Description
Book SynopsisThis edited collection by scholars of both history and anthropology re-examines the concepts of resistance and the effect of neoliberalism from the 1980s to the present day comparing Brazil and Mexico, two of the largest countries in Latin America.
Trade Review“
New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico is a fascinating collection. It gives a broad overview of the ‘resistance boom’ of the 1980s, while providing a serious critique from a more contemporary perspective. It puts scholars from different disciplines into conversation, and it introduces English-language readers to the work of Latin American scholars whose work is not as well known as it should be. This collection will be widely read, and it will stimulate debate.”—
Jeffrey Lesser, author of
A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980“This collection offers extraordinarily rich and historically and ethnographically penetrating analyses of the concept of resistance, developing more nuanced and powerful applications of the concept based on detailed case studies from Mexico and Brazil. The authors are recognized authorities and the each present original work of great interest and value. The essays are outstanding and the introduction by John Gledhill and the concluding discussion by Alan Knight are masterful summaries of the complex issues that emerge in the essays.”—
Donald Pollock, University at Buffalo, SUNY
“
New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico, constitutes a welcome assessment of a major intellectual trend in the contemporary academic world…. the chapter case studies are well suited for introducing undergraduate students to questions of interpretation in history. The volume… should be of interest to specialists regardless of discipline.” -- Alan Shane Dillingham * History: Reviews of New Books *
“...the interdisciplinary and international aspects of the project, not to mention the ambitious interinstitutional collaboration sustaining it, add refreshing and innovative qualities to the final product.” -- Clifford Welch * Hispanic American Historical Review *
“Overall,
New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico is a welcome addition to the growing literature on subaltern agency in Latin America and will provide ample material for discussions of key historiographical and theoretical issues for any graduate seminar which assigns this book." -- Matthew Rothwell * Canadian Journal of History *
“The volume offers valuable ethnographic material, as well as provocative theoretical refl ections on the resistance studies genre that surged in the 1980s and on the subsequent critiques. . . . The contributors to this volume explicitly challenge what they consider to be the romanticization of resistance, and in the process they pose important questions for scholars employing the concept." -- Richard Stahler-Sholk * Journal of Anthropological Research *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. A Case for Rethinking Resistance / John Gledhill 1
Part One: Resistance and the Creation of New Worlds 21
1. Rethinking Amerindian Resistance and Persistence in Colonial Portuguese America / John Monteiro 25
2. Rituals of Defiance: Past Resistance, Present Ambiguity / FelipeCastro Gutiérrez 44
3. Indian Resistances to the Rebellion of 1712 in Chiapas / Juan Pedro Viqueira 63
4. The "Commander of All Forests" against the "Jacobins" of Brazil: The Cabanada, 1832–1835 / Marcus J. M. de Carvalho 81
5. A "Great Arch" Descending: Manumission Rates, Subaltern Social Mobility, and the Identities of Enslaved, Freeborn, and Freed Blacks in Southeastern Brazil, 1791–1888 / Robert W. Slenes 100
Part Two: Resisting through Religion and for Religion 119
6. Millenarianism, Hegemony, and Resistance in Brazil / Patricia R. Pessar 123
7. Where Does Resistance Hide in Contemporary Candomblé? / Luis Nicolau Parés 144
8. Catholic Resistances in Revolutionary Mexico during the Religious Conflict / Jean Meyer 165
9. Gender, Resistance, and Mexico's Church-State Conflict / Patience A. Schell 184
Part Three: Rethinking Resistance in a Changing World 205
10. Tracing Resistance: Community and Ethnicity in a Peasant Organization / Margarita Zárate 221
11. Resistance, Factionalism, and Ethnogenesis in Southern Jalisco / Guillermo de la Peña 230
12. The Transhistorical, Juridical-Formal, and Post-Utopian Quilombo / Ilka Boaventura Leite 250
13. From Resistance Avenue to the Plaza of Decisions: New Urban Actors in Salvador, Bahia / Maria Gabriela Hita 269
14. Contestation in the Courts: The
Amparo as a Form of Resistance to the Cancellation of Agrarian Reform in Mexico / Helga Baitenmann 289
15. Beyond Resistance: Raising Utopias from the Dead in Mexico City and Oaxaca / Matthew Gutmann 305
Conclusion. Rethinking Histories of Resistance in Brazil and Mexico / Alan Knight 325
Bibliography 355
About the Contributors 389
Index 391
