AAU’s Alexei Anisin Challenges Conventional Views on Unarmed Violence

Dr. Alexei Anisin, dean of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Anglo-American University (AAU), recently participated in a forum published in the Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence. The forum brought together leading political violence and conflict scholars from different universities to discuss the role of unarmed violence and civil resistance in contemporary political movements, in relation to Andreas Malm’s book, How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

Alongside Anisin, the panel of esteemed contributors included Brian Martin, Emeritus Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, Australia; Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Associate Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, UK; Isak Svensson, Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden; Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, USA; Antoine Durance from the Institut d’études politiques de Bordeaux, France; and Manuel Cervera-Marzal, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Liège, Belgium.

Contributors examined Malm’s argument that nonviolent actions have been insufficient to address the climate crisis and that more radical measures such as sabotage should be considered. In his own analysis, Anisin highlighted the overlooked potential of unarmed violence and argued that traditional classifications of resistance movements as purely violent or nonviolent are simplistic and fail to capture the full range of protest strategies. Anisin advocated for a more nuanced approach that considers the role of unarmed violence as a legitimate and potentially effective form of resistance.

Anisin likewise posited that research on civil resistance has often been based on the notion that nonviolence is the sole route to bringing about socio-political change, and frequently, inquiries have relied on data that are problematic in their structure. Challenging the conventional binary categorization of protest strategies, he instead called for disaggregated, event-based data to more accurately understand the dynamics of civil resistance. 

In the end, Anisin emphasized the need for scholars and activists alike to rethink the conventional wisdom that nonviolence is the only viable path to achieving social change, particularly in the face of urgent global challenges like climate change.

Citation:

Martin, Brian, Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Isak Svensson, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Alexei Anisin, Antoine Durance, and Manuel Cervera-Marzal. “On Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 2, no. 2 (2024): 257–291.