Overview

Fields of Fire: Emancipation and Resistance in Colombia identifies the concept of the emancipatory network as a coordination of loose, discrete, and differentiated actors to explain how activists successfully practice high-risk activism. Illustrating that previous studies on high-risk activism come to contradictory conclusions, Fields of Fire argues that networks rather than individual characteristics are associated with mobilization. This book features unique ethnographic material of a Colombian sugarcane worker strike, interviews with workers and human rights activists in Valle del Cauca and Bogotá reveal different forms of knowledge that activists bring to a social movement. Esparza argues that the combination of these different forms of knowledge bolsters the movement’s resiliency in the face of repression.

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9781666927047

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Reviews

Situated at the crossroad of social movement scholarship and Latin American Studies, a peak moment of political contention in Colombia's recent history is told with the accuracy of a social scientist, the vivid descriptions of an intrepid ethnographer and the empathy of a native son. --Gilda Zwerman, SUNY-Old Westbury This is a brilliant and entertaining study of rural Colombia, showing how invisible social networks actually work to spark political action, often suddenly and surprisingly. It combines poetic ethnographic observation with high-level theories of political action. --James M. Jasper, author of The Art of Moral Protest

Author Information

Louis Edgar Esparza is professor of sociology at California State University-Los Angeles.

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