Courageous Resistance: The Power of Ordinary People [Paperback]

Kristina E. Thalhammer (Author), Paula L. O'Loughlin (Author), Myron Peretz Glazer (Author), Penina Migdal Glazer (Author), Sam McFarland (Author), Nathan Stoltzfus (Author), Sharon Toffey Shepela (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2007

During times of grave injustice, some individuals, groups, and organizations courageously resist maltreatment of all people, regardless of  their backgrounds.  Courageous resisters have assisted others in such locales as Nazi-controlled Europe throughout the 1930s and 40s, Argentina during the "Dirty War" of the 1970s, Rwanda in the 1990s genocide and Iraqi prisons in recent years. Using these and other case studies, this book introduces readers to the broad spectrum of courageous resistance and provides a framework for analyzing the factors that motivate and sustain opposition to human rights violations.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"With so much evil in the world, it is of great importance to see the power of goodness. This important, well-written book gives compelling, emotionally engaging examples, and provides understanding of the roots of courageous resistance to social injustice by individuals and groups. It shows how people's values, their sense of effectiveness, their connections to other individuals, groups and institutions motivate them and enable them to act when members of some group are harmed or a community is threatened. The book offers powerful guidance and inspiration to empower ourselves, join with others, and become actors. Courageous Resistance is a valuable contribution to creating a better world."

--Ervin Staub, author of The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence and The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults and Groups Help and Harm Others

 

"This book is an especially welcome text for those teaching about human rights abuses. For those who study grave injustices such as human rights abuses, there is often a sense of despair and hopelessness regarding what people can and have done done to each other. Uniquely, what this book offers is hope. Pulling together research from multiple fields and providing a needed integrated interdisciplinary approach, this book explains how and when people choose to resist injustice. Drawing on rich case studies ranging from Rwanda to Nazi Germany, it builds a compelling and theoretically informed argument for understanding how ordinary people can and do resist injustices of all types as individuals and groups and through institutions."

--Kathryn Sikkink, Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota

 

Courgeous Resistance, remarkable in so many ways, is a major contribution to peace, conflict, and nonviolence studies, focusing on strategies for peacemaking employed by 'ordinary people' in extraordinary circumstances. Equally valuable are the psychological insights the book offers toward our understanding of how individuals in similar circumstances respond differently."

--Michael True, Emeritus Professor, Assumption College, on the board of the International Peace Research Association Foundation, and Author of People Power: Fifty Peacemakers and Their Communities

 

"Courageous Resistance offers fresh confirmation that unjust rule and even violent repression can be resisted and eventually overturned, through nonviolent action by individuals and organized campaigns.  It is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of this crucial form of political and social power that all people possess."

--Jack Duvall, President, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, co-author of A Force More Powerful

About the Author

Kristina Thalhammer is Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Olaf College. She has published numerous articles on political tolerance and on opposition to repressive regimes in Argentina.
 
Paula O'Loughlin is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Her research interests include political psychology and human rights.
 
Sam McFarland is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology at Western Kentucky University.  His research interests and publications focus on ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, human rights, and the psychology of religion.  
 

Myron Peretz Glazer is Barbara Richmond Professor (Emeritus)  in the Social Science in the Department of Sociology at Smith College. 

 

Penina Migdal Glazer is Marilyn Levin Professor (Emeritus) of History at Hampshire College.  The Glazers have published extensively, their publications include the coauthored books, The Whistleblowers: Exposing Corruption in Government and Industry (1989) and Environmental Crusaders: Confronting Disaster and Mobilizing Community (1998).

 

Sharon Toffey Shepela is Professor of Psychology at Hillyer College/University of Hartford. She is a social psychologist who in a 1999 paper coined the term "courageous resistance." Her research focuses on the conditions that foster courageous resistance and on the effects of discrimination on women and their children and the public policy implications of those effects.

Nathan Stoltzfus is Associate Professor of History at Florida State University and an author or editor of four books and numerous articles, published in seven languages, including the award-winning Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany (1996).  

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (August 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403984980
• ISBN-13: 978-1403984982
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #29 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > War & Peace

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