Sociology Working Papers
Paper Number 2003-04
When Costs are Beneficial: Protest as Communicative Suffering
Michael Biggs
Department of Sociology
University of Oxford
Littlegate House, St Ebbes
Oxford OX1 1PT
www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/swp.html
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When Costs are Beneficial: Protest as Communicative Suffering
Michael Biggs
University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign
email: [email protected]
sacrificial suffering can thwart the opponent’s efforts, influence his attitudes
and actions, expose his moral defenses, and thereby break his morale
—Krishnalal Shridharani, 1939
In some social movements, we find people who invite suffering—or actually inflict it on
themselves—as an act of protest. They march long distances, go willingly to jail, welcome or
provoke the blows of police, refuse to eat, and even kill themselves. In short, they act as if costs
were beneficial. The costs are not merely time and money, but the more profound costs of
physical hardship and emotional distress, and occasionally the ultimate cost of life itself. The
benefits are collective rather than individual; these actions contribute to a ‘public good.’ This
raises the problem of altruism in its most acute form: if it is hard to reconcile the act of voting
with self-interest (Downs 1957), consider the act of sacrificing one’s life. These actions raise
another puzzle, perhaps less obvious but no less theoretically important. How can suffering
contribute to a public good? This question has rarely been posed, let alone answered. The neglect
is curious given the significance of deliberately chosen suffering in the history of social
movements. After all, its proponents include Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., two
of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. This paper emphasizes the importance of
what may be termed communicative suffering as one form or dimension of protest. Different
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types of communicative suffering are distinguished. Most importantly, the paper analyzes their
efficacy—how costs can be beneficial. I argue that suffering can become a source of power by
signaling commitment or deprivation, by evoking anger or guilt, or by creating what I call
‘second-order injustice.’ My intention is not to assess the significance of these various sources of
power, but rather to make analytical distinctions and provide empirical illustrations.
The literature on social movements and transgressive contention pays little attention to a
fundamental theoretical question: wherein lies the efficacy of protest? This is not the same as
asking what sort of circumstances give rise to protest, or what sort of situations make protest
more likely to succeed. We also want to know the ‘mechanisms’ (Elster 1989b, 2000) which
enable protest to be effective: the sources of its power. Thus far the only developed answer is that
protest works by imposing costs—or threatening to impose costs—on the opponent. This is
explicitly formulated by James Q. Wilson, who defines protest as a form of bargaining
distinguished “by the exclusive use of negative inducements (threats) that rely, for their effect, on
sanctions which require mass action” (1961, p. 292).1 The same mechanism is implicit in other
studies (e.g. Piven and Cloward 1977). Thus protest is a war of attrition: an iterated chicken
game. This is exemplified by strikes and boycotts.2 By going on strike, workers inflict costs on
the employer, in the form of lost profits. The employer in turn inflicts costs on them, in the form
of lost wages and often unemployment. “Other things being equal, each party naturally prefers to
use its weapons in a way that hurts the other party maximally and itself as little as possible”
(Elster 1989a, p. 165). The employer, for example, will try to recruit scabs in order to maintain
1
Wilson spreads his net widely, considering “unfavorable publicity” as one type of cost, and
including demonstrations as well as strikes and boycotts. I argue for a narrower definition of
coercive protest, which enables us to recognize quite different logics as well.
2
Neoclassical economists analyze strikes as a war of attrition, though they focus on the paradox
that threats alone should suffice for both sides to reach agreement (first raised in Hicks 1963 [first
edition 1932]). As they point out, a strike (or any sort of coercive protest) is always mistaken ex
post because both sides would have been better off having attained the result at the outset (see
Kennan 1986).
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production and to threaten workers with unemployment; workers will try to strike at the peak of
production, when the employer has most to lose from a stoppage. Although workers suffer costs,
they do not seek them. If one offered to replace their wages for the duration of the strike, they
would surely accept with alacrity—thus attaining an unassailable bargaining position vis à vis
their employer.
This simple model helps us to understand the efficacy of protest in many situations. It serves to
highlight what is so puzzling about protesters deliberately choosing to suffer costs—and,
symmetrically, what is puzzling about opponents deliberately refraining from imposing costs.3
“The delicate relationship between protesters and authorities is often a double-dance of
ambivalence,” observes Neil Smelser (1997, p. 184): “a game of last-tag in which each forever
tries to avoid illegitimate expressions of the negative side of their ambivalence and to push
antagonists into it.” The interaction he describes has the same formal structure as a game of
chicken. But in coercive protest, each side’s payoff is negatively correlated with its costs: the aim
is, naturally enough, to minimize one’s own costs. In this puzzling inversion, the correlation is
positive—costs are beneficial.
One side of this paradox is recognized in studies of repression: there is considerable evidence that
repression is sometimes counterproductive, insofar as it inflames protest rather than quenching it
(e.g. Opp 1990; Rasler 1996; Stott and Reicher 1998). In rationalistic models of protest, this is
treated simply as something that enhances the collective benefit expected from protest. “When
peaceful marchers have been clubbed by the police,” suggests Anthony Oberschall, “the value of
3
The sociological reader will want to complete a two-by-two typology by filling in two more
cells. Thirdly, protesters may deliberately refrain from inflicting costs. This is less theoretically
interesting, because it may be explained away simply by the desire to avoid retaliatory
punishment. To use a simple example, strikers might avoid vandalizing the employer’s property
because they do not wish to risk imprisonment. (There is much more to restraint on the part of
protesters than this credits, but that is a subject for another paper.) Fourthly, opponents may
deliberately choose to suffer. There are a few examples of self-immolation being used almost as a
countermeasure to self-immolation. Perhaps we could also include agent provocateurs.
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forcing a change of government increases” (1994, p. 80). Similarly, Jack Goldstone and Charles
Tilly argue that “repression that is excessive can create the perception of increased current threat
under the status quo” (2001, p. 188). This kind of explanation leaves something to be desired. For
one thing, we cannot assume that severe repression comes as a surprise. To take a concrete
example, when blacks in Mississippi registered to vote, they faced severe repression—up to and
including murder. But this was quite predictable: blacks already knew that white supremacy was
enforced by violence. More fundamentally, these analyses overlook the possibility that actors are
strategic. In other words, occasionally peaceful marchers are intent on being clubbed by the
police, precisely because they think that repression will (somehow) aid their cause.
Two scholars have recognized this point, and they provide particularly valuable theoretical
accounts, inspired by the American Civil Rights movement. Dennis Chong (1991, ch. 2)
formalizes what he calls the ‘public relations game.’ For protesters, the dominant strategy is
nonviolence, however police respond. For police, the preferred outcome is to violently repress
violent protesters, but the best response to nonviolent protest is nonviolence. The game has this
structure of payoffs because unjustified police violence creates adverse publicity. “Public opinion
could be mobilized against the southern status quo only if the conflict intensified and became
salient to the general public” (1991, p. 21). Doug McAdam’s (1996) analysis of ‘strategic
dramaturgy’ arrives at the same conclusion by a different route. Reviewing the literature on
‘framing,’ he argues that it exaggerates the importance of discourse. “Actions do speak louder
than words” (p. 341). Thus King’s genius lay in his “ability to lure segregationists into acts of
extreme racist violence while maintaining his followers’ commitment to nonviolence” (p. 354).
McAdam and Chong provide tantalizing insights. What is missing, however, is an explanation of
why suffering is a source of power: why did it have the effect that it indubitably did have?
Before attempting an answer, I will attempt to differentiate suffering per se from symbolism.
Along with coercion, this creates three potential dimensions of protest. Protest is always
symbolic, of course. Some acts of protest are only symbolic, involving neither suffering nor
bargaining. For example, anti-globalization activists invade the City of London and wash the
windows of major banks, dramatically symbolizing their demands for transparency in
international finance. Some acts of protest combine coercion with symbolism. Animal-rights
activists throw red paint at people wearing fur, not only imposing costs on them, but also
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symbolizing the bloody business of harvesting fur. Now consider another example: during the
boycott of foreign textiles in Bombay in 1930, a woman picketing a store tried to remonstrate
with a customer (Slocombe 1936, p. 393). He was not persuaded by her discursive framing. She
then stabbed her own arm, bleeding on his new purchase. This act was perfect: it imposed costs
by damaging the cloth, it dramatically symbolized how foreign cloth consumed the life-blood of
the Indian nation—and it sprang from her own suffering. I would urge that we do not conflate the
second with the third. She could have conveyed the same symbolic message with red paint or
animal blood (which feminists have used at beauty contests). Opening her own veins with the
knife added a new element: this is what I mean by ‘communicative suffering.’4 One may suspect
that this was the secret of her success: “Almost in tears the buyer surrendered the cloth”
(Slocombe 1936, p. 393).5
1. Theoretical approaches
To theorize protest as communicative suffering, we can draw on its practitioners. Gandhi coined
the neologism satyagraha, which he translated as ‘soul-force’ (another translation is ‘struggle for
truth’): “a method by which men, enduring pain, secure their rights” (1909 [Gujarati version], p.
90, n. 178). He contrasted this to violent force. This antithesis overlooks the possibility of
nonviolent coercion. “‘We will hurt you if you do not give this’ is one kind of force; it is the
force of arms” (1909, p. 85). But this logic of bargaining need not be violent; strikers may impose
costs on their employer without physically hurting anyone. In explaining the efficacy of
suffering, Gandhi tended to emphasize the moral conversion of opponents. He even stated that a
pure practitioner of satyagraha “cannot allow himself to be regarded as a martyr nor can he
4
This is why I have not adopted McAdam’s ‘strategic dramaturgy.’ I would like to preserve a
terminological distinction between the drama of burning a flag and that of burning oneself; selfimmolation by fire is so awful (in the archaic as well as modern senses of the word) because the
suffering is real and not (merely) symbolic. Burning oneself in effigy would not have the same
effect.
5
This account is second-hand: George Slocombe, an English journalist in Bombay, heard it from
the cloth merchant.
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complain of the hardships … nor may he make political capital out of what may appear to be
injustice or ill-treatment” (1910, p. 147). (He acknowledged that this pure form “can exist only in
theory”—fortunately, we might add!) This almost hints at a supernatural mechanism: the cosmic
order would inevitably reward those who suffered with pure hearts. Within a different religious
framework, King made the same point: “History has proven over and over again that unearned
suffering is redemptive” (quoted in Miller 1992, p. 152). For the social scientist, a more helpful
analysis is provided by Krishnalal Shridharani’s War Without Violence (1939). A companion of
Gandhi’s on the salt march, he completed a Ph.D. in Social Science at Columbia University. As
the title of his book suggests, he recognized the element of ‘compulsion’ in nonviolent protest
(1939, pp. 292-3). This paper draws extensively on his book for examples and insights.
There is a body of theory which focuses on the paradox of cost-seeking behavior. Costly
signaling theory was developed independently in biology and economics (Spence 1974; Zahavi
and Zahavi 1997). (The original publications appeared in consecutive years, another of Robert
Merton’s ‘multiples.’) The central insight is simple: “in order to be effective, signals have to be
reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly” (Zahavi and Zahavi 1997, p. xiv). In
biology, most attention has concentrated on signals of strength or fitness. As an example, healthy
individuals of many species conspicuously waste energy when they detect a predator about to
give chase. By adopting such a handicap, they provide a reliable signal to the predator to abandon
a fruitless chase, to the benefit of both parties. Thorstein Veblen (1899) provided a similar
analysis of wealth. “Refined tastes, manners, and habits of life are a useful evidence of gentility,
because good breeding requires time, application, and expense” (49). Conspicuous consumption
is a reliable signal of wealth. This approach promises important insights for social science
(Gambetta forthcoming-b; Gintis, Smith, and Bowles 2001). Anthropologists have recently
argued that males in foraging societies waste their energy on inefficient modes of hunting
because risky ventures demonstrate their prowess to potential mates and competitors (Bliege
Bird, Smith, and Bird 2001). Diego Gambetta (forthcoming-a) and Heather Hamill (2001) have
demonstrated the importance of signaling in criminal activity. A vivid example, particularly
pertinent to communicative suffering, comes from Northern Ireland. Petty criminals are subject to
punishment beatings, administered by the Irish Republican Army. One aspiring ‘hood’ was so
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keen to mimic such a punishment that he paid a friend to shoot him in the knee and slice open his
calf.
2. Varieties of communicative suffering
The first task is to examine the varieties of communicative suffering. This will also demonstrate
its importance in some—historically significant—episodes of protest. I will focus on people who
intentionally seek or threaten their own suffering. This excludes victims who are killed or injured
in situations which they did not anticipate: the demonstrators massacred by British troops at
Amritsar in 1919, for example, or Emmett Till, tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955.
Moreover, I will focus on actions which do not directly inflict material costs on opponents.
Table 1 depicts two axes of distinction. Firstly, consider the agency which actually inflicts
suffering: either the protesters themselves or their opponents. In the latter case, evidence is
inevitably more ambiguous; it is not invariably clear that protesters invited or welcomed their
own suffering. Therefore an important source of evidence comes from opponents: when they
refuse to inflict suffering, or when they belatedly recognize its negative consequences, then they
too are acknowledging that costs can be beneficial. Secondly, consider whether suffering is
sought or threatened. This should be conceived as a spectrum of risk. At one extreme, protesters
are sure that their actions will result in their suffering. At the other, protesters are sure that their
opponents will act in order to avert their suffering.
Physical violence and imprisonment are usually considered as a potential cost of participation in
protest. On occasions, however, protesters seem to treat them as beneficial—something that will
threaten or sanction their opponents. To launch the campaign against the salt tax in 1930, Gandhi
resolved to occupy the salt works at Dharasana, north of Bombay. In a letter to the Viceroy, Lord
Irwin, he told him that the only way of preventing the raid, aside from yielding to their demands,
was by arresting or brutalizing the protesters. “Success is the certain result of suffering of the
extremest character voluntarily undergone” (quoted in Muzumdar 1932, p. 107). Gandhi was
arrested, but the operation went ahead. Webb Miller, a journalist with the Chicago Tribune,
witnessed one of a series of bloody confrontations with the police (see also Weber 1997, pp. 433-
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55). “You will be beaten but you must not resist,” the protesters were told (quoted in Miller 1936,
p. 192). Then they marched towards the salt works:
… scores of native police rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on
their heads with steel-shod lathis. Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend
off the blows. … The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly
marched on until struck down. When every one of the first column had been knocked
down stretcher-bearers rushed up unmolested by the police and carried off the injured
… Then another column formed while their leaders pleaded with them to retain selfcontrol.” (Miller 1936, p.193)
The unequal confrontation continued until Miller counted over three hundred injured men, many
severely; two were dead.
Such gruesome scenes were repeated many times during the civil disobedience campaign.
Congress deliberately provoked violence by defying official rules regarding demonstrations.
Negley Farson, on assignment for the Chicago Daily News, watched police attacking marchers in
Bombay.
The Sikh leader … was being struck on the head. He was hit until his turban came
undone and his top-knot was exposed. A few more blows and his hair came undone
… A few more and blood began to drip … He stood there with his hands at his sides.
(Farson 1937, p. 143)
By submitting so readily to such savage beating, the protesters obviously did not treat pain as a
cost to be minimized.
Their leaders welcomed the violence. J. C. Kumarappa explained the rationale for the Dharasana
raid:
our expectation was that the Government would open fire on unarmed crowds. …
Our primary object was to show the world at large the fangs and claws of the
Government … In this we have succeeded beyond measure. (quoted in Weber 1997,
p. 454)
This was even more explicit in Nehru’s commentary on a bloody clash in Lucknow, two years
before:
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I have not the slightest grievance against the government and officials … they had
completely played into the hands of the boycotters. They had brought the issues
before the people … that the British rule in India means the policeman’s baton.
(quoted in Low 1997, p. 88)
The British rulers faced a dilemma. Why they did not simply arrest protesters at Dharasana is not
altogether clear.6 But when they confronted huge crowds, as with tens (hundreds?) of thousands
marching in Bombay, it was impossible to arrest them all. The authorities had either to yield, or
to stop them with violence. At least some of the British realized that the latter was beneficial to
the protesters. After the police violently dispersed a demonstration in Lucknow in 1930, the
provincial governor confided to the Viceroy that it was “a mistake”: “It may be very satisfactory
at times to apply forcible methods to an obstinate lot of ‘satyagrahis,’ but the ultimate gain does
not always compensate one for the trouble … on the whole it has formed somewhat of an asset to
Congress” (quoted in Low 1997, p. 112).
The benefits of police brutality were also apparent in the Civil Rights movement, though
protesters did not provoke it in such a deliberate fashion. According to most accounts (e.g.
McAdam 1996), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) targeted Birmingham,
Alabama in 1963 because the city was known for the brutality of its police force under Eugene
‘Bull’ Connor, one of the Public Commissioners. A revisionist historian now shows that the
SCLC expected Connor to be voted out of office before their campaign began (Eskew 1997, pp.
210-14). Nevertheless, they certainly understood the benefits of violence when the police
eventually unleashed dogs on black bystanders (not actually on the protesters themselves). At
SCLC headquarters, the leaders were jubilant: “We’ve got a movement. We’ve got a movement.
We had some police brutality. They brought out the dogs. We’ve got a movement!” (quoted in
Forman 1972, p. 312).7 Connor’s use of dogs and then water hoses provided the defining images
6
They had already arrested hundreds of protesters on previous days; perhaps the legal system
was strained by the number of prisoners (Weber 1997).
7
Note that James Forman is an unsympathetic witness; he was disgusted that they were “happy
about police brutality” (p. 312).
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of the campaign in Birmingham. When the SCLC turned to Selma, Alabama, in 1965, the
benefits of violence were fully appreciated. When the County Sheriff, James Clark, blocked a
procession on the steps of the courthouse, C. T. Vivian harangued the sheriff and eventually
dared the man to hit him. A punch sent him reeling down the steps—all of which was captured on
television (Garrow 1986, p. 391). A staff member of the SCLC underlined the benefits: “Every
time it appears that the movement is dying out, Sheriff Clark comes to our rescue” (quoted in
Garrow 1986, p. 391).
The success in Selma and Birmingham contrasted with the SCLC’s previous campaign in
Albany, Georgia from 1961 to 1962. There the police chief, Laurie Pritchett, understood that
suffering would benefit the protesters. He trained his force in an innovative method of policing—
not brutalizing blacks. “We’re going to out-nonviolent them,” he proclaimed (interview in
Hampton and Fayer (eds) 1990. p. 106). Indeed, the U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy,
even sent Pritchett a telegram congratulating him on the peaceful arrests. King summed up the
lesson:
racial violence against peaceful demonstrators was an essential prerequisite to
securing racial justice. … We learned this in Albany, Georgia, where we marched but
were never met with violence. Our demonstrators were arrested and placed in jail in a
rather orderly fashion, but because there was no true confrontation the movement
gradually died and none of our demands were met. (quoted in Garrow1986, n. 46, p.
692)
Besides inviting suffering, protesters can also threaten their own physical suffering in order to
constrain their opponents’ actions.8 Indian protesters adopted a novel form of picketing. In 1922,
students boycotting Calcutta University sat prone in front of its gates: “they implored the
conforming students not to hesitate to step on their bodies if the latter felt justified in entering
8
The threat has an ancient pedigree. When Pontius Pilate threatened protesting Jews with death
unless they accepted Caesar’s image in Jerusalem, they “all fell to the ground, extended their
necks, and proclaimed that they were ready to be killed rather than transgress the law” (Josephus
quoted in Horsley and Hanson 1988, p. 39).
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that way” (Shridharani 1939, p. 21). What is interesting is that Gandhi deplored their action as
‘cowardly’ (1909, p. 95 n. 191 [editorial note]). In a more diffuse fashion, the college students
who traveled to Mississippi for Freedom Summer in 1964 were threatening the forces of white
racial oppression with their own suffering. The same threat is widely used in contemporary
protest: Greenpeace sails a ship into an area demarcated for nuclear testing; environmental
activists lie down in front of logging trucks; peace activists use their bodies to thwart Israeli
military operations against Palestinians. These methods usually succeed because opponents
decide that it would be too costly to them to take the lives of protesters. Of course this is always a
risk. To enforce the boycott against foreign cloth in Bombay in 1930, a young man lay down in
the driveway of a store; an (English) truck driver ran over and killed him. In the furor that
followed, the storekeeper himself joined the movement (Shridharani 1939, p. 21). Three of the
students in Freedom Summer were murdered, focusing public attention on the routine violence
which maintained white supremacy. Earlier this year an Israeli bulldozer crushed an American
student to death, as she tried to protect a Palestinian house in the Gaza strip (Smith 2003). This,
however, has not generated any appreciable concern.
Like violence, imprisonment is sometimes welcomed by protesters. It is important to distinguish
this from the tactic of using mass arrests to fill the prisons, as practiced in India and the American
South. That was effective insofar as it inflicted costs on the political authorities, by straining the
prison system and preventing further arrests. The clearest examples of imprisonment pertain to
leaders. At his first trial in India in 1922, Gandhi famously challenged the judge to “inflict on me
the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are
good for the people of this country” (quoted in Muzumdar 1932, p. 32). He was sentenced to six
years in prison, though in fact he only served two. The British authorities released him once he
became seriously ill, because they did not want him to die in prison. When Gandhi began the salt
campaign, the authorities were very reluctant to imprison him. The Governor of the Punjab, Sir
Geoffrey de Montgomery, suspected that he was “dreadfully anxious to get arrested” (quoted in
Dalton 1993, pp. 127-8). The Viceroy acknowledged “that our action in not arresting Gandhi is
very illogical,” for he had violated the law, and other leaders had been imprisoned. Yet “up to
now it has helped us and embarrassed the other side” (quoted in Dalton 1993. p. 130). Gandhi
was eventually arrested, and spent several spells in prison. After he began a fast in 1933, the
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authorities found a perfect opportunity to release him. “Government was not prepared to allow
him to die in jail nor to order forcible feeding to save his life,” ran the official explanation
(quoted in Low 1997, p. 235). Rather than welcoming his freedom, Gandhi realized that he had
been outmaneuvered: “This discharge is a matter of no joy to me” (quoted in Low 1997, p. 236).
He struck back—in paradoxical fashion—by pledging himself not take part in civil disobedience
until his one-year sentence would have expired. In effect, then, he imprisoned himself.
King also learned benefits of imprisonment. He was first arrested in Albany during a
demonstration in 1961. Joining hundreds of other protesters, he went to jail rather than being
bailed out. “I will not accept bond,” he told a reporter. “If convicted I will refuse to pay the fine. I
expect to spend Christmas in jail. I hope thousands will join me” (quoted in Garrow 1986, p.
185). Two days later, however, he posted bond and left jail. Local leaders had informed him that
concessions had been offered by city officials. Needless to say, those concessions were promptly
denied by the mayor. The debacle was reported as an embarrassing defeat. It is not surprising,
then, that after being convicted some months later he elected to serve 45 days in jail rather than
pay a $178 fine. But only two days later, Pritchett claimed that a mysterious black man had paid
the fine on the behalf of King and Ralph Abernathy, a fellow activist. (In actual fact this was
arranged secretly by the mayor.) “I do not appreciate the subtle and conniving tactics used to get
us out of jail,” King fulminated to reporters (quoted in Garrow 1986, p. 203). He had insisted to
Pritchett that “we want to serve this time.” “God knows,” replied the police chief, “I don’t want
you in my jail” (see film footage in Hampton 1986).
In all these interactions, protesters deliberately invited or threatened their own suffering. Some of
their opponents tried to avoid inflicting suffering, recognizing that it would benefit the protesters.
It is also possible, however, for protesters to directly inflict suffering on themselves. This is
comparatively rare. It is nonetheless of great significance, for it furnishes compelling evidence
that costs can be beneficial.
A hunger strike is the most familiar form of self-inflicted suffering. Here, once again, death is
used as a threat against the opponent. One example will suffice. Gandhi first used fasting as a
political weapon in 1922, during a lockout of textile workers in Ahmedabad. After weeks without
pay, many of them were drifting back to work on the employers’ terms. This broke the pledge
they had made, at Gandhi’s insistence, to die rather than succumb. Faced with this desperate
13
situation, Gandhi announced that “I shall not take food, nor use a car till you get 35 per cent
increase or all of you die fighting for it” (quoted in Erikson 1969, p. 351). He forbade others to
join him. The fast was avowedly intended to stiffen the workers’ resolve, but it also placed
pressure on the employers. One of them, who had contributed funds to Gandhi’s ashram, called it
a “dirty trick” (quoted in Erikson 1969, 353). This caused Gandhi some disquiet; he even urged
employers to disregard the fast: “it gives me immense pleasure and need not cause any pain to
anyone” (quoted in Erikson 1969, 357). After only two days, a compromise was agreed. In
subsequent years, Gandhi’s propensity for fasting contributed to the reluctance of British
authorities to arrest him. Lord Irwin worried about “the probability, or at least possibility, of his
going on hunger-strike if we put him in prison. This last is embarrassing …” (quoted in Dalton
1993, p. 126).
By threatening death by starvation, the hunger striker attempts to obtain concessions. The
element of threat is absent when someone deliberately kills him or herself as an act of protest.
Self-immolation is the most awful example of self-inflicted suffering. A Buddhist monk, Thich
Quang Duc, set himself alight in Saigon in 1963, requesting President Ngo Dinh Diem to stop
persecuting Buddhists. In the four decades since, at least a thousand—perhaps as many as three
thousand—individuals have taken (or attempted to take) their own lives in this ultimate sacrifice
(Biggs forthcoming). The great majority of them use the method of burning, which promises a
painful death. In addition, most commit the act in a public place, where it will be witnessed.
Curiously, self-mutilation is far less common than self-immolation. This is surprising seeing that
deliberate self-harm among the general population is far more prevalent than suicide (Hawton et
al. 2002). In some cases where people set their clothes on fire, they apparently expect to be
quickly rescued; these could be classified as self-mutilation. Other examples are extremely rare.
In Vietnam, a student went to a temple in Saigon in September 1963 to chop off her left hand
with an axe (Chân Không 1993, pp. 41-2).9 In a letter to the President, she offered the hand as a
gift, requesting him to understand his people’s wishes to end the persecution. On hearing of her
courage, thousands of students took to the streets in protest against the regime. Vietnam furnishes
9
She apparently did not succeed at amputating her hand.
14
two more examples. In 1966, immediately after a nun had burned herself to death, a monk cut off
part of his finger before a cheering crowd (New York Times, May 30, 1966). In 1969, a monk
burned his finger in a candle flame, before an audience of thousands (Hassler 1970, p. 142).
It might seem obtuse to place long-distance marches in the same category as self-immolation. But
these too depend on self-inflicted costs. In 1930, Gandhi prepared his campaign against the salt
tax with a march in Gujarat. The march was highly symbolic: it was to terminate at the coast
where he would break the law by collecting salt from the sea, on a date commemorating a
previous campaign in 1919. Its impact also came from the willingness of the marchers to endure
physical hardship. A duration of five days was rejected in favor of twenty-four days. Gandhi
along with eighty followers walked over two hundred miles on foot. On the march he castigated
the followers for trying to ease the hardship, for example by trucking in fresh milk.
“Extravagance has no room in this campaign” (quoted in Dalton 1993, p. 110). By the time he
reached the coast, over ten thousand people had traveled to welcome him. In 1965, black
Americans staged their own salt march, from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama.
Again, it was decided to walk rather than ride (Garrow 1986, p. 394). Although it only took five
days, the marchers ran the risk of violent attack; they had to be protected by units of the National
Guard under Federal command. The importance of physical endurance—beyond the symbolic
journey from one point to another—is underlined by the disparaging remarks of a hostile white
onlooker: “they had walked for the TV cameras … and they got on the trucks, they got in the
ambulance, and they rode … they didn’t march all the way” (interview in Raines (ed.) 1977, p.
219).
I would argue that all the acts discussed so far have been instrumental; they were intended to
benefit the collective cause, or at the very least were welcomed as beneficial in retrospect. In
addition, however, we can find acts of the same character which appear impulsive. These are
more appropriately classified as purely expressive—they serve only to dramatize intense
emotions of anger (and perhaps altruistic solidarity). Sometimes violence is ostensibly sought. At
Dharasana, following the beating of protesters, a student ran to the police superintendent, “his
face contorted with rage, tore open his cotton smock, exposing his bare breast, and shrieked:
‘Shoot me! Kill me, it’s for my country!’” (Miller 1936, p. 194). As this occurred in front of
Miller, it seems unlikely that the student expected to be shot. (For an almost identical incident,
15
see Miller 1936, p. 203.) At a march in Bombay, a woman held up her baby to a British
policeman: “‘Strike him!’ she screamed” (Farson 1937, p. 142). The policeman pushed her aside.
Harm can also be self-inflicted. During the Beijing student movement in 1989, a student activist
recalled how he reacted to the government’s refusal to accept a petition: “I even punched my own
face several times, and blood gushed out” (quoted in Zhao 2000, p. 1618).
The incident with the baby merits a digression. There is no equality in suffering: women and
children count for more than men. This fact can be used strategically. During the civil
disobedience campaign in India, women would surround the men with their bodies, posing a
serious obstacle to the police (Farson 1937, p. 141). Conversely, British authorities established
“that in no case should women volunteers be handled or searched for salt” (quoted in Dalton
1993, p. 129). In Birmingham, the SCLC recruited large numbers of school children to take to the
streets and fill the jails. In part, this is explained by the conventional cost calculus: the cost of
imprisonment was much less for them than for adults, who faced the loss of employment (James
Bevel, interview in Hampton and Fayer (eds) 1990). Nevertheless, the image of high-pressure
hoses being turned on school children was an especially potent one.
Having examined the modes of communicative suffering, we can briefly consider the audiences
to whom suffering is addressed. Where suffering is imposed by police, they are obviously the
most immediate audience. For the most part, however, police apparently have little compunction
about carrying out orders. Indeed, Miller describes how at Dharasana the native Surat police were
“enraged by the nonresistance,” and inflicted much greater pain than was necessary to
incapacitate the protesters (1936, p. 195). Needless to say, there are exceptions: police who are
profoundly moved by suffering (as opposed to those who see a strategic advantage in avoiding
it). One was the commander of the uniform patrol division in Birmingham, Glen Evans. He
recalled watching Reverend Shuttlesworth being knocked over and injured by a high-pressure jet
of water, and thinking “What does this accomplish? What do we hope to do here by doing these
kind of things?” (interview in Raines (ed.) 1977, p. 174) As the police herded arrested students
on to school buses transporting them to jail, a fellow officer remarked: “ten or fifteen years from
now, we will look back on this and we will say, ‘How stupid can you be?’” (in Raines (ed.) 1977,
p. 171). Note that they did not refuse to obey orders. On at least one occasion, however, firemen
in the city refused to hose water on praying demonstrators (Forman 1972, p. 312).
16
In general, communicative suffering is addressed to more distant audiences. In most cases,
suffering is intended to be communicated far beyond the immediate witnesses. Here the interests
of protesters converge with the interests of journalists, for violence and suffering create an ideal
drama to attract readers or watchers. The development of technologies to reproduce and
disseminate images have surely enhanced the power of suffering. What is notable is the extent to
which communicative suffering has been addressed quite deliberately to ‘bystanders’: people
who are not affected by the struggle between protesters and their opponents, and not inclined
towards involvement (cf. McCarthy and Zald 1977). This exemplifies McAdam’s argument that
“virtually all instances of state-movement interaction are mediated by other publics” (1996, p.
355).
Gandhi arranged for three cinema companies to film his salt march on newsreel, and it received
front-page coverage in American newspapers (Dalton 1993, p. 107). One suspects that if he had
been free to lead the campaign at Dharasana, he would have arranged the brutal spectacle to be
captured on film. As it was, only one foreign journalist—Miller—was present, apparently
through his own determination. The British authorities surreptitiously blocked the telegraphed
text of his account, while denying that there was any censorship (Miller 1936, p. 197-8; see also
Farson 1937, pp. 144-5). They could not, of course, prevent it from eventually being printed
throughout the English-speaking world. It caused a sensation in the United States; a senator even
read the account into the Senate’s official record. Indians in America seized the opportunity,
distributing it in pamphlet form (Miller 1936, p. 198-9). Farson complained that his dispatches
were reprinted “completely omitting all paragraphs where I showed that the ghastly affair was
inevitable, deliberately invited by the Indians themselves” (1937, p. 138). In England, his ‘EyeWitness Account of Imperialist Brutality’ was used as text for sermons. Another example of the
communication of suffering, deliberately planned, was the immolation of Quang Duc (Biggs
forthcoming). Some of the monks in Saigon were adept at using the American media (notably
more so than the Diem regime or the American embassy). As Quang Duc burned, monks handed
out his final letter while another with a loudhailer (somewhat redundantly) chanted ‘A monk
burns himself to death’—all in English. Malcolm Browne’s photograph of flames consuming the
frail figure, serenely seated in the Lotus position, won the World Press Photograph Award for
1963.
17
3. The efficacy of communicative suffering
We find numerous cases where protesters seek or threaten their own suffering, and moreover
communicate this to a wide audience. One can hardly escape the conclusion that suffering can be
instrumentally effective. To be sure, a few instances are best described as purely expressive.
Perhaps some isolated acts can be attributed to psychopathology. For the most part, however, we
must surely accept that actors had good reason to choose or promise to suffer: they intended this
to advance their collective cause. Even death can be chosen for its efficacy. Emily Wilding
Davison, the English suffragist who died under the hooves of the King’s race horse in 1913,
intimated that “a life would have to be given before the vote was won” (quoted in Colmore 1913,
p. 49). “The world doesn’t need many martyrs,” declared Norman Morrison, who set himself
alight in 1965 to protest America’s war in Vietnam. “But it needs a few” (quoted in Hendrickson
1996, p. 202). Needless to say, we cannot hope to empirically demonstrate that suffering raises
the probability that a movement will prevail over its opponents. Any movement involves an array
of different protest techniques; suffering is only one form or dimension of protest. Nevertheless,
it is suggestive that two notably successful movements of the twentieth century—Indians against
British colonialism and African Americans against racial oppression—have emphasized
suffering. Less than a year after the salt march, the Viceroy accepted face-to-face negotiations
with Gandhi. Within months of the Selma campaign, President Lyndon Johnson introduced a
substantive Voting Rights Act.
What is puzzling theoretically is how suffering could be effective. It is easy to understand how
protesters who inflict costs on their opponents gain power. How might suffering be a source of
power?10 I will propose several different answers to the question, without attempting to evaluate
their relative importance. Suffering conveys information and evokes emotions. For theoretical
clarity, it is important to differentiate the two. The theory of costly signaling properly pertains
10
I will avoid discussing supernatural sources of power, which are of marginal significance in
modern social movements. One woman in Vietnam sacrificed herself after the fall of the Diem
regime: having made a vow to Buddha, to burn herself if the imprisoned monks and nuns were
released, she kept her side of the bargain. But this is unusual.
18
only to the former. Signals “are activities or attributes of individuals … which, by design or
accident, alter the beliefs of, or convey information to, other individuals” (Spence 1974, p. 1).
Suffering signals two things: commitment and deprivation. Commitment is more straightforward,
and is readily understood as costly signaling. We may distinguish two varieties of commitment
signaling. I will call these ‘sincerity’ and ‘strength’ respectively.
Producing a public good almost always requires leaders to coordinate collective action and to
negotiate with opponents. Yet those leaders may exploit collective action for their own benefit.
Scholars who study social movements generally choose to focus on exemplary altruistic leaders.
In reality, movements also attract ‘Unscrupulous Rascals and the most infamous damn liars and
tricksters at Large’ (ch. 5 of Kealey and Palmer 1982). To similar effect, social scientists
committed to individualistic explanations focus on the free-rider problem, ignoring this equally
important problem of credibility (cf. Gambetta forthcoming-b). One exception is Samuel
Popkin’s (1979) analysis of peasant mobilization in Vietnam. “The self-denial of Communist
organizers, the celibacy of missionary priests, the scorn of conspicuous consumption by Hao Hao
organizers, were striking demonstrations to the peasants that these men were less interested in
self-aggrandizement than the visibly less self-denying organizers from other groups” (p. 261).
Communicative suffering can fulfill the same function.
There are two particularly clear examples. Gandhi’s fast in 1922 was provoked by criticism from
impoverished workers. He had insisted that they not interfere with the employment of others in
their stead. One of his staff reported a bitter comment on Gandhi and another leader: “They come
and go in their car, they eat elegant food, while we suffer death agonies” (quoted in Erikson
1969, p. 351). On the very next day, Gandhi foreswore food and automotive transport, which
suggests how deeply he felt the need to prove his own sincerity, as well as to stiffen the resolve
of the workers. King’s leadership was seriously compromised when he left jail in Albany, after
promising to spend Christmas in confinement. Louis Lomax, a black reporter from Georgia,
imagined how people would react:
Lord, child, we got to watch our nigger leaders. They’ll lead you into trouble with the
white folks and then run off and leave you like he did them people in Albany.
(Lomax 1962, pp. 110-11)
It is no surprise, then, that King wanted to remain in jail after he was convicted.
19
This signal of commitment does not require deliberately chosen suffering. In the Deep South,
blacks who sustained a challenge to racial oppression in the face of brutal intimidation thereby
proved their commitment. Medgar Evers, an established leader within the NAACP, came to
support the more radical activists: he “was very moved by the young people that volunteered to
sit in the restaurants, who were beaten, who were spat upon” (Myrlie Evers, interview in
Hampton and Fayer (eds) 1990, p. 151). Conversely, leaders who entered the movement after the
mid 1960s tended to be more opportunistic, precisely because they had chosen to join once the
danger had lessened, and there were tangible rewards of political office and government money
(Payne 1995, pp. 348-9, 353).
Suffering could also signal the strength of commitment to opponents. What matters is not just the
number of people who are willing to protest, but also the strength of their commitment. This
signal would function in the same way as in biology. Physical fighting, with its risk of severe
injury even to the strongest competitor, can be avoided by displaying reliable signals of strength.
Similarly, if opponents can be convinced of the commitment of protesters, then they might decide
to yield without a costly conflict. This remains a hypothetical possibility, however, because I find
no evidence that opponents have responded this way. 11
Besides commitment, suffering also communicates deprivation. Most obviously, it helps attract
attention (Chong 1991). Bystanders face a bewildering variety of claims of deprivation and pleas
for justice. Suffering lends salience. “I wanted someone to stop and think about us,” recalled
Necla Koskun, a Kurdish girl who set fire to herself in London (Guardian, 8 June 1999). More
importantly, suffering may help to convince bystanders that protesters have a legitimate claim of
injustice. When we consider how to evaluate claims about justice (or fairness, to use a less
portentous term), we usually focus on the quality of argumentation. Of course this is important.
In practice, though, more-or-less convincing arguments exist on either side. (We tend to forget
11
It is conceivable, though implausible, that the Birmingham policeman quoted by Evans was
responding to a signal of strength rather than injustice. ‘If their children are willing to go to jail,
then we cannot prevail in the long run’ as opposed to ‘then their cause must be just.’
20
this after a movement has been successful; in retrospective, its claims of injustice seem selfevidently valid.) To put it crudely, talk is cheap. As Chân Không explains:
If you want to buy something, you should pay something. And now you want to buy
something very, very precious—the understanding of people. You have nothing more
precious than your life. (quoted in Forest 1978, p. 8; see also Chân Không 1993, pp.
39, 105)
Let me try to unpack that insight. How do we evaluate claims of injustice? Without postulating a
coherent theory of justice, I suggest that our evaluation of such claims depends in part on
judgments about the degree of deprivation (actual or potential) experienced by each side.12 To
illustrate, consider one aspect of racial segregation in the South before 1960: blacks were barred
from eating a meal at department stores where they shopped. The argument against racial
discrimination was countered by arguments about the right of merchants to choose their
customers, and the right of whites not to be forced to eat with blacks. How would a bystander
evaluate these conflicting claims? Surely one element is a judgment about the level of deprivation
that segregation imposed on blacks—versus the level of deprivation that desegregation would
impose on whites. When blacks proved that they were willing to pay such a high cost—time
spent in sit-ins and picketing, along with arrests and violence—to end this segregation, that surely
signaled the degree to which they were deprived. In short, willingness to suffer can help
demonstrate deprivation—in a way that words alone cannot (cf. McAdam 1996). Note that
suffering need not be sought deliberately.
This signaling function was expressed by King: “we would present our very bodies as a means of
laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community” (1963, p. 3). The
line appears in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This letter, which has become King’s most
12
My argument fits perfectly into a utilitarian theory of justice, but I hope that it has broader
applicability. A parallel argument can be made for attempted suicide. By wagering one’s life, one
proves the depth of one’s unhappiness. Cases where attempted suicide led to a marked
improvement in relationships—by altering the behavior of others—are documented by Erwin
Stengel (1969).
21
famous text, presented a brilliant argument. Yet who could doubt that the power of these words
was accentuated by the circumstances of their composition? “While confined here in the
Birmingham city jail …” begins the letter. Imagine altering that sentence to “While resting here
in Gaston’s Motel …” (the motel used by the SCLC as its temporary headquarters). The logical
and rhetorical force of his argument would remain, but I doubt that it would be widely read
today. President Lyndon Johnson made a direct connection between suffering and injustice, after
the violence at Selma: “The blows that were received, the blood that was shed, the life of the
good man that was lost, must strengthen the determination of each of us to bring full and equal
and exact justice to all of our people” (quoted in Garrow 1986, p. 407) In a television address to
promote a new Voting Bill, he stated that the black man’s (and woman’s, we must add) “actions
and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of
this nation” (p. 408).
How the servant of an American family in Saigon reacted to Quang Duc’s self-immolation again
suggests the potent message of suffering:
I have always believed in President Diem. But now this has happened. This proves
that the President is bad. (quoted in Mecklin 1965, p. 167)
The servant was apparently not converted by intellectual argument. If a venerable monk had
sacrificed his life for a cause, the cause had to be just.
Suffering not only conveys information; it also evokes emotions. Even those who are already
committed to the collective cause can be profoundly affected by suffering. This can provide the
motivations to contribute to the collective cause. The two paramount emotions are anger and
guilt.
Obviously, suffering evokes anger among those who identify with those who suffer.
When the people saw with their own eyes their helpless kith and kin mercilessly
belaboured by lathis and heavy bludgeons even though they were meekly lying down
on the road receiving blows without the least retaliation … no wonder that every
shade of opinion in Lucknow, including the Muslims and the moderates was roused
to indignation. (quoted in Low 1997, p. 111)
Thus wrote a member of the Indian Legislative Assembly after a brutal clash in 1930. The fact
that severe repression can have an inflammatory effect has been demonstrated for a diverse range
22
of social groups, from English football fans to Iranians protesting against the Shah (Opp 1990;
Rasler 1996; Stott and Reicher 1998).
Anger does not require that suffering be sought deliberately; unintentional victims also evoke
anger. But only those who deliberately suffer can induce guilt among adherents who have not
contributed as much to the cause. This is emphasized by Kim’s (forthcoming) analysis of the
response to the self-immolation of Park Sung Hee. She set herself alight in 1991 in protest
against the American-supported regime in South Korea—and, more immediately, the death of a
student at the hands of police. Before he was buried, seven others followed her example and
sacrificed their lives (including one at his funeral). Kim analyzes testimonials written by visitors
to Park’s memorial, years later. Over two-thirds explicitly resolved to intensify their efforts on
behalf of the cause. This resolve is strongly and significantly associated with expressions of guilt
or shame. (It is also strongly associated with expressions of anger and of patriotic love, though
these are not statistically significant.) Measured against such self-sacrifice, these individuals felt
guilty about their own relative lack of commitment. “While looking at your face, 14 years
younger than mine, I feel ashamed through and through” (quoted in Kim forthcoming, p. 48).
This motivated a pledge of enhanced commitment. “I resolve that I will become a fighter who
will not be ashamed to stand before you” (quoted in Kim forthcoming, p. 14). At the funeral of
another student who died in the same wave of self-immolation, a dissident leader tried to instil
this same emotion: “We will never disappoint the martyr who devoted his dear life to the nation”
(Associated Press, 12 May 1991).
Suffering communicates by evoking emotions and conveying information. It may also function
by creating what I call ‘second-order’ injustice. This is similar to signaling deprivation, but it is
no longer a matter of information about an existing situation: it is the creation of a new one.
Consider again the example of segregation in the American South. Even after blacks had signaled
the extent of their deprivation, one might still hold racial segregation to be legitimate. Yet one
might not be willing to support racial segregation if it could be upheld only through violence. To
appreciate this subtle distinction, consider the following situations:
S0: Segregation in which blacks appear ‘content’
S1: Segregation in which blacks are obviously genuinely deprived (because they are
willing to suffer in protest)
23
S2: Segregation which can be only upheld by high levels of violence (causing
protesting blacks to suffer)
D: Desegregation
Someone who ranks S0 > D, when presented with S1 may rank S0 > D > S1, thereby accepting
desegregation. But even someone who evaluates S0 > S1 > D, when presented with S2, may
conclude S0 > S1 > D > S2, thereby accepting desegregation. This is conceivably how the
median white outside the South would have evaluated these alternatives in the mid 1960s. In
other words, s/he did not accord legitimacy to the claims of black protesters, but nonetheless
could not abide their violent repression.
If this seems excessively abstract, consider the recollection of a senior English police officer in
Bombay, John Court Curry. He did not accept the justice of the campaign for independence, nor
did he judge Gandhi (whom he had met) worthy of adulation. He insisted that “law-breakers
could not be allowed to continue their deliberate misbehavior.” Nevertheless, “on every occasion
when the Congress staged a large demonstration I felt a severe physical nausea.” Having “had no
such feelings on occasions of serious rioting,” he could only explain the malady as “due to the
extreme distaste at the idea of using force against these ‘non-violent’ people” (quoted in Dalton
1993, p. 133). He resigned his position in 1930. This is what I mean by second-order injustice:
even though one upholds the justice of existing institutions, one cannot stomach (in this instance,
literally) the suffering which is now necessary to maintain them.13
4. Limitations on communicative suffering
Protesters sometimes deliberately seek or threaten their own suffering; this suffering is
sometimes effective in advancing the collective cause. Lest I be accused of exaggerating the
13
What I call second-order injustice could be compared to the threat of self-harm in a toddler’s
tantrum (Trivers 1985)—or a fledgling’s noisy cry, insofar as it threatens to attract predators
(Zahavi and Zahavi 1997). “The weaker member of a partnership can blackmail the stronger by
threatening to bring injury on itself” (Zahavi and Zahavi 1997, p. 120). These cases are readily
explained by the parent’s (genetic) interest, which of course does not apply to my second-order
injustice.
24
importance of communicative suffering, its limitations should also be considered. First of all, it is
only one form or dimension of protest. Suffering alone did not win Indians their independence
and African Americans their freedom. Both movements also used coercive protest: they imposed
costs on opponents, especially by means of economic boycotts. If anything, I suspect that
communicative suffering is inevitably a minor theme in the repertoire of protest—though that
does not make it any less theoretically interesting.
Why is communicative suffering not utilized more extensively? The question almost answers
itself. Suffering is by definition costly. Very few people, relatively speaking, are willing to suffer
for a cause. That is precisely why it is potent. Moreover, it requires unimaginable discipline. The
Buddhist monks and nuns who burned sitting motionless in the lotus position must represent the
highest conceivable form of self-control. Submitting to brutality without fighting back also
requires self-discipline. This was not achieved without considerable effort. At Dharasana, after
watching so many succumb to the blows of lathis, the crowd “was on the verge of launching a
mass attack upon the police.” The leaders “rushed up and down, pleading with and exhorting the
intensely excited men to remember Gandhi’s instructions” (Miller 1936, p. 194; for another
example, see p. 202). They succeeded. In a similar incident in Birmingham, some of the crowd
began to throw bricks at the police. James Bevel of the SCLC used a police bullhorn to shout
orders: “If you’re not going to respect policemen, you’re not going to be in the movement”
(interview in Hampton and Fayer (eds) 1990, p. 134; for another example, see Payne 1995, p.
290). Once again, the protesters adhered to the logic of suffering. Still, these incidents illustrate
how unnatural it is to submit to violence instead of fleeing or fighting.
Suffering does not always send the intended signal. Self-inflicted suffering, in particular, can be
interpreted in another way. Someone who sacrifices him or herself for a cause may reveal the
depth of their commitment and the extent of the injustice—but it might also show that they are
depressed by personal setbacks or afflicted with mental illness. To be sure, self-immolation is
sometimes an excuse for suicide. A blatant example is Yukio Mishima, a celebrated Japanese
writer who disemboweled himself after staging a doomed coup; this was an act of exhibitionism
rather than protest. The response to self-immolation is therefore problematic precisely because it
is such a drastic act. When Ruth Christenson set fire to herself in a Minneapolis sex shop, the
context of the act was eminently reasonable: the city council was about to vote on a pioneering
25
anti-pornography ordinance, which many American feminists viewed as a legal breakthrough.
Yet she was portrayed merely as a rape victim with a history of instability (Associated Press, 12
July 1984). When self-immolation is dismissed as suicide, the act does not advance the collective
cause. Worse still, however, it can be used to discredit the cause itself. This happened after
several practitioners of Falun Gong set themselves alight in Tiananmen Square in 2001 (Biggs
forthcoming). Unfortunately, one of them involved her twelve-year-old daughter. In a brilliant
propaganda counteroffensive, the government used the incident to frame Falun Gong as a
dangerous religious cult. State television repeatedly broadcast gruesome film of the girl writhing
in agony. This not only justified severe repression; it also enabled the government to interpret
deaths in prison as cultic suicides.
The prevalence and efficacy of suffering obviously vary across cultures and among political
systems. Here I can do no more than survey a frontier for future research. We must suppose
people from some cultural traditions are more prepared to embrace suffering. Two aspects of
Gandhi’s inheritance are worth noting. Methods of communicative suffering already existed in
practice (Spodek 1971, 363-4). One was sitting dhurna, which meant sitting prominently outside
the opponent’s residence, and not leaving or eating until satisfaction was obtained. Another was
traga (Gujarati spelling), graduated self-mutilation which could ultimately culminate in killing
oneself. The Charan caste specialized in providing security for travellers, lenders, and treatymakers; default would be sanctioned by traga (Weinberger-Thomas 1999, pp. 58-63). This
gained its efficacy through a supernatural mechanism: the ghosts of the dead would return to
haunt the culprit. In addition, religious asceticism which valorized suffering was embedded in
Hindu and Jain traditions.14 The significance of religious asceticism is even clearer in Vietnam.
Burning the body was an established part of Mahayana Buddhism (Benn 1998). The ordination
ceremony for monks and nuns involved burning part of the forehead. Burning oneself to death
was first recorded in Buddhist texts from the fifth century; this was heterodox because it clashed
with the injunction against killing. The last case of a monk burning himself to death in Vietnam
occurred in the late eighteenth century, but in China it was still happening in Quang Duc’s
lifetime (Thich Thien-An 1975, pp. 172-3; Welch 1967, p. 327).
14
The problem of course is that asceticism is found in all the great religious traditions.
26
While the significance of such traditions is crucial, it would be a mistake to conceive
communicative suffering as inextricably connected to particular cultures—and, in particular, to
the divine cosmic order of Asiatic religions as opposed to the transcendent God of Semitic
religions. In the 1920s and 1930s, Christian pacifists in the West looked to Gandhi for
inspiration. Shridharani argued that “Satyagraha, once consciously and deliberately adopted, has
more fertile fields in which to grow and flourish in the West than in the Orient” (1939, p. xxxvxxxvi).15 James Farmer specifically argued that African Americans should learn from India. W.
E. B. Dubois, however, countered that self-sacrifice had no place in an American movement:
“our culture patterns in East and West differ so vastly, that what is sense in one world may be
nonsense in the other” (quoted in Fox 1997, p. 73). As we know now, this diagnosis was too
pessimistic. The Christianity of blacks in the South provided a fertile soil for transplantation.
Nevertheless, African Americans did not borrow some of the more extreme modes of suffering:
there were no hunger strikes, and picketers did not challenge opponents to walk over them. To
take another example, self-immolation diffused to the West in the 1960s. Several Americans set
themselves alight in protest against the war in Vietnam. Yet it is hard to escape the impression
that self-immolation made less ‘sense’ in America than in Vietnam. A telling difference is that
occasionally a Vietnamese crowd assembled to watch the spectacle of self-immolation or selfmutilation, as if attending a religious ceremony. As far as I know, that has never happened in the
West.16
We may separate the character of the political system as posing another—albeit overlapping—
limitation on the efficacy of communicative suffering. British India and the American South were
15
His reasoning was interesting: “Like war, Satyagraha demands public spirit, self-sacrifice,
organization, endurance and discipline for its successful operation, and I have found these
qualities displayed in Western communities more than my own” (Shridharani 1939, p. xxxvi).
16
This is not entirely explained by the different connotations of death by fire: in the East, where
cremation is deeply rooted, burning is purifying; in the West, it is horrifying. If this was the only
cultural difference, why have other methods of self-immolation (like taking poison) not proved
more acceptable in the West?
27
similar insofar as the rulers were ultimately accountable to a democratic public, informed by a
free media. Edward Thompson’s observation on Gandhi’s method bears repeating:
It succeeded in India, because it was used against a Government that—however
imperfectly—recognized that the game of insurrection and repression had rules; his
enemy had streaks of humanity and liberalism. The government therefore found itself
ultimately helpless, when line after line of Nationalists stood up fearlessly, to be
struck down by the lathis of the police, while British spectators were overcome with
shame and American journalists hurried off to cable home their indignation.
(Thompson 1939, p. 289)
Before and even after the Second World War, Gandhi claimed that the method could be used by
European Jews against Nazi persecution (Dalton 1993, pp. 135-7). This is unconvincing.17
Comparing British India to other imperialist regimes, D. A. Low (1997) sharpens the point. He
argues that British colonial rule was fundamentally ambivalent (as was experienced viscerally by
Curry), and that it was Gandhi’s genius to exploit this ambiguity. “In Indonesia it is well-nigh
certain that he would have been exiled [by the Dutch] to some distant island for life: while in
Vietnam … there is every likelihood that he would have been done to death [by the French]” (p.
39).
The Vietnamese comparison can be brought forward, to consider the Buddhist movement which
emerged in 1963, and which pioneered the use of self-immolation as a means of communicative
suffering (Chân Không 1993; Forest 1978; Topmiller 2002). The movement can be credited with
toppling the Diem regime in less than a year, albeit only because the United States arranged a
coup. After this, however, the movement failed to end the civil war. This was not due to any
reluctance to suffer: at least forty monks, nuns, and lay people burned themselves for peace in the
17
We can make a more contemporary comparison. The International Solidarity Movement has
had some success in preventing violence by Israeli troops and settlers against Palestinians, by
having volunteers—mainly American college students—threaten their own suffering. An
equivalent operation to protect Israelis from suicide bombers is really inconceivable, and not
merely because of technical impediments (like the lack of knowledge about where and when they
will strike). Presumably terrorists would not be deterred by the deaths of bystanders.
28
ten years after 1963. By unleashing massive repression, however, the various military juntas—
propped up by the United States—could continue to wage an increasingly futile war until the
very end. Once the communist regime had occupied the South, the Buddhists were subjected
once again to severe repression. Self-immolation continued, but without any effect. This is a
tragic counterpoint to the triumph of Indian Independence and American Civil Rights. It is clear
that suffering loses much of its power in a dictatorial or totalitarian regime. By controlling the
media, the regime can suppress information or even (as in China after 2001) distort it for
propaganda. If the regime is able and willing to utilize massive repression against protest, the
‘inflammatory’ effect of suffering is nullified. Faced with such reprisals, few adherents will be
willing to put their anger or guilt into effect; those that do will be killed or imprisoned for a
lengthy period. Bystanders might be appalled, but without the will or the ability to sanction the
regime, moral revulsion is irrelevant. It is interesting to compare the response of the American
‘public’ to the suffering of African Americans and Vietnamese Buddhists in the 1960s. Whites
outside the South could be made to feel morally responsible for the actions of Southern whites,
whereas the connection with Vietnam was tangential. Moreover, Southern racism was damaging
America’s struggle with Communism, whereas after the fall of Diem the logic of the Cold War
was antithetical to Buddhist demands for peace. (Ironically, as activists in the American anti-war
movement became more strident, they rejected the Buddhist demand for a ceasefire in favor of a
victory for Ho Chi Min.)
Conclusion
In sum, I hope to have shown that we should conceptualize communicative suffering as a distinct
form or dimension of protest. This is analytically separate from the coercive and symbolic
dimensions of protest. We can find many cases where people protest by seeking or threatening
their own suffering, and not by imposing material costs on their opponent, as in coercive protest.
In the broadest perspective, acts of communicative suffering are not common. But they occur in
sufficient numbers—and in sufficiently diverse cultural contexts—to pose an important
theoretical puzzle. As with coercive protest, one can always ask why some individuals are willing
to suffer costs for a collective cause; I have not addressed this question. I have focused instead on
the question of why suffering can be instrumentally effective: why costs are (sometimes)
beneficial. The efficacy of suffering may extend to victims who had no intention of advancing a
29
collective cause. This certainly is an important area for research.18 For example, how did the
death of 146 young women in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire benefit the labor movement? How did
the brutal killing of Mathew Sheppard help the cause of gay rights? I have chosen to focus on
cases where people intentionally use suffering, because that deliberate choice is theoretically (and
morally) compelling. Cases where people directly inflict suffering on themselves are especially
clear. We cannot dismiss all these acts as the products of madness or masochism. There has to be
a strong presumption for the instrumental efficacy of suffering; many reasonable people have bet
their lives on it.
Thus I argue that some people understand, however imperfectly or tacitly, that their suffering can
be instrumentally effective. This should not imply that they have a coherent theory of the
mechanisms by which suffering is effective. We have seen that even Gandhi did not provide such
a theory. Analysis might actually be antithetical to practice, though I do not believe that acts of
deliberate suffering require a fundamental misapprehension of social reality.19 Quite possibly
individuals overestimate their prospects of success. Against this, however, we can point to the
enormous potential impact of suffering. Take self-immolation as an extreme case. An ordinary
individual cannot advance the cause by using more conventional—less costly—forms of protest.
18
There has been a special issue of Daedalus on this subject. “Social suffering results from what
political, economic, and institutional power does to people, ” assert the editors (Kleinman, Das,
and Lock 1996, p. xi). They can neither imagine real people as perpetrators—as well as victims—
nor comprehend the possibility that people might seek their own suffering.
19
Nor even that their opponents have such a misapprehension. An illustration may clarify the
distinction. I might threaten to kill myself because I believe that after death as a ghost I would be
able to inflict revenge on my adversary. For social scientists who do not believe in ghosts, this is
a misapprehension. But I might also threaten to kill myself because my adversary believes in
ghosts, even though I do not. While such supernatural mechanisms are important in traditional
societies (e.g. Charan in India) they are not necessary. What is remarkable is that people who
have used communicative suffering in the twentieth century almost never mention supernatural
mechanisms, despite the overwhelming importance of religious training and religious beliefs.
30
After all, the marginal collective benefit of any individual contribution is vanishingly small. This
does not hold for self-immolation; individuals like Quang Duc, Norman Morrison, Jan Palach,
and Park Sung Hee made an historically significant contribution to their cause. 20 Decades after
their death, they have a cherished place in the collective memory (in Morrison’s case,
Vietnamese rather than American).
So communicative suffering can be a source of power—but how? I have proposed an array of
mechanisms which contribute to an explanation. Firstly, suffering conveys information: it is an
honest signal, because it is costly. A leader who suffers signals the sincerity of his or her
commitment to the cause. By suffering, people signal the extent of their deprivation, which
influences how others evaluate the justice of their claims. Actions, to repeat McAdam, speak
louder than words. Secondly, suffering evokes emotions, over and above any information
conveyed. By means of anger and guilt, it can motivate others to contribute, helping to overcome
fear and self-interest. Beyond signal and emotional stimulus, suffering creates a new reality.
Someone who remains unconvinced and unmoved by the claims of protesters may nonetheless be
unwilling to be implicated in their suffering. This is the manipulative element of suffering, for the
other’s compassion is used against their interest. Hence the resentment often expressed, for
example, by Gandhi’s antagonists. On a more mundane level, Farson describes what happened
when a bloodied Sikh offered himself for another beating. The British sergeant’s resolve failed:
“‘It’s no use,’” he said, turning to me with a half an apologetic grin. ‘You can’t hit a bugger when
he stands up to you like that!’” (Farson 1937, p. 143).21
These are the mechanisms by which communicative suffering can be effective. Whether it will be
used, and what effect it will have, depend crucially on the cultural and political context. Here we
are in uncharted waters, and I have probably already run aground on theoretical shoals. Political
20
We never find leaders in a movement choosing self-immolation; with very few exceptions, it is
a weapon of people who otherwise would be unknown outside their circle of family and friends.
21
According to Farson, the Sikh stood up again when he discovered that Farson and his colleague
were journalists. Whether the sergeant was inhibited by their presence is hard to judge; Farson
describes how the Sikh had been brutally beaten just moments before.
31
opportunities pose fewer hazards. It is surely plausible that suffering is relatively less effective in
states which can suppress media coverage, which are insulated from external pressure, and which
do not pretend to benign rule. Conversely, very costly self-inflicted suffering may be ineffective
in functioning democracies, because it is simply too extreme. Audiences respond with pity or
incomprehension, and not with outrage. We can surely agree that cultural traditions are vital, but
how to turn this platitude into theoretical insights is unclear. Perhaps the most promising subject
for research is self-immolation, because at least we can establish in which cultures this has been
most prevalent (Biggs forthcoming). There are patterns, albeit elusive ones. Protest as
communicative suffering (like personal suicide: Simpson and Conklin 1989) seems quite rare in
the Islamic world. Turkish Kurds are an exception, but then they have committed their acts of
self-immolation in the Christian West. Many Palestinians have been willing to die for their cause,
but only if it entails killing Israelis. It is not absurd to raise a hypothetical alternative: what if they
had only killed themselves, in the manner of Vietnamese Buddhists? What would be the effect of
dozens of self-immolations, captured live on CNN and beamed into the living rooms of Israelis
and Americans?
Let me end on a less speculative note. While this paper has concentrated exclusively on modern
social movements , deliberately chosen suffering is obviously found in a wide range of contexts
and in many different types of societies. The parallel with religiously motivated suffering is
especially clear. We often bemoan an artificial separation between the study of social movements
and of religion. The lives of Quang Duc and many others mentioned here did not heed this
separation. Martyrdom, pilgrimages, and painful asceticism provide important parallels (compare
Iannaccone 1992; Stark 1997, ch. 8; Wilson 2002). It is surely true that most people try to
minimize the costs of physical hardship and emotional distress, most of the time. Precisely for
this reason, social scientists should look closely whenever people act as if costs were beneficial.
32
Table 1: Varieties of communicative suffering
Agency
suffering imposed by others
suffering inflicted on oneself
blocking with one’s body
hunger strike
suffering
Anticipated risk
threatened
(low risk)
suffering sought
being beaten by police, going
(high risk)
to prison
self-immolation, selfmutilation, long-distance
march
Note: ‘risk’ refers to the probability that suffering will ensue, and not the extent of suffering.
33
APPENDIX: COSTLY FORMS OF POLITICAL VOICE
The paper has focused on the extreme end of the spectrum of political participation. But we may
also discern beneficial costs in more routine forms of political participation. These costs fall short
of anything we would properly term suffering, but they have a similar effect: they amplify ‘voice’
(Hirschman 1970). As a natural extension of my analysis of protest, I will make a few tentative
suggestions.
Since the advent of scientific polling in the 1950s, politicians and voters have increasing access
to accurate information about the electorate opinions. To take a recent example, the Bush
administration and indeed any American citizen could easily ascertain the number of people who
oppose the war on Iraq by consulting polling data. What is the point, then, of holding an anti-war
demonstration? One answer is that demonstrations are intended to strengthen the resolve of
participants, by means of collective effervescence (e.g. Collins 2001). This is surely part of the
answer. In addition, however, I would suggest that it is precisely the cost of demonstrating that
makes it effective. Responses to opinion polls are cheap talk. Even when the poll asks
respondents to record the strength of their opinion on an issue—‘rate your opposition to the war
on a scale of 1 to 5’—this is not an honest signal. Many people who respond with a ‘5’ are not
actually willing to expend any time or money to support the cause. Demonstrating provides an
honest signal of commitment. Obviously there is a trade-off between the cost of demonstrating
and the number of people willing to participate. In some cases (discussed above), marches are
organized to require physical endurance. But most demonstrations demand a fairly minimal cost.
One might speculate that this cost is just sufficient to signal electoral significance, while
maximizing the number of participants. By electoral significance, I mean that people hold the
opinion strongly enough for it to remain important in their decision on whom to vote for—and
actively campaign for—at the next election (which might be some years away).
34
When individual citizens convey their opinion to their political representatives, we could predict
that the most costly modes of communication sound the loudest.22 An email petition is easily
discounted, because it costs almost nothing. A telephone call or an original letter are costly, and
therefore should be considered significant. Note the paradoxical implication: at first sight it
seems that we can encourage greater political participation by making representatives more
accessible, especially via the internet (recall the enthusiasm for the internet as participatory
democracy in the early 1990s!). A moment’s reflection suggests why this could be self-defeating.
Precisely because it is so cheap, it is worthless. I predict that political representatives should be
most alert to costly forms of voice, because these may indicate something which even the best
opinion polls cannot tell them.
One of the most prominent voices emerging in the anti-war movement was John Brady Kiesling.
An American diplomat, he resigned in protest in February 2003. His letter of resignation—
written to the Secretary of State—was widely reprinted and posted on the internet. A Google
search (in May 2003) finds almost 8000 web pages containing his name. This is about one sixth
of the pages with ‘Noam Chomsky’ and ‘Iraq’ (posted in the previous three months)—an
impressive result for someone who was completely unknown before February. Why has Kiesling
become so popular? The resignation letter is a fine sample of rhetoric, and in person he is
articulate, engaging, and intelligent. Nevertheless, his intellectual acuity does not altogether
distinguish him from a cacophony of critics. What does differentiate him is the fact that he has
inflicted a cost on himself, by resigning from a promising career—before, we read, reaching the
twenty years’ service that would make him eligible for a pension. In other words, he has proved
his sincerity by paying a cost.
22
David Lazer (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) tells me that this is indeed
correct.
35
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