New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico

“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

“The wealth of the ethnographic data will certainly be of use for future scholars and interested individuals, and the volume as a whole presents an important addition to contemporary studies of politics and power – regardless of whether one will agree with Gledhill or with Sahlins.”
- Aleksandar Boškovic, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“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

“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

 "A significant contribution to the debate on resistance through a number of case studies in Brazil and Mexico." - Steven Wenz, AmeriQuests

"A terrific collection of works by a broad array of scholars working in different fields and in universities on different continents. And, although it is indeed quite specialized, the work is accessible and can be assigned to advanced undergraduates. . . . The book as a book is certainly worthwhile, and the individual essays can each be read as challenging, interesting, and discrete studies of some aspect of resistance in Brazil or Mexico."  - Joel Wolfe, EIAL