New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico

Bringing together historically and ethnographically grounded studies of the social and political life of Brazil and Mexico, this collection of essays revitalizes resistance as an area of study. Resistance studies boomed in the 1980s and then was subject to a wave of critique in the 1990s. Covering the colonial period to the present day, the case studies in this collection suggest that, even if much of that critique was justified, resistance remains a useful analytic rubric. The collection has three sections, each of which is preceded by a short introduction. A section focused on religious institutions and movements is bracketed by one featuring historical studies from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and another gathering more contemporary, ethnographically-based studies. Introducing the collection, the anthropologist John Gledhill traces the debates about resistance studies. In the conclusion, Alan Knight provides a historian’s perspective on the broader implications of the contributors’ findings. Contributors. Helga Baitenmann, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, Guillermo de la Peña, John Gledhill, Matthew Gutmann, Maria Gabriela Hita, Alan Knight, Ilka Boaventura Leite, Jean Meyer, John Monteiro, Luis Nicolau Parés, Patricia R. Pessar, Patience A. Schell, Robert Slenes, Juan Pedro Viqueira, Margarita Zárate

“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.”, “...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.”, “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."

John Gledhill is the Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics.Patience A. Schell is a Senior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City.