There is today so much inequality, discrimination, and uncertainty concerning the future that the lives of most people in the world are dominated by fear rather than by hope. However, people cannot afford to be so pessimistic, given that their struggle for survival, an urgent and inescapable everyday task, is at stake. Their struggle will be all the more successful, and their revolt all the more likely to attract followers, if more and more people come to the realization that the hopeless fear of powerless majorities stems from the fearless hope of powerful minorities. This epochal condition endows our time with an atmosphere of monstrosity, i.e. the unpredictable and uninsurable risk to avert vulnerability, the almost incommensurable power differences between oppressors and oppressed, and systemic impunity. Monsters present themselves as specifically disturbing threats, while at the same time constituting realms within which there is room for manoeuvre and resistance. This chapter identifies seven such threats.

This chapter provides a summary of the deep-rooted connections between Canadian Doukhobors (Doukhobortsy or Spirit Wrestlers) and Tolstoy, starting with important anti-militaristic events organized by the Doukhobor leader Peter Verigin at the end of the nineteenth century: refusals to serve in the army and the Burning of the Weapons in Doukhobor villages in the Caucasus, Russian Empire. These events as well as the following severe persecutions of Doukhobors in Russia caught the attention of Tolstoy because this peasant anti-militaristic movement resembled his own peaceful non-resistance teachings. Tolstoy became one of the most passionate protectors and a dear friend of the Doukhobors, commending their pacifism in his works. The chapter describes the first encounter of a group of Doukhobors with Tolstoy, and Tolstoy’s friendship and correspondence with Peter Verigin, as well as the pivotal role played by Tolstoy in organizing and funding the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada. In conclusion, the author points out a few other correspondences between Tolstoy’s teachings and Doukhobor beliefs, such as agrarianism, communal cultivation of land, the unity of people, and rejection of Church institutions and priests. The chapter highlights the significance of pacifism (as it is understood by Tolstoy and the Doukhobors) in contemporary context.

Chapter 13 focuses on sustainable development in contemporary Latin America and, more specifically, on the impact of neoextractivism–the exploitation of primary products–on the quality of life of the communities where this economic activity is based. It shows that, although neoextractivism has led to short-term economic growth, it has also created environmental damage that has been especially detrimental to indigenous peoples and the rural poor. It explores protests against neoextractivism through case studies of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, and shows that affected communities had some success in ameliorating the negative consequences of neoextractivism only in Bolivia. Finally, to explain the impact of protests it highlights several factors. Democratic institutions and decentralization create incentives for greater accountability at the local level. Moreover, in some cases, the mobilizational strength and political coordination of local communities leads to collective action. However, the impact of protests is reduced most critically because leaders across the political spectrum have been committed to neoextractivism and have co-opted the mechanism of prior consultation.

Chapter 15 addresses economic inequality and its impact on democracy in contemporary Latin America. It illustrates the significance of inequality with discussions of Brazil and Chile, and shows that wealth and income are unequally distributed and that certain categories of citizens (rural dwellers, indigenous people, informal workers) are among the poorest Latin Americans. It stresses that it is paradoxical that several decades after Latin America achieved democracy – a political system based on the idea that citizens are political equals – social inequality remains deep and pervasive. Yet it accounts for the difficulty faced by democratic governments in reducing economic inequality through redistributive policies in terms of the structural and instrumental power of economic elites, the control of the media by economic elites, and the actions of politicians and state agents. The chapter also stresses that persistent economic inequality has negative consequences on democracy and shows how recent political developments in Chile – for decades seen as the poster child of political and economic success in the region – are a warning sign against complacency with economic inequality.

this chapter explores the medium through which the Nigerian population addressed and contested the series of rules, restrictions, and regulations imposed by the British to address the crisis generated by the war. In this context, the letters and petitions Nigerians wrote provided opportunities to locate African voices, as they confronted the new political and economic system introduced during the war. This chapter reveals that, although support for the war cut across class lines, most of the upper class and political elite were less concerned with the issues of daily survival, such as food insecurity and matters of daily subsistence, that lay at the root of these petitions. It concludes that the richness of these petitions allows for a better understanding of the impacts of the war on rural families and urban communities and situates the civilian experience within the larger context of the war and colonial society while creating a space for petitioners to participate in the larger discourse. It argues that Nigerian petitions reveal how local economic conditions and production systems linked a broad range of people, classes, and spatial categories and allowed them to move into the realm of public discourses on war, colonialism, and policy.

Profound religious, political, social and economic change marked the early modern period of European history. The religious reformations of the sixteenth century, the expanding power and fiscality of the monarchical state, the pressures of a growing population, and economic change associated with agricultural enclosures and the first stirrings of industrialisation all contributed to frequent eruptions of collective popular violence. That violence assumed three chief forms. Riots were characterised by geographically limited violence, of relatively brief duration, that generally arose over local issues like the high cost of necessities such as bread in local markets. In rebellions, local protests, often beginning as riots, merged with more general issues to affect more than one locale and to extend for more than a few days when protestors secured effective leadership, often by social elites. Revolutions drew the support of a national group, or of a single ethnic group within one of the ethnically composite states emerging in our period, to seek fundamental countrywide change.