The Consequences of Violence During Social Movements

Governments react in varying ways during social movements. This project focuses on the interactions among social movements, violence against protestors, and political change in emerging democratic societies. Specifically, the project examines how lethal violence influences the trajectory and success of social movements.

Conversely, it also asks, how does a society place limits upon the scale of political violence? The researchers examine the extent to which violence against non-violent protestors may contribute to the escalation of protests. These questions of political culture, human rights, and social change are significant to researchers, human rights advocates, and state policy makers.

The project contributes to the training of two doctoral students and several undergraduates, increases dialogue between local and foreign social scientists, and documents the history and losses of predominantly indigenous and working-class people.

Drawing on theory from political anthropology, this project examines the interplay between organized protest and sanctioned violence in the advancement of human rights and equity. The researchers use media, scholarly, and archival sources to complete a database of approximately six hundred deaths in political conflict, including information about the cause, manner, and responsibility for each death, social movement context, and the role of the state.

By compiling detailed information on political violence into an accessible form, the project facilitates further research on political violence, social movements, and regional history. Using this dataset, researchers examine the paradox of repression, namely that violence by state and national authorities can either quell an ongoing mobilization or backfire into catalyzing the movement further, while testing the hypothesis that nonviolent movements are uniquely placed to benefit from backfire.

Combining quantitative analysis with case-based investigation, the dataset is also used to characterize the outcomes of combative but unarmed protest tactics, and to compare the importance of presidential policy versus quantity or form of protest in determining the prevalence of violence against protestors. In addition, the researchers collect qualitative data, primarily in the form of oral history interviews with movement participants and state officials, which are focused on topics such as movement persistence, state decisions to inflict and respond to violence, and the role of death and loss in transformative political change.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.