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Full-Text Articles in Other American Studies
The Shanti Sena “Peace Center” And The Non-Policing Of An Anarchist Temporary Autonomous Zone: Rainbow Family Peacekeeping Strategies, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.
The Shanti Sena “Peace Center” And The Non-Policing Of An Anarchist Temporary Autonomous Zone: Rainbow Family Peacekeeping Strategies, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.
Michael I Niman Ph.D.
This article utilizes ethnographic methods and government documents to examine the self-policing and peacekeeping strategies of the Rainbow Family, a nonviolent acephalous intentional community that holds massive weeklong gatherings around the globe. It is a case study that examines the efficacy of these methods, comparing them to those traditional police agencies employ under similar conditions. It contextualizes these strategies by examining other utopian and anarchist communities and movements such as Critical Mass bike rides. This study demonstrates how smiling, chanting, listening, social pressure, and social capital all play into forming a more effective and less violent approach toward peacekeeping.
You Can’T Be Nonviolent Without Violence: The Rainbow Family’S Nonkilling Nomadic Utopia And Its Survival Of Persistent State Violence, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.
You Can’T Be Nonviolent Without Violence: The Rainbow Family’S Nonkilling Nomadic Utopia And Its Survival Of Persistent State Violence, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.
Michael I Niman Ph.D.
Since 1972, the Rainbow Family of Living Light, a nonhierarchical nomadic community, has been holding large temporary gatherings in remote forests around the world to pray for world peace and to create a model of a functioning utopian society. Wherever and whenever they gather, the temporary Rainbow city remains essentially unchanged, modeling what anarchist theorist Hakim Bey calls the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). Revolutions, Bey writes, seek permanent change and, in doing so, lead to violence and martyrdom. Revolutionaries aim to hold territory. The TAZ, by contrast, does not directly engage the state, but instead “liberates an area (of land, …
Weirdos Riot, Media Gets It Wrong, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.
Weirdos Riot, Media Gets It Wrong, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.
Michael I Niman Ph.D.
Michael I. Niman is concerned by media treatment of a hippie riot that never happened