M. S. Wallace is a visiting scholar in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University and previously taught at the University of New Hampshire and Brown University, USA.

Wallace explores ethical yet effective responses to violence, proposing nonviolent intervention (civilian peacekeeping) as a third option for protecting civilians during humanitarian crises. This book addresses a diverse range of literatures and debates, and is both philosophically innovative and practically useful for those working in the field.

Introduction

Part I: Violence and nonviolence

Chapter 1: Challenging the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence

Chapter 2: Questioning the efficacy of violence

Chapter 3: Enacting conviction and provisionality through nonviolent action: difference, responsibility to the other(s), and the nonviolent coercion or transformation of the opponent

Part II: Understanding violence in Sri Lanka's civil war and counterinsurgency

Chapter 4: Confronting wrongs, creating wrongs: official discourses and the legitimation of violence

Chapter 5: Making sense of violence: media accounts and combatants' understandings

Part III: Confronting violence in Sri Lanka's civil war and counterinsurgency

Chapter 6: Assessing armed and unarmed strategies: toward a psycho-discursive theory of civilian protection and violence prevention

Chapter 7: Rethinking protection: Nonviolent Peaceforce in Sri Lanka

Conclusion