disobedience

1 the failure to obey [syn: noncompliance] [ant: conformity, obedience]

2 the trait of being unwilling to obey [ant: obedience]

English

Noun

1. Refusal to obey.

   the disobedient child

Synonyms

• contumacy
• rebellion

Antonyms

• obedience

Translations

Derived terms

• civil disobedience

Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying power, without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent form (known as ahimsa or satyagraha) it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement.

Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have rebelled against unfair laws. It has been used in many well-documented nonviolent resistance movements in India (Gandhi's social welfare campaigns and campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American Civil Rights Movement, and in peace movements worldwide. One of its earliest massive implementations was by Egyptians against the British occupation in the nonviolent 1919 Revolution.

The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government". The driving idea behind the essay was that of self-reliance, and how one is in morally good standing as long as one can "get off another man's back"; so one doesn't have to physically fight the government, but one must not support it or have it support one (if one is against it). This essay has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War.

Early uses of the term

Thoreau did not coin the term "civil disobedience," nor did he ever use it. However, after his landmark 1848 lectures were published in 1849, the term "civil disobedience" began to appear in numerous sermons and lectures relating to slavery in the United States. Early examples of these include:

• The Gospel Applied to the Fugitive Slave Law [1850]: A Sermon, by Oliver Stearns (1851);
• "The Higher Law," in Its Application to the Fugitive Slave Bill:... by John Newell and John Chase Lord (1851);
• The Limits of Civil Disobedience: A Sermon..., by Nathaniel Hall (1851);
• The Duty and Limitations of Civil Disobedience: A Discourse, by Samuel Colcord Bartlett (1853).

Thus, by the time Thoreau's lectures were first published under the title "Civil Disobedience," in 1866, four years after his death, the term had achieved fairly widespread usage.

Theories and techniques

• Henry David Thoreau
  • Civil Disobedience
• Mohandas Gandhi
  • Satyagraha
• Dr Martin Luther King, Jr
  • Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Rosa Parks, "mother of the civil rights movement"
• Dalai Lama
• Abalone Alliance and Clamshell Alliance, anti-nuclear power groups
• Christian anarchism
• Conscientious objection
• Direct action
• Draft resistance
• Holocaust rescuers
  • Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, French town
• Insubordination
• Hunt sabotage
• Nonconformism
• Nonviolence
• Nonviolent resistance
• Rachel Corrie
• Sousveillance, passive campaign against surveillance
• Tax resistance
• Tree sitting
• Trident Ploughshares, anti-nuclear weapons group
• Defiance Campaign, anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa.

External links

• Pensions for Peace ~ ACT for the Earth
• Civil Disobedience, by Peter Suber. From Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia, edited by Christopher Berry Gray, Garland Pub. Co., 1999, vol. I, pp. 110-113
• On Resistance to Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau
• Manifesto against conscription and the military system, with an updated list of all signatories from 1993 to 2005
• DirectAction.org offers online organizing resources for civil disobedience
• http://clamshell-tvs.org a project of the Traprock Peace Center
• Nonviolent Resistance ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans (U.S)

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