JUST 322. Understanding Violence and Nonviolence

Credits 3.00 PeopleSoft Course ID 011812

This course is organized around better understanding the complex dimensions of both violence and nonviolence. Is violence (sometimes) necessary? Is nonviolence naïve? Is one approach more effective than another? When? Where? Why? How are these related to justice? This course will critically examine these different approaches to dealing with social conflict and social change, with special emphasis on comparing the motivations, dynamics and outcomes of these two approaches. We will examine both theoretical and applied approaches from a wide assortment of writers and social interactions that deal with interpersonal, institutional and structural pathways to violence and/or nonviolence. The underlying assumption is that one cannot understand violence or nonviolence separately, because they are intimately connected. Prerequisite: JUST 200 and one other 200-level JUST course, excluding JUST 225 .