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In Civilizing Contention, Rana B. Khoury asserts that to understand civilian and refugee activism in war, we must regard the international actors and organizations that enter the scene to help. When these organizations respond to crises, they work with local actors. In so doing, they facilitate activists' participation in something like a civil society even in the depths of war. Yet as aid imposes its structures and routines, it also leaves activists unprotected from the violence of war and its aftermaths.

Khoury pursues these ideas through analysis of Syria's war that emerged from the 2011 Arab Uprisings. She traces the afterlife of a social movement that did not merely take up arms or capitulate to repression. Interviews with Syrian activists and international aid workers in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon provide insight into action among actors in the war, while original social media data offers additional evidence. Civilizing Contention deepens knowledge of civilian and refugee agency by explaining how ordinary people act in extraordinary ways in a world structured by powerful forces.