Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria’s War

During war, repression, exhaustion, and violence narrow the pathways for nonviolent activism on behalf of a cause or community. Yet, astonishingly, nonviolent actors often continue to participate in activism during war. In this book, I contend that to fully understand civilian and refugee nonviolent action in war, we should look toward the international actors and organizations that enter the scene to help. I show that while international aid can support, train, and reward some local activists during war, it is costly for the cadre involved. Ultimately international aid shapes local nonviolent action into something like a civil society by supporting civilian and refugees’ participation in crisis response, while also constraining their politics and collectivity. While aid “civilizes” contention, it cannot provide the protection that civil society requires and instead leaves local activists bare to the violence that unfolds during war and its aftermaths.

I developed my theoretical framework through inductive analysis of the Syrian war that emerged from the 2011 Arab Uprisings, informed by insights in sociological institutionalism, organization theory, and constructivism. It applies when international aid actors enjoy autonomy, like in areas of limited statehood, such as in border areas that have hosted humanitarian response in southern Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and other cases. Deploying process tracing methods with qualitative data collected through fieldwork in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon, I identify causal mechanisms activated by international-local interactions during war. Semi-structured and in-depth interviews and immersive observation with Syrian activists and international aid workers provide insight into action and meaning-making among actors in the war. For additional evidence, I analyze an original dataset of over 1200 public Facebook pages representing Syrian organizations in Syria, neighboring countries, and around the world. Ultimately, I seek to deepen our knowledge of civilian agency by explaining how ordinary people act in extraordinary ways in a world structured by powerful forces.