Fields of Fire

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, Louis Edgar Esparza argues that networks rather than individual characteristics are associated with mobilization. The book features unique ethnographic material of a Colombian sugarcane worker strike and includes interviews with workers and human rights activists in Valle del Cauca and Bogotá that reveal different forms of knowledge that activists bring to a social movement. It argues that the combination of these different forms of knowledge bolsters the movement’s resiliency in the face of repression. The book provides a counterfactual chapter, illustrating a lack of mobilization where the emancipatory network is absent. Ultimately, it integrates English and Spanish-language social movement literatures, revealing important theoretical insights, and is detailed with data from various sources to outline the state context of social movement action.