Uprising of Hope

Jeanne Simonelli and Duncan Earle have succeeded in their goal of sharing the Zapatista dreams with their students, anthropological fellow travelers, and what should be a wide readership with this book. En route it provides an extraordinary insight into the Zapatistas, their neighbors in the Lacondon rainforest, the governments de turno (shifting regimes), and anthropological efforts as theory and method of human lifeways. Their book may effectively change the way that ethnography is undertaken, as well as written, if their call for an activist approach to research and a collective effort in producing results is heeded. -- June Nash, from the Preface
The Zapatista rebellion changed the way anthropologists practice their science in the jungles and highlands of Chiapas, where instead of being objects of traditional research, the rebel Zapatistas are now the subject of their own story. Jeanne Simonelli and Duncan Earle are anthropologists for the Zapatista age, never imposing their constructs upon the communities they study, examining and re-examining their own motives about what they are doing, and above all, listening closely as the indigenas tell their poignant stories of how Mayan indian villages along the Mexican-Guatemalan border came to embrace the Zapatista struggle. Uprising of Hope is an important book that uplifts and transcends anthropology. -- John Ross, author, The War Against Oblivion
Earle and Simonelli make important issues accessible, and highlight the truly innovative efforts of the Zapatista movement ot resist domination from above and from outside. Their unapologetically committed scholarship seems in keeping with Gramsci's admonition to combine pessimism of the intellect with optimism of the will. * Journal Of The Royal Anthropological Institute *
Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. * CHOICE *