Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance

Nonviolence is celebrated and practiced around the world, as a universal ’method for all human conflict.’ This Element describes how nonviolence has evolved into a global repertoire, a patterned form of contentious political performance that has spread as an international movement of movements, systematizing and institutionalizing particular forms of protest as best claims-making practice. It explains how the formal organizational efforts of social movement emissaries and favorable and corresponding global models of state and civic participation have enabled the globalization of nonviolence. The Element discusses a historical perspective of this process to illuminate how understanding nonviolence as a contentious performance can explain the repertoire’s successes and failures across contexts and over time. The Element underscores the dynamics of contention among global repertoires and suggests future research more closely examines the challenges posed by institutionalization.