AbstractsSociology

Non-violent resistance may be defined as the open, deliberate, and peaceful performance of an unorthodox course of conduct considered socially desirable by the resister and the willing endurance of whatever suffering may follow. In an attempt to describe the social process of non-violent resistance, this study has analyzed and compared the soeial interactions involved in the use of this method by American Quakers in Massachusetts Bay colony, in the woman suffrage movement, and among conscientious objectors in the Norld War. This has limited the study to instances of a ction by a religious group for a political change. The social interactions involved among the four groups concerned in the conflict, i.e., the resisters, the authorities, the general public, and groups external to the society immediately concerned, were analyzed separately for each historical situation. The results were then compared to discover what uniformities or differences might appear.