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Preface --Timeline of Important Events -- Studying Jewish Resistance -- Understanding Resistance: Theoretical Underpinnings -- Fighting for Honor in the Warsaw Ghetto -- Competing Visions in the Vilna Ghetto -- Hope and Hunger in the Łódź Ghetto -- Resistance: Past, Present, and Future -- Appendix: Data Sources.

This article examines leadership and its role in the emergence of collective action with a comparison of resistance activities in two Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews rose up in armed rebellion against the Nazis twice during 1943; in contrast, Jewish activists in the Vilna Ghetto planned for similar resistance, but a sustained uprising never took place. The author argues that these different outcomes can be attributed in part to the resistance fighters' "authority work," or efforts made to establish their credibility in the eyes of each community; activists in Warsaw performed this work successfully, whereas those in Vilna did not engage in this work at all. The lack of authority work in Vilna was especially damaging because of the actions of another authoritative ghetto leader, who persuaded the community to oppose resistance efforts. The findings suggest that authority work varies across different movement settings and is particularly important in the context of uncertainty.

Most research on the role of identity in social movements treats identity as something that is constructed solely by movement participants themselves. However, participants are not the only actors involved in this identity construction. This article uses basic insights from symbolic interactionism to argue that external claims, or claims made about movement participants by those outside the movement, also shape activists' sense of identity. Using data collected during three years of fieldwork with members of a nonviolent animal rights organization, I show how the activists made use of their opponents' depictions of them -- in particular, charges that the activists were "overly emotional" & "irrational" -- when describing themselves. Specifically, I illustrate two processes by which these external claims left their mark on the activists' identity: identity disconfirmation & identity recasting. More broadly, I suggest that "bringing the outsiders in" to examinations of identity & collective action provides a more complete picture not simply of identity construction but of movement dynamics as a whole. 72 References. Adapted from the source document.