Fields of Fire

This book identifies the concept of the emancipatory network as a coordination of loose, discrete, and differentiated actors to explain how activists surmount overwhelming odds.

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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.