Unarmed Militants and Irrepressible Uprisings:
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence in Bolivia

Twenty-first century Bolivia is the scene of one of Latin America’s most dramatic revolts against neoliberalism, including two popular overthrows of elected presidents. Compared with classical models of revolution, recent revolts around the world have expanded more quickly, involve enormous numbers of people, and rely far less on armed violence as a means. Anthropologist Carwil Bjork-James conducted in-depth research on Bolivia as an ethnographer of street protest, and an oral historian of the country’s active grassroots movements. In this talk, he looks at urban Bolivian activists who organize road blockades and strike waves as unarmed militants: people who face armed police with little more barricades and the force of will. Unarmed militants fight back in uneven battles in order to hold physical space, obstruct the flows of daily life, and impose social costs, yet claim some of the moral purity of principled nonviolent activists and survivors of military dictatorship.

This talk places these Bolivian experiences in a global conversation among unarmed militant practices and theories from Oaxaca, Argentina, Egypt, and North America. It also questions the way a black-and-white binary between advocates of nonviolence and proponents of armed struggle have hidden successful experience that can’t be defined as either. What options, examples, and strategies are we missing when we are too quick to draw this line?

Carwil Bjork-James
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University

Thursday, September 29
7pm at the Department of Anthropology and Social Change
California Institute for Integral Studies
1453 Mission Street (at 11th St), Room 607
near Civic Center BART
San Francisco