'It looks like war out here!' Peace protest during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches, 1979-1984.

Abstract

This thesis aims to place the peace protest of Is Het Hier Oorlog? (IHHO) during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches in a broader historical context to provide more insight into the motivation, goals, representation, and results of the protest. Considering the relationship between sport and social protest in the 1980s this thesis asks the following research question: In what ways has IHHO used framing to advance social protest during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches in the period 1979-1984? The concept of framing and the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu form the analytical framework for this research, focussing on the documentation from IHHO and their representation in the local newspaper De Gelderlander. It can be stated that IHHO has partly successfully used framing to advance social protest during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches. The variation in the extremity of the different collective action frames determines the degree of the success of the protest. Requesting attention for their pacifistic ideas certainly succeeded, however, the removal of the army from the Marches have proved to be hopeless. In the long term, the weapons disappeared from the streets to which IHHO’s protest certainly contributed.