaction.4 Therefore, science and technology fornonviolent struggle, if they are to be effective,must be developed with the active support andparticipation of the ultimate users of the ideasand artefacts. This means that the “method”of doing science needs to involve more of thepopulation.

Testing a method of nonviolent actionusually means a field test with a large cross-section of the population. This might beplanting fruit and nut-bearing trees to makecommunities more self-sufficient in food ordesigning factories so that they can be safelyand easily shut down if taken over by anaggressor. The implication is that R&D fornonviolent struggle, to be effective, wouldrequire close liaison with numerous communitygroups, from local gardeners to factory workers.The equivalent of soldiers testing out a newrifle would be a community testing of a newcommunication procedure.

Consider, for example, radio systems. Mili-tary radio systems need only be tested withinthe military itself. Radio for nonviolent struggleneeds to be tested by all who are likely to use it.If cheap, reliable and easy-to-use short-wavesystems are to be introduced throughout thesociety, then extensive tests need to be carriedout with all sectors of the population, includinggroups such as children and people withimpaired hearing. The military can developradio systems and then recruit or trainspecialists to operate them. Radio for nonvio-lent struggle, by contrast, needs to be useable byall. Therefore, the design and developmentphases require input from likely users. In otherwords, the development process must beresponsive to a wider section of the populationthan is the case for military technology.

Military and nonviolence R&D are alike inthat science and technology are never devel-oped solely in the minds of intellectuals or inremote labs: there is always a process of socialinteraction, including the motivation, funding,training and applications for R&D. Where

Research methods 77

these alternatives differ, in this regard, is in thesocial groups of greatest significance to theR&D process.

The so-called scientific revolution was madepossible by combining theoretical work, carriedout by gentlemen philosophers, with practicalskills possessed by the much lower status arti-sans. Modern science thrives on the theory-practice interaction. Currently it is shapedpredominantly by links with the state, corpora-tions and the military. An alternative directionwould be created by forging links with grass-roots social action and life. In a sense, thiswould be an extension of the original scientificrevolution, expanding the constituency ofscientific and technological production beyondprofessional scientists and engineers and theirprimary patrons to the general public.

The difference in the development processcan be pictured in the following way. Formilitary R&D, scientists, engineers and mili-tary testing are somewhat insulated from otherinfluences. “External” social influences onmilitary science and technology exist, to besure—examples include strategic policy, compe-tition for funding, and influence of the peacemovement. But a key “social influence” isactually the very organisation of the R&D as aprofessional, in-house enterprise.

In a more participatory process of R&D fornonviolent struggle, there would be no cleardistinction between researchers and the rest ofthe population. Of course, some people may bemuch more active than others in the process oftechnological innovation. But in this model,such innovation depends vitally on interactionand cooperation with a wide cross-section ofthe population. Furthermore, this interactionand cooperation is likely to lead to contribu-tions by others—those who in the militarymodel would be simply users of the technology.This participatory model of R&D underminesthe special role and status of professional scien-tists and engineers as the exclusive holders ofexpertise about science and technology.5

There are some precedents for this sort ofparticipatory R&D. Citizen groups in

Japan—often with participation by some scien-tists—have investigated environmentalproblems, using simple techniques such astalking to people about local health problemsand testing for the presence of radioactivity byobserving specially sensitive plants. Such anapproach was more successful in determiningthe cause of Minamata disease—due tomercury pollution in the ocean—than heavilyfunded teams of traditional scientists usingsophisticated ocean sampling and computermodels.6

Many parts of the women’s health move-ment—most prominently, the BostonWomen’s Health Book Collective—have reas-sessed available evidence and drawn on theirown personal experiences to provide a differentperspective about women’s health, one that isless responsive to the interests of drug compa-nies and medical professionals and moreresponsive to the concerns and experiences ofwomen themselves.7

AIDS activists in the US, concerned aboutthe slow and cumbersome processes for testingand approving drugs to treat AIDS, developedtheir own criteria and procedures and triedthem out with drugs, some of which wereproduced and distributed illicitly. Their effortsand political pressure led to changes in officialprocedures.8

These examples show that nonscientists canmake significant contributions to the process ofdoing science, and in some cases do better orcause changes in establishment approaches.However, the issue is not a competitionbetween scientists and nonscientists, but ratherpromotion of a fruitful interaction betweenthem. Scientists, to do their jobs effectively,need to bring the community “into the lab”and nonscientists need to learn what it meansto do research. In the process, the distinctionbetween the two groups would be blurred.

A good case study of the two models is thedebate over encryption of digital communica-tion described in chapter 5. The military modelwas embodied, literally and figuratively, in theClipper chip, designed by the US National


Security Agency so that authorised partiescould decipher any encrypted messages. Clipperwas designed in secrecy. It was based on theSkipjack algorithm, which remained a secret.Clipper and related systems were planned forinstallation in telephones and computernetworks essentially as “black boxes,” whichpeople would use but not understand. If Clipperhad been a typical military technology, such asa ballistic missile or fuel-air explosive, it wouldhave been implemented in military arenas withlittle debate (except perhaps from peaceactivists) and certainly little public input intothe choice of technology.

At first glance, the participatory alternativeto Clipper is public key encryption, widelyfavoured by computer users. But rather thanthe alternative being a particular technology, itis more appropriate to look at the process ofchoosing a technology. Encryption has beenthe subject of vigorous and unending discus-sions, especially on computer conferences.Different algorithms have been developed,tested, scrutinised and debated. This has oc-curred at a technical level and also a sociallevel. Various encryption systems have beenexamined by top experts, who have thenpresented their conclusions for all to examine.As well, the social uses and implications ofdifferent systems have been debated. Last butnot least, lots of people have used the encryp-tion systems themselves. The contrast toClipper is striking.

Even the more participatory process used indeveloping and assessing encryption is stilllimited to a small part of the population. Thisis inevitable, since not everyone can be in-volved in looking at every technology. Thepoint is that the process is relatively open: thereare far more people who have investigatedcyptography in relation to public key encryp-tion than could ever be the case with agovernment-sponsored technology such asClipper. The other important point is that theparticipatory process requires informed popularacceptance of the technology, rather thanimposition through government pressure. The

best indicator of the participatory process is avigorous and open debate involving bothtechnical and social considerations.

The case of encryption shows that participa-tory R&D does not eliminate the role ofexpertise. What it does reduce is the automaticassociation of expertise with degrees, jobs inprestigious institutions, high rank, awards, andservice to vested interests. Expertise has to betested in practical application. Just as anathlete cannot claim current superiority on thebasis of degrees or past victories, so an expert ina process of participatory R&D cannot rely oncredentials, but is always subject to the test ofcurrent practice.

These comments on participatory R&D areinevitably tentative. By their very nature,participatory systems are shaped by the processof participation itself, so what they become isnot easy to predict.

Research methods 79

Notes1. Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An

Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1972).

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

3. Ian I. Mitroff, The Subjective Side of Science: APhilosophical Inquiry into the Psychology of the ApolloMoon Scientists (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1974).

4. Obviously, not everyone is able to partici-pate in every form of nonviolent action. Forexample, using a short-wave radio to sendmessages requires certain skills and technology.But virtually everyone can participate in peti-tions, rallies, boycotts, strikes and other forms ofnoncooperation. On participation by people withdisabilities, see Brian Martin and Wendy Varney,“Nonviolent action and people with disabilities,”Civilian-Based Defense, Vol. 15, No. 3, Year-End2000, pp. 4-16.

5. There is a considerable literature on citizenparticipation 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, “Participatoryanalysis, democracy, and technological decisionmaking,” Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol.18, No. 3, Summer 1993, pp. 341-361; BrianMartin (ed.), Technology and Public Participation(Wollongong: Science and Technology Studies,University of Wollongong; http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/TPP/, 1999); James C. Petersen (ed.),Citizen Participation in Science Policy (Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press, 1984); RichardE. Sclove, Democracy and Technology (New York:Guilford Press, 1995); Leslie Sklair, OrganizedKnowledge: A Sociological View of Science andTechnology (St. Albans: Paladin, 1973); LangdonWinner (ed.), Democracy in a Technological Society(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992). However, most ofthis writing sees citizens as involved in decisionmaking but not actually doing research. Onscience by the people, see Brian Martin, “The goalof self-managed science: implications for action,”Radical Science Journal, No. 10, 1980, pp. 3-17;

Brian Martin, “Anarchist science policy,” TheRaven, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 136-153;Richard Sclove, “Research by the people, for thepeople,” Futures, Vol. 29, No. 6, 1997, pp. 541-549. Relevant here are the diverse experiences inparticipatory action research, though such“people’s research” is far more likely to be infields of social analysis rather than science andengineering. See for example Stephen Kemmisand Robin McTaggart (eds.), The Action ResearchPlanner (Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University,3rd edn, 1988); Robert A. Rubinstein,“Reflections on action anthropology: somedevelopmental dynamics of an anthropologicaltradition,” 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 toManage our Futures: The Participative Redesign ofSocieties in Turbulent Transition (New York: Wiley,1982).

6. Jun Ui, “The interdisciplinary study ofenvironmental problems,” Kogai—The Newsletterfrom Polluted Japan, Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 1977,pp. 12-24.

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

8. Steven Epstein, ‘Democratic science? AIDSactivism and the contested construction ofknowledge,’ Socialist Review, Vol. 21, April-June1991, pp. 55-64.


Chapter 10

Technology policy for nonviolent struggle

The basic idea of technology for nonviolentstruggle is straightforward. Actually bringingthis alternative about—doing relevant researchand developing, testing and implementingrelevant technologies—is much more difficult.In this chapter I discuss priorities for movingtowards technology that serves nonviolentrather than violent struggle.

The term usually used when discussingpriorities of this sort is “policy,” in this casetechnology policy. The idea of policy, though,has come to refer primarily to decisions andimplementation by governments. Govern-ments are certainly important players in R&D,but not the only ones. After discussing priori-ties, I look at what can be done by three par-ticular groups: governments; scientists andengineers; and community groups.1

Before beginning, it is worth emphasisingthat there are enormous institutional andconceptual obstacles to promoting nonviolentstruggle.2 Many government and corporateleaders would do everything they could tooppose development of grassroots capacity fornonviolent action, since this would pose adirect threat to their power and position.Furthermore, the idea of popular nonviolentstruggle is extremely challenging to manypeople given standard expectations that the“authorities” or experts will take care of socialproblems, including defence. Therefore, to talkof technology policy for nonviolent strugglemay seem utopian. But if alternatives are everto be brought about, it is important to talkabout them now. Without vision and dialogue,there is little hope of building a nonviolentfuture.

Priorities

The traditional idea of technological advancewas the “linear model”: first there is scientificresearch; the results of the research are applied,thereby producing a technological application;finally, the technology is taken up in themarketplace. Among those who study techno-logical innovation, this simple model is prettymuch discredited. Innovation seldom happensthis way.

Another model is “market pull.” There is ademand for a certain product or service. Thisencourages technologists to search for a suitablesolution; sometimes this involves doing directedresearch.

In practice, the process of innovation isusually complex. It involves market incentives,new ideas coming out of basic research,economic and psychological commitments tocurrent systems, and the particular agendas ofinterest groups such as politicians, governmentbureaucracies, corporate elites, and variouspressure groups. Nevertheless, the usual modelsof innovation focus on several key players:government and the market and their relationto R&D. The “market” is constituted by thosewho buy and sell the product in question.

For weapons, the market has only a partialrelevance, since a large fraction of production iscarried out by governments for their own use.In most capitalist economies, corporations areheavily involved in weapons production, inwhich case the major purchasers are govern-ments. Technology policy for military defenceis therefore primarily concerned with govern-ment funding, regulation and promotion of theprocess of innovation.

Technology policy for nonviolent struggle 81

Technology policy for nonviolent struggle isdifferent in a fundamental way, aside from theobvious difference between nonviolence andviolence. As outlined in the previous chapter,the very method of doing R&D for nonviolentstruggle needs to involve all interested membersof the community, since they are the ones whowill be on the “front line” in carrying outnonviolent action. The immediate implicationis that the highest priority should be put onmeasures that involve as many people as possi-ble and minimise dependence on groups withspecial skills or resources. Accordingly, I nowoutline four ways of promoting technology fornonviolent struggle, in order of priority.

1. Implement currently availabletechnologiesThis includes things such as expanding accessto computer networks, teaching workers how toshut down and start up factory equipment,promoting use of self-reliant energy systems,and running simulation exercises in neighbour-hoods and workplaces. Such measures do notrequire any new technologies, much less anyresearch. However, they would have a strongindirect influence on R&D. When people learnhow to use existing technology, they often haveideas about how it could be improved, adaptedor replaced. The key point here is to link theuse of the technology to the goal of nonviolentstruggle.

For example, when users of computer net-works think about how to communicate in anemergency, they are likely to ask “what if?”questions. What if an aggressor coerces thesystem administrator? What if messages areintercepted and read? This is likely to lead topressure for better security, such as standard useof encryption, and contingency measures foran emergency. This in turn could readilystimulate research in particular directions.

When workers think about how to resist atakeover of their factory, initially they maywant to know how to protect themselves orhow to make sure the aggressor can be resistedwith the least risk to anyone’s life. Once they

learn more about how the factory operates,they may have ideas about reorganisingproduction, accounting systems, work ar-rangements and the like, all of which couldmake the workers better able to resist anattack. This in turn would likely lead to anumber of puzzles for engineers.

Thus, to set top priority on implementingcurrently available technologies is likely to leaddirectly to demands for finding and imple-menting different technologies. The biggestadvantage of this approach, though, is that itcan generate support for further measures.Rather than do research in isolation from theapplication and hope that people find itrelevant to technology, this approach usesimplementation as a way to mobilise knowl-edge and skills.

The fundamental assumption is that sincepopular involvement is the foundation forsuccessful nonviolent struggle, popular in-volvement is also the foundation for thepromotion of science and technology fornonviolent struggle.

2. Search out and disseminate existingideasExamples here include radios operating on verylow power, medical techniques for diagnosingthe use of torture, and plants that can bereadily grown locally for food. These are areasin which technologies or techniques are avail-able but not widely known. There are lots ofradios available that operate using mains elec-tricity or conventional batteries, and there arefactories to produce such radios. By contrast,there are few micropower radios available andrelatively few people who know how to buildthem. Similarly, some researchers have devel-oped techniques for diagnosing particular typesof torture, but very few medical practitioners orothers know about these techniques, much lesshow to apply them.

From the point of view of any grouppromoting nonviolent struggle, it is first neces-sary to search out these sorts of ideas. Thenthey need to be tested. Assuming they are


useful ideas, they need to be publicised in theright quarters. Testing and publicity are inter-active. The results of testing can be the basisfor publicity, whereas publicity can lead totesting by others, or to awareness that othershave already developed the same technique.

The next stage is to begin to implementthese technologies. That takes us back topriority 1.

3. Adapt existing technologyThis includes modifying factory design so thatworkers can control production more easily(shutting it down or gearing it up), developingshort-wave radio sets so that they can be usedas public phones, and designing dams andpower plants so they are less susceptible tosabotage. The basic idea here is to use existingtechnology but to modify it to better serve thepurposes of nonviolent struggle.

In the case of factory design, this mightmean introducing a crucial piece of equip-ment—such as a special computer chip—thatcan be easily destroyed, thereby rendering thefactory useless for a period of time until areplacement could be reconstructed. Dependingon the factory, this might be straightforward ordifficult, but in either case it means a modifica-tion of the existing design rather than redes-igning the factory from scratch.

In the case of short-wave radio, existing setswould need modification for use as publicphones, to make them simpler to use, relativelyresistant to weather and mishandling, etc.Again, the aim is to adapt the technology fornonviolent purposes.

Adaptation of this sort is not necessarilyeasy. It can pose difficult technical challenges.It also must involve prospective users. Theworkers must be involved in the factory redes-ign process, otherwise the new system may turnout to be useless or even counterproductive. Apublic short-wave radio system has to be triedout by the sort of people who would actuallyuse it. In the testing that is an essential part ofthe adaptation of the technology, manysuggestions for improvement and new ideas are

likely to arise. The whole process should be aninteractive and iterative one.

If a modification of technology turns out tobe effective, then it becomes worthwhile to tellothers about it. It becomes an “available”technology that others may want to use. Thistakes the process back to approach 2, searchingand disseminating existing ideas.

In reality, there is a lot of overlap betweenthese two approaches. An existing technologycan seldom be transplanted directly from onesituation to another. Adaptation is usuallyrequired. Even factories producing the sameproduct using the same method are designed insomewhat different ways. The workers havedifferent skills and experiences. This meansthat equipment designed for one factory islikely to need modifications in order to workeffectively in another. Similarly for short-waveradio. From one community there may bedifferences in climate, language, commonknowledge, treatment of public facilities and soforth. Factors such as these need to be takeninto account in designing and implementingany system.

4. Develop new technologiesExamples here include new varieties of cropsthat do not rely on artificial pesticides or fertil-isers, new communication systems that areresistant to centralised control, and new stylesof architecture to facilitate ease of constructionand to foster community solidarity. The chal-lenge to develop new technologies to servenonviolent struggle could require scientificinvestigations. For example, crop planning forself-reliant communities might lead to puzzlesin mathematical ecology somewhat differentfrom the standard ones. Introducing computerchips and sensors in walls, appliances and soforth—called ubiquitous computing—might, insome circumstances, be valuable for nonviolentstruggle. How could it be done in a way thatgives no power to any group trying to controlthe population? Just as whole branches ofcurrent theoretical work in various disciplineshave evolved from the puzzles deriving from


practical problems, so it is likely that thepractical problems of nonviolent struggle wouldgive rise to numerous theoretical investigations.

Compared to using or modifying existingtechnologies to serve nonviolent struggle,developing new technologies requires muchmore effort and gives less guarantee of success.Even more important than this, though, isparticipation in trying out technology. Imple-menting existing technology involves the usersimmediately. Their responses are essential formaking the technology actually serve thepurposes of nonviolent struggle. Developingnew technology, by contrast, is seldom acommunity-based enterprise. It often requiresspecialised skills. Therefore it is best done in thecontext of widespread support for nonviolentapproaches rather than as the vanguard ofnonviolent struggle. Without popular involve-ment, new technologies are likely to simply siton the shelf, untested and unknown.

This set of priorities may suggest that I amhostile to new technologies. Quite the contrary.If, in the long term, nonviolent methodsbecome established as the only viable way tostruggle, then new technologies are likely to befundamental to this process. In a society builtaround self-reliant communities with numeroustechnological systems by which people canundermine aggressors, violence will be widelyseen as counterproductive. So long as techno-logical systems exist that allow centralisedcontrol—which includes everything fromweapons systems to centrally controlledcommunication systems—the dangers ofdomination will persist. So in the long term thedevelopment and implementation of newtechnologies to serve nonviolent struggle areessential.

However, this does not mean that develop-ing new technologies is the best approach inthe short term. In present-day societies, vio-lence and centralised control are pervasive andrelatively few people are dedicated to develop-ing nonviolent alternatives. The idea of scienceand technology for nonviolent struggle is virtu-ally unknown. In this situation, the first prior-

ity is to generate greater involvement in theidea and practice of nonviolence. Concernabout new technologies is more a distractionthan an aid in this, given that there arenumerous existing technologies that can servenonviolent struggle most effectively.

I have talked so far about priorities forintroducing technology for nonviolent struggle.I haven’t actually said who will do the intro-ducing. In my view, there is no single correctanswer. Various groups can be involved,ranging from governments, corporations,engineers, workers and nonviolent activists.

Government

If even a single government devoted significantresources to the promotion of technology fornonviolent struggle, it would have an enormousimpact.3 It could, among other things:

• sponsor projects to implement availabletechnologies;

• finance searches for suitable technologiesthat are not widely known;

• organise simulations of social defence;• publish writings and advertisements about

nonviolent struggle;• endorse the development of contingency

plans for nonviolent resistance;• promote measures for self-reliance in

various fields;• encourage inclusion of the theory and

practice of nonviolent action in schools;• disseminate ideas about nonviolence to

other governments;• offer support—moral, human and mate-

rial—to nonviolent groups opposing repressionin various parts of the world;

• develop plans for nonviolent resistancewithin government bureaucracies;

• set up institutes for research into nonvio-lence.

Governments have two great advantageswhen it comes to promoting nonviolence:legitimacy and resources. Legitimacy is perhapsthe most important. If just one government inthe world decided to promote nonviolent strug-


gle, it would provide an example and inspira-tion to people everywhere. The resourcescontrolled by governments are important too:money, workers, laws, policies. These resourcesare used now to sustain military systems.Clearly the same resources would have a giantimpact if devoted instead to nonviolent strug-gle. But legitimacy is vital in the use of re-sources too: laws will be obeyed only if mostpeople consider them legitimate; governmentemployees can easily strangle policies if they donot think them legitimate.

The great power of government, via legiti-macy and resources, is the reason why so manygroups look to government to solve their prob-lems. This applies to peace movements as wellas many others. Many of the campaigns ofpeace movements over the decades have beenaimed at changing goverment policy. Intenselobbying is carried out; rallies are held todemonstrate the strength of public commit-ment; demands are made for governmentaction, such as a “nuclear freeze” or an end toforeign intervention. But in most cases theseefforts have had little success. Governments areseldom responsive to peace movements andhave seldom shown any interest in nonviolentstruggle. There are several reasons for this.

Most fundamentally, states and militariesare sustained by each other, as noted inchapter 2. The foundation of state power is amonopoly over what is considered legitimateviolence, exercised by the military and thepolice. Even when the threat of foreign aggres-sion is negligible—as in geographically remotecountries such as Fiji or New Zealand—mili-tary establishments are maintained and fear ofenemies is fostered. Militaries are far morelikely to be used internally, against the peoplewho are supposed to be defended, than againstforeign aggressors. This is most obvious in thecase of military dictatorship.

Since the military is an integral, indeedessential, part of the state, it is inherentlyunlikely for the state to fully endorse popularnonviolent struggle as an alternative to the

military. Popular nonviolent struggle might,after all, be used to challenge the status quo.

This assessment of the link between thestate and the military is useful at a generallevel, but it gives too mechanical a picture. Thestate is not a unified entity: it contains thegovernment (elected or otherwise), the legalsystem and various state bureaucracies to runor regulate functions such as welfare, educa-tion, industry and transport, among others. Itis quite possible for different sectors of the stateto promote different goals. Some governmentshave sponsored studies of social defence; someteachers in government schools have developedpeace studies; some government departmentshave promoted self-reliance; and so forth. It iscertainly possible for parts of the state tosponsor nonviolent struggle.

The problem is that nonviolence has a verylow profile compared to military approaches.The military is well and truly entrenched,partly because of its structural relation to statepower.

Peace activists often hope to sway politicalleaders by the logic of their arguments. Thisseldom has much impact, since politicians aremuch more influenced by power considera-tions. After all, the threat of global nuclear warhas never been enough by itself to persuadepoliticians to implement nuclear disarmament.

Peace activists also try to apply pressure topolitical leaders through letter-writing, rallies,mobilisation of voters and civil disobedience.This has a much greater impact than justlogical arguments. Nevertheless, there arelimitations in the strategy of applying pressure.Political leaders are subject to other pressures,such as lobbying by supporters of the military.Promises are easy to make and easy to break.When community activists seek to get thegovernment to take action, they do not takecontrol of the agenda themselves. Their effortis to get someone else (the government) to takeaction, not to take action themselves.

Finally, even when governments do takeaction, they are not likely to promote a processof community mobilisation. They are more


likely to sponsor research, which may just delaythe day when action occurs. They are likely toprovide support for figureheads—such asprominent investigators—rather than forcommunity-level activists.

The experiences with government sponsor-ship of research into social defence illustratethe above generalisations. Supporters ofnonviolent action have devoted much effort topersuading governments to investigate socialdefence. Occasionally there have been suc-cesses. The governments of Denmark, Swedenand the Netherlands have sponsored studies.

The experience in the Netherlands is in-structive.4 In the late 1970s, a small radicalparty was part of a coalition government. Amember of this party was made science minis-ter, and Johan Niezing, Professor of PeaceResearch at the Free University of Brussels, washis chief scientific adviser. Niezing has longbeen committed to social defence, not foridealistic reasons but because it seems to him tobe the most pragmatic alternative to the hor-rors of military methods.5 As a result ofNiezing’s influence, one of the conditions forcontinuing the coalition was the acceptance ofproposals to fund ten social defence researchprojects. A committee, chaired by Niezing, wasset up to oversee the ten projects. But thenthere was a change of government. Fundingwas dramatically reduced so that there wasenough for just one project.6

The one project was a study coordinated byAlex Schmid of Leiden University. Schmid andhis collaborators concluded that an invasion bya determined military power (specifically, theSoviet Union) could not be stopped bynonviolent means.7 In retrospect, now that theSoviet threat to western Europe has collapsedin the wake of the largely nonviolent 1989revolutions in Eastern Europe, this analysisseems quite shortsighted. Thus ended apromising possibility for sustained research onsocial defence.

(Schmid went on to set up the Interdiscipli-nary Research Project on Root Causes of GrossHuman Rights Violations, with the Dutch

acronym PIOOM, at the University of Leiden.This is a vitally important social science enter-prise, whose core funding remains precarious.)

The Niezing committee was disbanded in1987; its original proposals, having beenupdated and augmented by Giliam de Valk,were published in English in 1993.8 Niezinghimself played a key role in ensuring that thispublication took place.

These problems with getting governments totake action serve as a warning. It may beworthwhile to seek government support fornonviolent struggle, but it is wise to be aware ofthe difficulties. For example, at the UnitedNations, the most powerful governmentsobstructed a study of military science andtechnology at every stage. The study wasendorsed by the General Assembly, but ham-strung by committee members (selected bygovernments) who were military officers or justignorant. The study was held back by govern-ments’ refusals to provide information or theirantagonism to critical comment, and wascontinually stalled at the publication stage.9

The difficulties that could confront activeefforts to develop technology for nonviolentstruggle—which might, after all, be used againstgovernment repression—can be imagined.

In summary, government support fornonviolent struggle offers the immenseadvantages of legitimacy and resources. But inmost cases there is likely to be great difficulty ingaining any support in the first place, due tothe close connection between the military andthe state. Furthermore, seeking governmentsupport has the disadvantage of trying to getothers to take action rather than doing itoneself. Finally, governments are likely tosponsor research that is removed from thecommunity.

All these features are apparent in the Dutchexperience. The Netherlands government hadample resources to investigate and promotesocial defence, but the major political partieswere not interested. It was only by a quirk ofpolitics that government funds were allocatedto social defence. The money was cut back at


the first opportunity and in any case wasdevoted to research rather than communityaction. Even so, the funding gave considerablecredibility to social defence and the proposalsfrom the Niezing Committee are a valuableresource for future research and action.

Scientists and engineers

Many scientists and engineers are in a goodposition to develop science and technology fornonviolent struggle. There are a number ofreasons why they haven’t done so already. Asdescribed in chapter 2, most funding for scienceand technology comes from governments andcorporations. Defence is seen as a matter forthe military, and military R&D is a key drivingforce for science and engineering. Thisemphasis on military priorities filters throughto civilian R&D: military priorities influencethe disciplines that are most favoured and thetechnical problems that are seen as mostsignificant. As high-status professionals whoseprivileges depend on claims to special expertise,scientists and engineers are seldom encouragedto get involved in social movements or, moreimportantly, to redirect their work so thatprofessional skills become easily taken up bycommunity activists. There is much moreprestige to be gained by taking up the mostesoteric theoretical challenges or constructingand using highly sophisticated technicalapparatus.

If scientists and engineers were to take uppractical problems in nonviolent struggle, theycould have an enormous impact. They bringtwo great resources to bear: skills and legiti-macy. Their skills are of great practical rele-vance in some cases, such as designing tele-communications systems or building renewableenergy systems. In other cases their skills arenot directly relevant to nonviolent struggle inany obvious way, but even so, the involvementof scientists and engineers would have greatimpact because they are the people with thegreatest social legitimacy as experts in scienceand technology.

The basic ideas of sustainable agriculture orshort-wave radio are known to many people.Applying these ideas to nonviolent struggle isnot so difficult, at least at the basic level. But ifan agricultural researcher or electronics engi-neer were to get up and say that theseapproaches have merit for nonviolent struggle,this would have a great impact. Scientists andengineers have credentials and often an insti-tutional affiliation that gives them credibility.

Some scientists and engineers, especiallythose working at universities, have considerablefreedom to choose their research topics. Theyare in a good position to undertake projects insupport of nonviolent struggle.

I have already described some of the reasonswhy scientists and engineers have not alreadytaken up this sort of work and advocacy. Manyof them are heavily funded by the military orrespond to research agendas shaped by militarypriorities. More generally, they are trained to beprofessionals and discouraged from buildinglinks with community groups.

But the social structures of science andengineering are only part of the problem. Thevery idea of science and technology fornonviolent struggle is hardly known. The peacemovement for the most part has only beenagainst technology, namely technology for war.The alternative to bombs and missiles is seen ascivilian priorities such as hospitals, publictransport and housing. The idea of “peaceconversion” or “economic conversion” is toconvert military production into production for“human needs,” which means everything fromfood and clean drinking water to clothing andbooks. The idea that technology could be usedto support a nonviolent method of struggle hasnot been on the peace movement agenda.

Some scientists and engineers have played astrong role in peace movements, sometimesforming their own organisations. They haveused their skills to push for disarmament, forexample to argue that a nuclear test ban couldbe adequately monitored with seismic detectioncapabilities. Sometimes they have tried toorganise boycotts of military R&D, most


notably in the case of the Strategic DefenseInitiative, commonly known as star wars, asdiscussed in chapter 2.

Many scientists and especially engineershave devoted their skills to goals such assustainable agriculture, renewable energytechnology, and community communication.They have worked with community activists todevelop alternatives that empower communi-ties rather than elites.

Thus there is an undoubted capacity andwillingness of some scientists and engineers touse their skills and prestige to improve andpromote nonviolent struggle, if only this alter-native were brought to their attention and seenas a viable option. There are several ways inwhich this could happen. One, perhaps leastlikely, is that governments begin to fundnonviolence R&D. Another is that a few scien-tists and engineers take up the issue on theirown initiative. Finally, popular support fornonviolent struggle would create a contextfavourable for involvement by professionals.

In summary, scientists and engineers bringtwo great strengths to the development andpromotion of R&D for nonviolent struggle:their skills and their legitimacy. On the otherhand, they face a number of obstacles,including employment and funding fromgovernments and corporations oriented tomilitary approaches, and their professionalstatus which inhibits building links withcommunity groups.

Community groups

Compared to governments and to scientistsand engineers, most community groups havefew resources and little legitimacy. Neverthe-less, in some ways they face the fewest obsta-cles in the task of developing and implement-ing technology for nonviolent struggle.

The category “community group” encom-passes a range of organisations, includingsporting clubs, service organisations such asRotary, environmental groups, women’sgroups, church groups and trade unions. Just

about any voluntary organisation could beincluded. Even some businesses and govern-ment-funded bodies might be included ascommunity groups, as in the case of some smalllocal businesses and libraries. In these cases it isusually the clients who make something acommunity organisation, in the sense that it isbased on voluntary participation frommembers of the local community.

The concept of “community” is easy to criti-cise. Is there really such a thing as “commu-nity,” over and above the activities of indi-viduals? Do community groups really representlocal constituencies in any fair way? Is there a“community” to be defended? Is it worthdefending?

Here, community groups are taken to berelatively small organisations or groupings ofpeople that are mostly voluntary. Whetherthey in some sense represent the “community”is not the central issue. The point here is not toidealise them but to comment on theirstrengths and weaknesses in promoting tech-nology for nonviolent struggle.

Although few community groups have eitherlarge resources, legitimacy (for waging nonvio-lent struggle) or a concentration of specialisttechnical skills, they do have one enormousadvantage. They are located at the point wherenonviolent struggle can be waged. Therefore,they can proceed to develop skills and makepreparations without waiting for anyone else.Theory and practice are much easier tointegrate.

An environmental group, for example, couldmake an assessment of local dependencies inenergy, transport and agriculture. How wellcould local people survive if liquid fuel supplieswere cut off? Could they get to work? Couldenough food be supplied and distributed? Couldthey keep warm enough in cold weather? Toanswer these questions, it would be necessary todo an inventory of local resources, travel pat-terns, transport links, contingency plans and soforth. With information in hand, it wouldthen be possible to make suggestions forimproving self-reliance, such as improving


insulation, fostering telework (working locallyand using telecommunications to keep in touchwith the main office), planting local vegetablegardens, etc. Obviously, any such programmeof study and action would require gaininginformation and support from local residents.

A local club, such as Rotary, Apex or Lions,could make a study of local networks andorganisations, and develop plans for resistance.This would involve liaison with many differentgroups, from lawyers to supermarket employeesand from librarians to hairdressers. What caneach group do? What might they be willing todo? How can they reach agreement? What arethe warning signs that urgent preparationsshould begin? What systems of communicationand decision making should be set up? Is itworth running a simulation?

The workers at a local radio station couldmake plans for action in the face of an attack.This might include preparing tapes to bebroadcast in an emergency, training bothworkers and outsiders in use of the station’sequipment, setting up plans for broadcastingfrom alternative premisses, building links withother radio stations and communicationmedia, and running simulations.

In each of these cases, and others, there ismuch that can be done with existing skills andresources. Furthermore, in most organisationsthere are likely to be some people with special-ised skills. As soon as initial plans are made, anobvious next step is to search for informationabout what others have done, including infor-mation about relevant technology. This leadsdirectly into the process of adapting existingtechnology to the tasks at hand. If there aredifficulties in the process, local skills may besufficient to overcome them. Alternatively, orin addition, help can be sought from engineersor others in order to tackle special problems.

Thus, when community groups prepare fornonviolent struggle, it is natural for them tobegin with implementation of existing technol-ogy. In other words, they are likely to proceedwith what I argued is the first priority. Unlikegovernments and professional researchers,

there is little incentive to undertake researchthat is unconnected with immediate practicalproblems. Nevertheless, the process of tacklingthese practical problems will inevitably lead tochallenges requiring R&D.

For community groups, preparation fornonviolent struggle need not be an abstractenterprise aimed at resisting a hypotheticalinvasion. There are more immediate concernsavailable. For example, many environmentalgroups use nonviolent action to oppose logging,stop freeways and so forth. Furthermore,building community self-reliance in energy,transport and agriculture is very much a part ofa programme to replace current systems inorder to reduce or eliminate their harmfulimpacts.

What about service groups such as Rotary?They can do community networking to gainsupport for valued projects. Another motiva-tion is to provide skills about communitynetworking to other groups, for example incountries under dictatorial rule.

Community radio stations can come underthreat themselves, for example if they chal-lenge powerful vested interests. Being preparedto defend against a hostile attack makes senseeven if foreign invasion is remote.

Community groups need not be naivepractitioners. At least some members of somegroups will have knowledge of methods ofscientific and social analysis. They can searchavailable literatures, develop protocols fortesting ideas and evaluating outcomes, andlearn from the results of investigations andprojects. Furthermore, the very process of doingcommunity group projects will develop the skillsof participants.

In summary, although community groupsdo not have large resources or great legitimacy,they are in a position to directly undertake theinvestigation and implementation of technol-ogy for nonviolent struggle. They are likely totackle the most feasible projects first, ratherthan getting sidetracked into esoteric research.


Conclusion

I have outlined here what I consider to be thehighest priorities for technology for nonviolentstruggle, which generally are the implementa-tion of currently available technologies firstand research into new developments last. ThenI commented on the strengths and weaknessesof action by three groups: governments, scien-tific and engineering professionals, andcommunity groups. There are also other groupsthat can take action, such as corporations andvarious international organisations. Valuableinitiatives are possible from any of these. Ineach case it is helpful to be aware of the oppor-tunities and likely difficulties.

There is a more fundamental question: howis action by any of these groups to be pro-moted? After all, there are only a few isolatedinitiatives for social defence around the world.There is no simple answer to the question.Action ultimately begins with individuals andsmall groups who decide the issue is worthy ofdevelopment. As long as military priorities aredominant, including the assumption thatdefence means military defence/offence, theinvestment of major resources into nonviolentstruggle is unlikely. But it is possible for theclimate of opinion to change. When thisoccurs, there will be plenty of things to do.Until then, those who are committed to thenonviolent alternative can only do the bestthey can, in the knowledge that their effortscan help to create a new climate of opinion.


Notes1. Conventional technology policy literature is

not deployed in this chapter. It is almost entirelyoriented to top-down decision making andprovides few insights about policy making for aparticipatory system such as social defence. Issuessuch as the suppression of innovation by vestedinterests, the influence of managerial control,worker opposition and social movements arealmost entirely absent from the conventionalpolicy literature. Innovation from the grassroots,or more generally any innovation that isnoncommercial or a challenge to state interests, isgiven virtually no attention. Some typical sourcesthat fit this characterisation are Rod Coombs,Paolo Saviotti and Vivien Walsh, Economics andTechnological Change (Basingstoke: MacmillanEducation, 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 WalterZegveld, Reindustrialization and Technology (Harlow:Longman, 1985). I thank Rhonda Roberts forhelpful comments on these points. See RhondaRoberts, “Managing innovation: the pursuit ofcompetitive advantage and the design of innova-tion intense environments,” Research Policy, Vol.27, 1998, pp. 159-175.

2. I thank Ellen Elster for emphasising thispoint.

3. For a vision of government policy forsocially beneficial technology, see MichaelGoldhaber, Reinventing Technology: Policies forDemocratic Values (New York: Routledge & KeganPaul, 1986). What is lacking in Goldhaber’sotherwise stimulating picture is a feasible processfor moving towards such a policy.

4. This account, based on discussions withJohan Niezing, is adapted from Brian Martin,“Impressions of the Dutch social defencenetwork,” Nonviolence Today, #34, September-October 1993, pp. 16-18; Civilian-Based Defense,Vol. 8, No. 6, Winter 1993-94, pp. 2-5.

5. Johan Niezing, Sociale Verdediging als LogischAlternatief: Van Utopie naar Optie [Social Defence as aLogical Alternative: From Utopia Towards Option](Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1987).

6. One way that this cutback was justified wason the basis of a critique of the Niezing commit-tee proposals by social scientist Koen Koch. For

Koch’s views, see Koen Koch, “Civilian defence:an alternative to military defence?” NetherlandsJournal of Sociology, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1984, pp. 1-12.

7. Alex P. Schmid, in collaboration with EllenBerends and Luuk Zonneveld, Social Defence andSoviet Military Power: An Inquiry into the Relevance ofan Alternative Defence Concept (Leiden: Center forthe Study of Social Conflict, State University ofLeiden, 1985). I reviewed it in Civilian-BasedDefense: News & Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 4, May1988, pp. 6-11.

8. Giliam de Valk in cooperation with JohanNiezing, Research on Civilian-Based Defence(Amsterdam: SISWO, 1993). The proposals weresketched in chapter 4.

9. Ulrich Albrecht, “The aborted UnitedNations study of the military use of research anddevelopment: an editorial essay,” Bulletin of PeaceProposals, Vol. 19, Nos. 3-4, 1988, pp. 245-259. Ithank Mary Cawte for finding this reference.


Appendix

Theories of technology

This book is based on the idea that technolo-gies can and should be developed and chosenbecause they are helpful for nonviolent strug-gle. This in turn is based on a number ofassumptions about the nature of technology.

In chapter 2 on militarised technology, Iargued that the military influences the devel-opment of technology in a number of ways,including through funding, applications,employment and suppression of challenges,plus via deep structures including the state,capitalism, bureaucracy and patriarchy. Inlater chapters, I outlined a variety of actualand potential technological developments thatwould be of special value for nonviolent strug-gle. In making these arguments I have assumedthat:

• technology is shaped by a range of socialfactors;

• any given technological system is moreuseful for some purposes than others (e.g.military versus nonviolent struggle);

• it is possible to influence the process oftechnological development to serve desirablesocial goals.

It would be possible to attempt to justifythese three assumptions through a set of ab-stract arguments. My approach, however, hasbeen to build an argument—with plenty ofexamples—based on these assumptions and toimplicitly justify the assumptions by demon-strating the insights available. In this appendixI continue this strategy by outlining somecommon approaches to studying technologyand seeing whether they provide useful ways totackle the topic of technology for nonviolentstruggle. This will illuminate some of the short-

comings of certain approaches and help clarifymy approach.1

Essentialist approaches

An “essentialist” approach to technologyassumes that it has essential or inherent fea-tures. Common essentialist views are thattechnology is good, bad, neutral or inevitable.

Some people think that technology is inher-ently good. Military technology provides thebest example that it isn’t. Bullets and bombskill. People who are killed by bullets and bombswould not see these artefacts as good—not goodfor them, anyway. It is difficult to argue thatweapons of mass destruction are inherentlygood. In fact, it was the development ofnuclear weapons that made many technolo-gists realise that not everything they producedwas of benefit to humanity.

When people think that technology isinherently good, they usually make an implicitassumption: the only choice is between presenttechnology—all of it, including stereos, babybottles and biological weapons—and no tech-nology at all. If it is assumed instead that it ispossible to make choices about technology,namely to have some artefacts but not others,then the idea that “technology is good” col-lapses. It should be obvious that the technol-ogy-is-good model is of no value in analysingproblems with military technology or develop-ing technology for nonviolent struggle.

A contrary view, held by a few, is thattechnology is inherently bad. This idea issimilarly flawed. After all, some technologieshelp at least some people: wearing glasses helpssome people to see better, even if the produc-


tion of the glasses causes pollution and un-pleasant work conditions. It is only possible toargue that technology is inherently bad if thereis no choice between technologies.

Many people are attracted to the idea thattechnology is inherently neutral, believing thatit is either good or bad depending on the way itis used. This is the so-called use-abuse model:technology can be either used (for good pur-poses) or abused (for bad purposes). It iscertainly true that many artefacts can be usedfor both good and bad purposes. For example, acomputer word processor can be used toproduce lists of dissidents who are to be arrestedor killed, or it can be used to produce articlesproclaiming the value of dissent. Computersoften make tasks easier, but they also can leadto people losing their jobs. But does this meanthat all artefacts are neutral?

An alternative perspective is that particularartefacts are easier to use for some purposesthan others. For example, if you want to cleanyour hands, soap is more helpful than a news-paper or a candle. After all, artefacts aredesigned for particular purposes. Of course, theymight be used for other purposes. A toothbrushis designed for cleaning teeth, but it can also beused to clean shoes or even for painting. But atoothbrush is not very helpful for sweeping thestreet or eating peas. This point should beobvious: any particular artefact is not equallyuseful for all purposes.

In this sense, artefacts are not neutral. Apair of dice might be said to be neutral if allpossible rolls from 2 to 12 are possible. But thedice would be called biased if they gave 12 halfthe time. In this sort of sense, artefacts arebiased. They potentially can be used for manydifferent purposes, but they are much easierand more likely to be used for certain purposes.

This applies clearly to military technologies.A nuclear explosion can be used to heat a houseor fry an egg, but this is neither the intendednor a convenient use of the technology.Thumbscrews are designed and used for torture.Their actual use as paperweights or parts of asculpture, or their potential use for medical

operations, hardly makes them neutral in anypractical sense.

The idea that technologies are neutral isusually maintained by taking a broad perspec-tive. For example, it can be claimed thatcomputers are neutral because they can be usedfor beneficial or harmful purposes. But thisonly means that sometimes they can be usedfor beneficial purposes and sometimes forharmful ones. It doesn’t mean that theseapplications are equally easy or likely. Nor doesit mean that the benefits and harm are spreadaround equally.

To pierce the illusion of neutrality it is onlynecessary to take a closer look, for example atthe computer built into the nose cone of acruise missile, enabling the missile to use alti-tude readings to assess where it is and to adjustits course as necessary. The computer is de-signed to help the missile reach its target anddestroy it. This computer is not neutral. Theidea of neutrality may be attractive to peoplebecause it removes the necessity to think care-fully about the values built into the design,choice and use of technology.

The idea that technology is neutral providesno leverage for analysing technology fornonviolent struggle. After all, if technology isneutral, that presumably means that anytechnology can be used for nonviolent struggleand there is no obvious means for choosingbetween technologies.

Sometimes it seems like technologies have awill of their own. The telephone and theautomobile have spread throughout society andno one seems able to stop their use. What iscalled “technological determinism” can beinterpreted in various ways. It can mean thatonce a new technology is developed—such asguns or nuclear weapons—it has an inherentmomentum leading to its widespread use. It canmean that there is general pattern oftechnological development that is inevitable,such as the use of steel, electricity or computers.

Simple interpretations of technologicaldeterminism don’t stand up to scrutiny.2 Thereare plenty of technologies that have been

Theories of technology 93

developed but have never become dominant,such as housing with passive solar design,supersonic transport aircraft, microfiche pub-lishing and cryonic suspension. How can it besaid that technology determines its own devel-opment when so many technologies are fail-ures? One answer is that some technologies are“better” and hence more successful. But thisprovides a circular argument, at least when theway to determine whether a technology isbetter than another is to see whether it is moresuccessful. Technological determinism providesa convenient excuse for ignoring the humanchoices, especially the exercise of power, indevelopment of technology.

Technological determinism provides no helpin analysing technology for nonviolent strug-gle. It assumes that military technologies aredominant due to their own inherent properties;nonviolent alternatives have not been success-ful and hence may be ignored. My entireanalysis is based on a rejection of technologicaldeterminism and an endorsement of the viewthat social choice is the basis for technologicaldevelopment and that that choice shouldbecome more participatory.

However, by adopting the topic of technol-ogy for nonviolent struggle, it is hard to avoidsounding like a technological determinist attimes. Because the focus is on technology, it ispossible to create the impression that byadopting a suitable technology, the cause ofnonviolent struggle is automatically advanced.My view is that development and use oftechnology is always a social process and, assuch, is one of a number of social locations forpromoting or waging nonviolent struggle.

Social shaping of technology

Rather than assume that technology hasintrinsic properties—being good, bad, neutral orinevitable—another approach is to assume thattechnology is a product of society and reflectsor embodies its origins in various ways. Thisgeneral approach can be called “social shaping

of technology.” It proceeds by examining socialinfluences on the nature of technology.

An extreme version of this approach is toclaim that large-scale social structures almostentirely determine technology, for examplethat capitalist society leads to technology thatserves capitalists.3 This can be called “deter-mined technology” or “social determinism” andis the converse of technological determinism.This approach provides an antidote totechnological determinism but isn’t particularlyhelpful when it comes to developing alternativetechnologies. If the structure of society deter-mines technologies, then advocating alterna-tives to current technologies seems futile since itdoesn’t change the process of social determi-nation. In other words, this approach assumesthat the only way to change technologies is tochange the fundamentals of social structure.My analysis assumes the contrary, that tech-nology is one potential avenue for interveningto change society as well as technology itself.

A more moderate approach involvesexamining the interaction of social and techni-cal factors on the development and choice oftechnology. For example, there have beenstudies of compression versus absorption refrig-erators, numerically controlled machine tools,light bulbs and electricity systems.4 Thisapproach has been used in a number of studiesof military technology, some of which werementioned in chapter 2. It is valuable foranalysis of actual technologies and also foropening up the possibility that other technolo-gies might have been developed if differentforces had been influential.

One of the most cited examples of socialshaping of technology is the low bridges,designed by Robert Moses for New York, whichallegedly prevented the twelve-foot high busesfrom passing underneath and hence preventedthose relying on public transport, especiallyblacks and poor people, from easily visitingbeaches.5 This example has been frequentlyused to show how social values, in this caseracism, can be built into artefacts, in this casebridges. Its pedagogical value seems to arise


from it being neither too complex nor toosimple, and having an obvious bad guy. Mili-tary technology provides plenty of examplesthat are almost too simple. Weapons aredesigned to kill and destroy. Detailed examplescan be produced by the dozen. Brightlycoloured landmines are designed to attract theattention of children. Tumbling bullets aredesigned to cause horrific exit injuries. One canspeculate why scholars haven’t raised thesesorts of examples more often. Perhaps thesocial shaping is too obvious.

Although the social shaping approach isquite valuable, it has some limitations asactually applied. Most social shaping analyseslook at rejected alternatives that are fairlysimilar to their successful rivals, such as theAR-15 rifle that was rejected in favour of theM-16. Postulating comprehensive wide-rangingalternatives is unusual, possibly because itrequires too much of a jump from the historicalrecord. Certainly there have been nodiscussions of technology for nonviolentstruggle, nor even much study of the field ofappropriate technology, which would seem anatural area for analysis.

More fundamentally, the social shapingapproach deals with the social influences ontechnology and says little about the actualtechnologies that exist or might exist. Forexample, it is all very well to analyse the socialforces shaping military and civilian communi-cation systems, but what guidance does thisgive for assessing which such systems would beuseful for nonviolent struggle? The socialshaping approach is restricted by its focus oninfluences on technology, which leaves out theeffects of technology. The next stage in thedevelopment of this theory is to look at theways that society and technology co-shapeeach other.

Various more focussed theoretical frame-works, such as labour process theory,6 can beapplied to technology within the general ambitof the social shaping approaches. A differentangle on technology is provided by “actor-network theory,” which is based on getting rid

of the dichotomy between humans and arte-facts.7 In this approach, anything potentially isan “actor”: a scientist, a scallop, a mechanicaldoor-closer, a bullet. The task of the socialtheorist is to “follow the actors,” namely towatch what they do without making assump-tions about them in advance, and to observetheir networks, namely to see how they create,destroy and rearrange relationships betweenthemselves. One advantage of the actor-net-work approach is that it gets away from theessentialist assumption that social structuressuch as the state are ordained categories forunderstanding social reality.

There have been a number of criticisms ofactor-network theory.8 It tends to overlookgroups such as women and the unemployedwho are not prominent in networks associatedwith technological innovation. Actor-networktheorists often seem to smuggle in concepts ofsocial structure that they supposedly havejettisoned.

More importantly, social constructivistsseem to restrict their efforts to explainingexisting technology, not taking any stance onwhether it is good or bad for humans norsaying how to go about changing it.9 Sinceactor-network theory builds on actors—inclu-ding artefacts—that exist, there is no theoreti-cal warrant for examining technology thatmight be designed in a social system putting apriority on nonviolent struggle, especially sincesocial structural analysis, including the conceptof the military, is avoided.

Biased technology

A useful framework for analysing technologyfor nonviolent struggle is to think of artefactsas non-neutral, biased, political or selectivelyuseful.10 In other words, they are easier to usefor some purposes than others. A key aim of asocial analysis of technology then is to find outwhich purposes a technology can be most easilyused for, and why.

Most technologies developed by the militaryare biased, or selectively useful, for killing and

Theories of technology 95

destruction. This obviously is because the aimof most military science and technology hasbeen to develop more lethal and destructiveweapons.11

It is quite possible to kill or incapacitatesomeone without technology. For example, asuitable blow from the hand at the back of theneck can do this. Mass killing can occur with-out technology, but it is much easier—andmore tempting—if technology designed forkilling is available. Spears, axes, bows andarrows, rifles and explosives make killing easier.Admittedly, they can be used for killinganimals and other less lethal purposes, but inmany cases they have been specially designedfor battles.

The idea of biased technology obviously isincompatible with the idea of technology asgood, bad or neutral. On the other hand, theidea of biased technology is quite compatiblewith the social shaping perspective. One wouldexpect that when the military influences thedevelopment of an artefact—such as designinga radar system or grenade—it is likely to beselectively useful to the military. But there areno automatic connections. It is necessary toexamine actual technologies, not just the socialshaping process, to determine which groups canmost easily use them. The Internet had mili-tary origins but has turned out to be highlyuseful for communication between antiwaractivists.

Another way to describe this approach is tosay that technologies embody social values orsocial interests. The idea of embodiment sug-gests that technologies take on the values ofthe interest groups crucial to their developmentand in turn are likely to be selectively useful tothese same interest groups. For example,nuclear technology was developed by scientistsand engineers working in the service of gov-ernments and militaries. Some of the keycharacteristics of nuclear weapons and nuclearpower are high potential danger and large scale,both generating a need for high security andcentralised control. These features make

nuclear technology selectively useful to themilitary and the state.

The idea of biased technology is quitecommon among those who examine techno-logical alternatives, such as appropriatetechnology. But it has never been the centre ofpopular or scholarly perceptions. The mostcommon popular perceptions of technologyseem to be that it is neutral, good or bad. Thesocial study of technology has focussed onsocial shaping approaches; in the past couple ofdecades, social analysis of the impacts oftechnology has not been nearly as common asanalysis of social influences on technology.There is not even a good name for the view oftechnology as biased. To talk of biased tech-nology certainly counters the idea of neutraltechnology, but it suggests that there is some-thing wrong with it: in a general sense, beingbiased is not seen as a good thing, even if it isbiased in favour of harmony or biased againsttorture. Also, to talk of biased technologysuggests that bias could be removed, which isnot possible—the question is which way tech-nology is biased, and in whose interests. Themeanings of alternative terms such asembodiment or selective usefulness are notimmediately obvious.

Whatever its name, though, this perspectiveis quite useful for analysing technology fornonviolent struggle. This appendix began withthe assumption that it is worthwhile to analysetechnologies, including yet-to-be-developedtechnologies, according to their value to asystem for nonviolent struggle. Working back-wards, it is possible to judge theories oftechnology to see how well they serve thispurpose. Ideas that technology or technologiesare inherently good, bad, neutral or inevitableare not helpful at all. Ideas of social shapinghave more potential, but are not well adaptedto looking at alternatives to what exists. Mostuseful is the idea that technologies embodysocial values and are selectively useful forcertain purposes. It should not be surprisingthat this has been the framework implicitlyused throughout this book!


Notes1. I thank Sharon Beder for helpful discussions

about theories of technology and Stewart Russellfor helpful discussions and a thorough reading ofthis chapter. For overviews and critiques ofapproaches in studies of science and technology,see David J. Hess, Science Studies: An AdvancedIntroduction (New York: New York UniversityPress, 1997); Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle,James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds.),Handbook of Science and Technology Studies(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995); Sal Restivo,Science, Society, and Values: Toward a Sociology ofObjectivity (Bethlehem, PA: Lihigh UniversityPress, 1994).

2. For a critique of technological determinism,see Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology:Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977). For differingviews by historians, see Merritt Roe Smith andLeo Marx (eds.), Does Technology Drive History? TheDilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1994).

3. One of the few works that comes close tothis view is David Dickson, Alternative Technologyand the Politics of Technical Change (London:Fontana, 1974).

4. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman(eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology: How theRefrigerator Got its Hum (Milton Keynes: OpenUniversity Press, 1985).

5. Langdon Winner, “Do artifacts have poli-tics?,” Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Winter 1980,pp. 121-136. For a critical perspective, seeBernward Joerges, “Do politics have artefacts?,”Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 3, June 1999,pp. 411-431.

6. The classic work, much criticised butimmensely influential, is Harry Braverman, Laborand Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in theTwentieth Century (New York: Monthly ReviewPress, 1974).

7. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, andTrevor J. Pinch (eds.), The social construction oftechnological systems: New directions in the sociology andhistory of technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1987); Michel Callon, John Law, and Arie Rip,Mapping the dynamics of science and technology:Sociology of science in the real world (London:Macmillan, 1988); Brian Elliott (ed.), Technologyand Social Process (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer-

sity Press, 1988); Bruno Latour, Science in Action:How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society(Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987);Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1988); John Law (ed.), Power, action and belief: Anew sociology of knowledge? (London: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1986).

8. Olga Amsterdamska, “Surely you are joking,Monsieur Latour?” Science, Technology, & HumanValues Vol. 15, 1990, pp. 495-504; Pam Scott,“Levers and counterweights: A laboratory thatfailed to raise the world.” Social Studies of Science,Vol. 21, 1991, pp. 7-35.

9. Langdon Winner, “Upon opening the blackbox and finding it empty: social constructivismand the philosophy of technology,” Science,Technology, and Human Values , Vol. 18, No. 3,Summer 1993, pp. 362-378. See also StewartRussell, “The social construction of artefacts: aresponse to Pinch and Bijker,” Social Studies ofScience, Vol. 16, 1986, pp. 331-346, a critique ofanother constructivist approach called “socialconstruction of technology.”

10. There are no central references on thisapproach. Some representative works are DavidElliott and Ruth Elliott, The Control of Technology(London: Wykeham, 1976); Ivan Illich, Tools forConviviality (London: Calder and Boyars, 1973);Richard E. Sclove, Democracy and Technology (NewYork: Guilford Press, 1995); Langdon Winner,The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in anAge of High Technology (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1986).

11. Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Science, technologyand military policy,” in Ina Spiegel-Rösing andDerek de Solla Price (eds.), Science, Technology andSociety: A Cross-disciplinary Perspective (London:Sage, 1977), pp. 443-471 makes this point nicely,commenting that, in the shadow of weaponsdevelopment, there is some work “in repairingbattle wounds, in making rations more tasty, andin preventing machinery from rusting” (p. 459).

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Technology for nonviolent struggle · Technology for Nonviolent Struggle Organised nonviolent struggle, using methods such as strikes, boycotts and noncooperation, is a possible alternative