Fields of Fire: Emancipation and Resistance in Colombia

Fields of Fire: Emancipation and Resistance in Colombia explores the concept of an emancipatory network to explain high-risk activism, challenging previous studies that focus on individual characteristics. It features unique ethnographic material and interviews with workers and human rights activists, highlighting the combination of different forms of knowledge that strengthens the movement's resilience. The book integrates English and Spanish-language social movement literatures and provides detailed data on the state context of social movement action.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 15 October 2023
Publisher: Lexington Books

Fields of Fire: Emancipation and Resistance in Colombia explores the concept of an emancipatory network as a coordination of loose, discrete, and differentiated actors to understand how activists engage in high-risk activism successfully. It challenges previous studies on high-risk activism that have reached contradictory conclusions, arguing that networks, rather than individual characteristics, are associated with mobilization. The book presents unique ethnographic material from a Colombian sugarcane worker strike, including interviews with workers and human rights activists in Valle del Cauca and Bogotá, which reveal different forms of knowledge that activists bring to a social movement. It contends that the combination of these diverse forms of knowledge strengthens the movement's resilience in the face of repression. The book includes a counterfactual chapter that illustrates a lack of mobilization when the emancipatory network is absent. Ultimately, it integrates English and Spanish-language social movement literatures, revealing important theoretical insights, and provides detailed data from various sources to outline the state context of social movement action.

ISBN-13: 9781666927023