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The emerging synthesis between nonviolent action and contentious politics studies has yielded important insights. Yet it also reproduces the dichotomy between politics and culture that continues to haunt both fields. Extending recent work by Jean-Pierre Reed and John Foran, our contribution introduces the political cultures of nonviolent opposition concept to forge a new synthesis, one that recognizes the politics of nonviolent culture and the culture of nonviolent politics. We apply our theoretical framework to two empirical cases, the Indian independence movement and the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (known as Movimento Sem Terra or MST), and conclude with ideas for further research on political cultures of nonviolent opposition.

The title of this series, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, reflects the triple foci of its volumes. These three issues that are so central to the identity of this series – social movements, conflicts, and change – are also prominent features with regard to the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Thus we open this 27th volume of the series with three papers analyzing various aspects of Northern Ireland's civil rights movement, a social movement working for political and social change in a society marked by protracted conflict. The first paper, by Gregory Maney, innovatively analyzes the interrelationships between the Irish Republican Army's campaigns of armed violence and the nonviolent civil rights movement.

Lorenzo Bosi is currently ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social & Political Movements of the University of Kent. His research examines social movements, political violence, as well as consolidated political identities and relations, in socio-politically polarized contexts such as Northern Ireland. He is also participating as an affiliated researcher in an international research project: The European Protest Movements since the Cold War.

The scholarship on social movements has focused attention recently on the strategic dimensions of decision-making by movement actors. Much of this work has been rooted in detailed case studies that offer useful analytical windows through which we can view the strategic choices made by individual movement organizations. As valuable as this work is in its own right, equally if not more important questions remain with regard to how the position a movement organization occupies in the broader social movement field impacts strategic decision-making of that organization and those other organizations with which it interacts. In fact, the coalition politics of a social movement is often a key variable in the degree to which a movement succeeds in its goals. Coalition conflicts and politics matter. Today's so-called anti-globalization movement, the peace movement opposing the Iraq War, and the contemporary global environmental movement with its focus on global warming each demonstrate that coalitions are important for social movements.