Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe explains how ordinary people become involved in resistance and rebellion against powerful regimes. The book provides a detailed theoretical treatment of the process that pushes and pulls individuals into risk-laden roles. It also reconstructs Lithuanian social networks of the 1940s, through extensive interviews, to illustrate and test the argument. The work conducts comparisons with several other Eastern European nations to show the breadth and depth of the approach. The book contributes to both the general literature on political violence, as well as the theoretical literature on collective action.
List of figures and tables; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Mechanisms and process; 3. Lithuania, 1940–1; 4. Rebellion in an urban community: the role of leadership and centralization; 5. The German occupation of Lithuania; 6. Post-war Lithuania; 7. More cases, more comparisons; 8. Resistance in the Perestroika period; 9. Fanatics and first actors; 10. Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.
"Resistance and Rebellion is an immensely rewarding and inspiring work." American Political Science Review
"...a good building block in development of a general approach to an important subject and contains a comprehensive bibliography." CHOICE
"...the book's contributions should be of interest to a wide audience of scholars concerned with collective action and comparative methodology." Contemporary Sociology
"This book presents an innovative attempt to examine how and why, at certain times, ordinary people decide to incur grave risks by rebelling against overwhelmingly powerful oppressors. . . . The substantive findings reported in Resistance and Rebellion should be of great relevance both to area specialists and to social movement experts. Petersen's impressive methodology, moreover, will stand as an illuminating example of research design for many researchers in positive political science and sociology across various sub-fields." Social Movement Studies