Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings A Comparative Perspective

More than half the world's population live in violent settings, such as civil wars, communal conflicts, cities plagued by gang violence, and entire areas governed by criminal organizations. Living exposed to diverse forms of violence, individuals and communities have found innovative-and sometimes counterintuitive-ways to protect themselves and others. Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings establishes the study of civilian agency and its protective dimension across various violent settings as a systematic and unified field of research. It brings together researchers spanning several social science disciplines to study civilian protective agency in different violent settings, including civil war, genocide, communal violence, and organized crime, and in various geographical locations, from Syria to Mozambique, Sri Lanka to Mexico, Iraq to Colombia and Western Europe. The volume offers conceptual foundations, new theoretical insights, and detailed empirics that advance our understanding of civilian protective agency and promote future research on the topic that is comparable, tractable, and cumulative.

Jana Krause, Professor, University of Oslo,Juan Masullo, Assistant Professor, Leiden University,Jennifer Welsh, Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, McGill University,Emily Rhoads, Associate Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College

Jana Krause is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She is the author of Resilient Communities: Non-Violence and Civilian Agency in Communal War (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and several articles on communal conflict, civilian agency, civilian protection, and gender and peacebuilding. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Visiting Research Fellow at Yale University and King's College London. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.


Juan Masullo is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University. He is also a co-editor of Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, the biannual publication of APSA's Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Section, and associate editor of the International Studies Review. Before joining Leiden University, he was a Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and an Associate Member of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford; a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science (BIGSSS), and a Research Fellow at the Program on Order, Conflict and Violence (OCV), Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. at the European University Institute.


Emily Paddon Rhoads is Associate Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Taking Sides in Peacekeeping: Impartiality and the Future of the United Nations (Oxford University Press 2016) as well as several articles on civilian protection, peacekeeping, and the United Nations. Previously, she was the Rose Research Fellow in International Relations (Lady Margaret Hall) and Associate Faculty at the Blavatnik School of Government, both at the University of Oxford. She has been a visiting scholar and researcher at Columbia University, International Peace Institute, and European University Institute. She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford.


Jennifer M. Welsh is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University and Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. She was previously Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute and Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she co-founded the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. From 2013-2016, she served as the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, on the Responsibility to Protect. She has published several books and articles on the ethics and politics of armed conflict, the 'responsibility to protect', humanitarian action and civilian protection, the UN Security Council, and Canadian foreign policy.

Preface, Stathis Kalyvas, University of Oxford
Civilian Protective Agency: An Introduction, Jana Krause, University of Oslo, Juan Masullo, Leiden University & Emily Paddon Rhoads, Swarthmore College
PART 1
1. Interregional networks and conventionalized gender roles in civilian resistance against genocide: Evidence from the Holocaust in the Low Countries, Robert Braun & Kiran Stallone, UC Berkeley
2. The ties that bind: Civilian adaptation and social connectedness during the Syrian Civil War, Kimberly Howe, Tufts University
3. Transformations in occult protection amid violence in the Central African Republic, Louisa Lombard, Yale University & Mobito Kozaga
4. Civil resistance against jihadists: Perceptions of, and resistance against, IS governance in Mosul, Isak Svensson & Alanna Smart, Uppsala University
5. The durability of resistance: Women's high-risk mobilization for gender justice along the continuum of violence, Julia Margaret Zulver, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
6. Protection as a spectrum: The different faces of protection in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Judith Verweijen, University of Sheffield
PART 2
7. Civilian violent mobilization and the intensity of civil war in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch, Leiden University
8. Vigilantism as civilian protective agency: The case of autodefensas in Mexico, Moshe Ben Hamo Yeger, University of Oxford & Juan Masullo, Leiden University
9. Trajectories of civilian resistance to criminal victimization in El Salvador and Nigeria, Eduardo Moncada, Columbia University
PART 3
10. Contingent civilians: Agency and action in mass atrocity contexts, 1. Zachariah Mampilly, City University of New York & Daniel Solomon, Georgetown University
11. Civilian protection monitoring in war and ceasefire contexts: Evidence from Myanmar's Kachin and Karen States, Jana Krause, University of Oslo
12. United Nations peacekeeping and civilian protective agency, 1. Emily Paddon Rhoads, Swarthmore College & Aditi Gorur
The extraordinary actions of ordinary people: concluding reflections on civilian protective agency, Jennifer Welsh, McGill University