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The essays in this volume engage on one plane with the totality of the concept, while at another they acknowledge the porosity of the idea of non-violence, particularly with respect to praxis or what can be thought of as learnt non violence. Conceived and osmotically structured around four themes - religion, protest, the modern condition, and the world today - the book is an invitation to consider the practical possibilities of non violence.

This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide. Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through.

The problem of violence in American culture has been a subject of increasing concern during the past two decades. In the fifties, there was rampant the school of "consensus" history writing, which tended to deny the existence of conflicts about basic issues in American history. More recently, the past has been portrayed in an entirely different light: Conflict, and particularly violent conflict, are seen as having been virtually endemic. Against the background of violent crime and civil disturbance, several presidential commissions have investigated violence, and they usually emerge with the conclusion that Americans are a peculiarly violent people. The atrocities of the Vietnam war, and police and ghetto violence, have led many to wonder at the same time whether the alleged merits of the American political system are as great as its defenders have insisted.

As this issue of Race & Class was going to press, we received from a friend in Jerusalem an Arabic language pamphlet which is currently circulating among Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. The author of al-A'anaf fi al-Aradhi al-Muhattalati (Non-violence in the Occupied Territories) is Dr Mubarak A wad, a US trained Palesti nian educator. We think this is a very important initiative, and the lively interest it has sparked among Palestinian activists to be a most significant development. In rough translation, we publish excerpts from this pam phlet in the hope that it will receive broad attention, and the discussion be constructively joined by others engaged in the struggle for justice and Palestinian self-determination.

This article explores the relationship between medical blood donation and concepts and enactments of violence and non‐violence in India. The focus is on those north Indian devotional orders in thesanttradition whose devotees donate their blood in large quantities for transfusion. These orders profess a commitment to the Hindu Brahmanic and reformist tenet of non‐violence (ahimsa). At the same time, their attempts to donate blood for Indian army personnel shows how blood donation can be a means to engage in military affairs 'from a distance'. This article also demonstrates the ways in which different modes of sacrifice surface in blood donation ideology and practice. Arguing that blood donation mediates between violence and non‐violence in the subcontinent, the article concludes with a related set of points concerning the ambiguous relationship between caste concepts and blood donation.RésuméLe présent article explore la relation entre le don du sang à usage médical et les concepts et réalisations de la violence et de la non‐violence en Inde. L'accent est mis sur les ordres dévots du nord de l'Inde qui suivent la tradition dusant, et dont les membres donnent beaucoup de sang pour les transfusions. Ces ordres professent leur attachement au principe de non‐violence (ahimsa) de l'hindouisme brahmanique et réformiste. Dans le même temps, leur volonté de donner du sang pour les personnels de l'armée indienne montre à quel point le don de sang peut être un moyen de s'engager « à distance » dans les affaires militaires. Cet article démontre également les manières dont plusieurs modes de sacrifice apparaissent dans l'idéologie et la pratique du don de sang. Avançant que le don de sang est une médiation entre violence et non‐violence dans le sous‐continent, l'article se conclut par un ensemble de considérations liées, concernant la relation ambiguë entre les concepts de caste et le don de sang.