Oliver Kaplan is an Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He was previously a postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University, New Jersey in the Woodrow Wilson School and at Stanford University, California. His research for Resisting War received the Martin Diskin Dissertation Award honorable mention from the Latin American Studies Association.

• 1. Introduction: civilian autonomy in civil war; 2. A theory of civilian decision-making in civil war; 3. The history of conflict and local autonomy in Colombia; 4. Living to tell about it: research in conflict settings; 5. How civilian organizations affect civil war violence; 6. Why some communities are more organized than others; 7. The institution of the ATCC: protection through conciliation; 8. Discovering civilian autonomy in Cundinamarca; 9. Civilian autonomy around the world; 10. Conclusions and policy implications.

'We have thousands of books and articles on how armed men threaten unarmed civilians, but very few on the important and fascinating phenomenon of how the civilians protect themselves and fight back. This compelling book fills the gap and represents an important turn in the study of violence, from how it is committed to how it is mitigated.' Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature