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I've been doing a lot of reading lately around violent resistance, nonviolent resistance, and counterinsurgency. This involves a lot of thinking about how ordinary people respond when they don't feel safe, and how those reactions can be shaped or exploited.
Here's an annotated bibliography/suggested reading list.
accessible introductions
These books make an emotional case using history and evocative personal anecdotes. I sometimes wished for a more nuanced, scholarly approach, but they are good places to get started.
Dave Grossman, On Killing. Grossman argues that the US military has become more effective at training soldiers to kill people, and describes the psychological cost. (Depending on the edition, this book may have a strikingly racist introduction about violent video games; Grossman has been involved in militarization of US police forces, so reading this book from a peace perspective is in some ways a matter of knowing one's enemy.)
Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World. Popovic is one of the founders of Otpor!, a group that successfully pushed to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in Serbia. He writes about the techniques Otpor! used and their application in other conflicts.
between theory and practice
David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla. Kilcullen is an Australian counterinsurgency expert who advised US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He writes in a compelling way about how small-scale conflicts become intertwined with large ones, often using examples from his own work. This book focuses on Afghanistan, and is a good introduction to Kilcullen's theory of counterinsurgency.
theoretical structures
These books provide new tools for thinking about how power structures work. They are serious works of political science that incorporate detailed discussion of alternative hypotheses, lengthy footnotes, and so forth. I recommend them highly, with the caveat that my bar for dense theoretical writing is quite high (I actually think these are quite readable, but that's in comparison to, say, the historiography of late antiquity).
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works. Chenoweth and Stephan argue that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance in creating lasting political change. They construct a theoretical framework and use it to analyze multiple cases of resistance, both successful and unsuccessful.
Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Kalyvas theorizes that violence against civilians is most likely to occur in areas of "contested control", where armed groups are actively competing for power. He tests his theory using data from Greece.
further reading
Amelia Hoover Green, The Commander's Dilemma. Hoover Green is interested in measuring both lethal and non-lethal violence against civilians. The commander's dilemma is training soldiers to kill without inspiring them to indiscriminate violence. Hoover Green argues that institutionalized training can change the "repertoire" of violence that a force uses (or refrains from using) against civilians, using El Salvador as a case study.
David Kilcullen, Blood Year. What went wrong in Syria.
David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency. A collection of Kilcullen's articles. The description of his experiences as part of a peacekeeping force in East Timor is particularly interesting.
David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains. Argues that we should anticipate modern, interconnected, urban warfare where the line between institutional/state and independent actors is not clear. Case studies include Kingston (Jamaica), Mogadishu, and Bombay.
Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla. 1960s training manual for leftist insurgents.
Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell. The war in Chechnya, as experienced by ordinary people. Politkovskaya was later murdered for her reporting. Review here.
US Army Sergeants Major Academy, Long Hard Road: NCO Experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. First-person accounts by non-commissioned officers who served in a variety of roles.
Here's an annotated bibliography/suggested reading list.
accessible introductions
These books make an emotional case using history and evocative personal anecdotes. I sometimes wished for a more nuanced, scholarly approach, but they are good places to get started.
Dave Grossman, On Killing. Grossman argues that the US military has become more effective at training soldiers to kill people, and describes the psychological cost. (Depending on the edition, this book may have a strikingly racist introduction about violent video games; Grossman has been involved in militarization of US police forces, so reading this book from a peace perspective is in some ways a matter of knowing one's enemy.)
Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World. Popovic is one of the founders of Otpor!, a group that successfully pushed to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in Serbia. He writes about the techniques Otpor! used and their application in other conflicts.
between theory and practice
David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla. Kilcullen is an Australian counterinsurgency expert who advised US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He writes in a compelling way about how small-scale conflicts become intertwined with large ones, often using examples from his own work. This book focuses on Afghanistan, and is a good introduction to Kilcullen's theory of counterinsurgency.
theoretical structures
These books provide new tools for thinking about how power structures work. They are serious works of political science that incorporate detailed discussion of alternative hypotheses, lengthy footnotes, and so forth. I recommend them highly, with the caveat that my bar for dense theoretical writing is quite high (I actually think these are quite readable, but that's in comparison to, say, the historiography of late antiquity).
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works. Chenoweth and Stephan argue that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance in creating lasting political change. They construct a theoretical framework and use it to analyze multiple cases of resistance, both successful and unsuccessful.
Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Kalyvas theorizes that violence against civilians is most likely to occur in areas of "contested control", where armed groups are actively competing for power. He tests his theory using data from Greece.
further reading
Amelia Hoover Green, The Commander's Dilemma. Hoover Green is interested in measuring both lethal and non-lethal violence against civilians. The commander's dilemma is training soldiers to kill without inspiring them to indiscriminate violence. Hoover Green argues that institutionalized training can change the "repertoire" of violence that a force uses (or refrains from using) against civilians, using El Salvador as a case study.
David Kilcullen, Blood Year. What went wrong in Syria.
David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency. A collection of Kilcullen's articles. The description of his experiences as part of a peacekeeping force in East Timor is particularly interesting.
David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains. Argues that we should anticipate modern, interconnected, urban warfare where the line between institutional/state and independent actors is not clear. Case studies include Kingston (Jamaica), Mogadishu, and Bombay.
Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla. 1960s training manual for leftist insurgents.
Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell. The war in Chechnya, as experienced by ordinary people. Politkovskaya was later murdered for her reporting. Review here.
US Army Sergeants Major Academy, Long Hard Road: NCO Experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. First-person accounts by non-commissioned officers who served in a variety of roles.