The Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, have often been portrayed in reductive, polarized terms; either as saintly activists or dangerous rebels. Cultural anthropologists Duncan Earle and Jeanne Simonelli, drawing on decades-long relationships and fieldwork, attained a collegiality with the Zapatistas that reveals a more complex portrait of a people struggling with self-determination on every level. Seeking a new kind of experimental ethnography, Earle & Simonelli have chronicled a social experiment characterized by resistance, autonomy and communality. Combining their own compelling narrative as participant-observers, and those of their Chiapas compadres, the authors effectively call for an activist approach to research. The result is a unique ethnography that is at once analytical and deeply personal. Uprising of Hope will be compelling reading for scholars and general readers of anthropology, social justice, ethnography, Latin American history and ethnic studies.

"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