Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:29:51.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Organizing Rebellion: Rethinking High-Risk Mobilization and Social Networks in War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2013

SARAH ELIZABETH PARKINSON*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
Sarah Elizabeth Parkinson is Assistant Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, 300 Humphrey School, 301 19th Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55455 ([email protected]).

Abstract

Research on violent mobilization broadly emphasizes who joins rebellions and why, but neglects to explain the timing or nature of participation. Support and logistical apparatuses play critical roles in sustaining armed conflict, but scholars have not explained role differentiation within militant organizations or accounted for the structures, processes, and practices that produce discrete categories of fighters, soldiers, and staff. Extant theories consequently conflate mobilization and participation in rebel organizations with frontline combat. This article argues that, to understand wartime mobilization and organizational resilience, scholars must situate militants in their organizational and social context. By tracing the emergence and evolution of female-dominated clandestine supply, financial, and information networks in 1980s Lebanon, it demonstrates that mobilization pathways and organizational subdivisions emerge from the systematic overlap between formal militant hierarchies and quotidian social networks. In doing so, this article elucidates the nuanced relationship between social structure, militant organizations, and sustained rebellion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abourahme, Dahna. 2010. Mamlaka al-Nisā’ ‘Ayn al-Hilwa (The Kingdom of Women, Ein el Hilweh). ARCPA/al-Jana. Documentary.Google Scholar
Alison, Miranda. 2003. “Cogs in the Wheel? Women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.” Civil Wars 6 (4): 3754.Google Scholar
Alison, Miranda. 2004a. Women and Political Violence: Female Combatants in Ethno-National Conflict. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Alison, Miranda. 2004b. “Women as Agents of Political Violence: Gendering Security.” Security Dialogue 35 (4): 447–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amrane-Minne, Danièle Djamila. 1992. “Les combattantes de la guerre d'Algérie.” Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps 26 (1): 5862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amrane-Minne, Danièle Djamila. 1999. “Women and Politics in Algeria from the War of Independence to Our Day.” Research in African Literatures 30 (3): 6277.Google Scholar
Amrane-Minne, Danièle Djamila. 2004. Des Femmes dans la Guerre d'Algérie. Algiers: Editions Dis. Ibn Khaldoun.Google Scholar
Ang, Swee Chai. 1989. From Beirut to Jerusalem. London: Grafton Books.Google Scholar
Barkey, Karen, and Van Rossem, Ronan. 1997. “Networks of Contention: Villages and Regional Structure in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire.” American Journal of Sociology 102 (5): 1345–82.Google Scholar
Bayard de Volo, Lorraine, and Schatz, Edward. 2004. “From the Inside Out: Ethnographic Methods in Political Research.” PS: Political Science & Politics 37 (2): 267–71.Google Scholar
Bernal, Victoria. 2001. “From Warriors to Wives: Contradictions of Liberation and Development in Eritrea.” Northeast African Studies 8 (3): 129–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burt, Ronald S. 2005. Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Centola, Damon, and Macy, Michael. 2007. “Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 113 (3): 702–34.Google Scholar
Central Bureau of Statistics. 1981. Demographic Characteristics of the Palestinian Arabs in Libanon's Camps. Damascus: Palestine Liberation Organization, Economic Department.Google Scholar
Coulter, Chris. 2009. Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women's Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Denkner, Amnon. 1983. “Israel in Lebanon.” Journal of Palestine Studies 12 (2): 179–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisk, Robert. 2002. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. 4th ed. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books.Google Scholar
Fujii, Lee Ann. 2010. “Shades of Truth and Lies: Interpreting Testimonies of War and Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 47 (2): 231–41.Google Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Bennett, Andrew. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gerring, John. 2001. Social Science Methodology: A Critical Framework. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerring, John. 2004. “What is a Case Study and What is it Good For?American Political Science Review 98 (2): 341–54.Google Scholar
Giannou, Chris. 1982. “Eyewitness: The Battle for South Lebanon. Interview with Dr. Chris Giannou.” Journal of Palestine Studies 11/12: 6984.Google Scholar
Giannou, Chris. 1990. Besieged: A Doctor's Story of Life and Death in Beirut. Ithaca, NY: Olive Branch Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff. 1997. “The Libidinal Constitution of a High-Risk Social Movement: Affectual Ties and Solidarity in the Huk Rebellion, 1946 to 1954.” American Sociological Review 62 (1): 5369.Google Scholar
Gould, Roger V. 1993. “Collective Action and Network Structure.” American Sociological Review 58 (2): 182–96.Google Scholar
Gould, Roger V. 1995. Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Roger V. 1996. “Patron-Client Ties, State Centralization, and the Whiskey Rebellion.” American Journal of Sociology 102 (2): 400–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–80.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1978. “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior.” American Journal of Sociology 83 (6): 1420–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91 (3): 481510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurr, Ted Robert. 1971. Why Men Rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
“Heroes of the Tripoli Underground.” 2011. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16001247 (Accessed December 12, 2011).Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver. 2012. “Syrian Women Risk Lives to Smuggle Aid to Dissidents.” Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/us-syria-smuggling-idUSBRE83O0TA20120425 (Accessed January 24, 2013).Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 2000. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 2001. The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Macartan, and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2006. “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War.” American Political Science Review 100 (3): 429–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, Macartan, and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2008. “Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (2): 436–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jamal, Amaney Ahmed. 2009. Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, Patrick. 2008. “The Geography of Insurgent Organization and Its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone.” Security Studies 17 (1): 107–37.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 1999. “Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria.” Rationality and Society 11 (3): 243–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawar, Amal. 1996. Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement. SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Khalidi, Rashid. 1985. Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking during the 1982 War. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Khalili, Laleh. 2007. Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalili, Laleh. 2008. “Incarceration and the State of Exception: Al-Ansar Mass Detention Camp in Lebanon.” In Thinking Palestine, ed. Lentin, Ronit. London: Zed Books, 101–15.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Adria. 2010. “Triggering Nationalist Violence: Competition and Conflict in Uprisings against Colonial Rule.” International Security 35 (2): 88122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Tanya. 2004. Guns and Guerilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation Struggle. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Mampilly, Zachariah Cherian. 2011. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Marwell, Gerald, Oliver, Pamela E., and Prahl, Ralph. 1988. “Social Networks and Collective Action: A Theory of the Critical Mass. III.” American Journal of Sociology 94 (3): 502–34.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1986. “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer.” American Journal of Sociology 92 (2): 6490.Google Scholar
Pachirat, Timothy. 2009. “The Political in Political Ethnography: Dispatches from the Kill Floor.” In Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power, ed. Schatz, Edward. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 143–62.Google Scholar
Padgett, John F., and McLean, Paul D.. 2006. “Organizational Invention and Elite Transformation: The Birth of Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence.” American Journal of Sociology 111 (5): 14631568.Google Scholar
Padgett, John F., and Powell, Walter W.. 2012. The Emergence of Organizations and Markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pearlman, Wendy. 2011. Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peteet, Julie Marie. 1991. Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Petersen, Roger D. 2001. Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Petersen, Roger D. 2002. Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Picard, Elizabeth. 2002. Lebanon: A Shattered Country. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Pool, David. 2001. From Guerrillas to Government: Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Rubenberg, Cheryl A. 1983. “The Civilian Infrastructure of the Palestine Liberation Organization: An Analysis of the PLO in Lebanon until June 1982.” Journal of Palestine Studies 12 (3): 5478.Google Scholar
Ryan, Louise. 1999. “‘Furies’ and ‘Die-hards’: Women and Irish Republicanism in the Early Twentieth Century.” Gender & History 11 (2): 256–75.Google Scholar
Sa'id Ibrahim, Fawziyya. 1983. “al-khsā'is al-dīmūghrāfiyya wa-l-ijtimādiyya wa-l-iqtisādiyya lil-falastīniyyīn fī mukhayyamāt lubnān wa sūriyya (Demographic, Social, and Economic Characteristics of the Palestinians in the Camps of Lebanon and Syria).” Lebanese University.Google Scholar
Sayigh, Rosemary. 1979. Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Sayigh, Rosemary. 1998. “Gender, Sexuality, and Class in National Narratives: Palestinian Camp Women Tell Their Lives.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 19 (2): 166–85.Google Scholar
Sayigh, Yezid. 1997. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schiff, Ze'ev, and Ya'ari, Ehud. 1984. Israel's Lebanon War. New York: Simon and Shuster.Google Scholar
Schwedler, Jillian. 2007. Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Siegel, David A. 2009. “Social Networks and Collective Action.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (1): 122–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinno, Abdulkader H. 2010. Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Staniland, Paul. 2012. “Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources, and Rebellion in South Asia.” International Security 37 (1): 142–77.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Team International Engineering and Management Consultants (TIEMC). 1981. Appendix VI: PLO”s Affiliated Institutions. Progress Report II Presented to Economic Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). Beirut: TIEMC.Google Scholar
“The Country Formerly Known as Syria.” 2013. The Economist 406 (8824): 2526.Google Scholar
UNRWA Public Information Office. 2011. Palestine Refugees, UNRWA Lebanon: A Special Case. Beirut: UNRWA.Google Scholar
Van Creveld, Martin. 1977. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Verkaaik, Oskar. 2004. Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Viterna, Jocelyn S. 2006. “Pulled, Pushed, and Persuaded: Explaining Women's Mobilization into the Salvadoran Guerrilla Army.” American Journal of Sociology 112 (1): 145.Google Scholar
Wasserman, Stanley, and Faust, Katherine. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 1999. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2002. “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 713–28.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2008. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2009. “Ethnography as Interpretive Enterprise.” In Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power, ed. Schatz, Edward. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 7594.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2010. “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science.” Annual Review of Political Science 13 (1): 255–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2007. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wickham-Crowley, Timothy. 1992. Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Amrit. 1991. The Challenge Road: Women and the Eritrean Revolution. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2008. “The Social Processes of Civil War: The Wartime Transformation of Social Networks.” Annual Review of Political Science 11: 539–61.Google Scholar
Yanow, Dvora. 2012. “Organizational Ethnography between Toolbox and World-Making.” Journal of Organizational Ethnography 1 (1): 3142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yermiya, Dov. 1984. My War Diary: Israel in Lebanon. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.