•  
  •  
 

International Dialogue

International Dialogue

Authors

Julie A. Pelton

Abstract

nsurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography, and the Political, edited by Jeffrey Juris and Alex Khasnabish, opens with a vignette describing an encounter between international activists and Zapatista base communities in 2006–7. The moment, and the thick description of it in the introduction, serves as an exemplar of the ethnographic approach to studying social movements advocated in this book: at once romantic, mysterious, and radical, while also rife with contradictions, struggles, and tensions. Juris and Khasnabish have gathered together a diverse collection of work on transnational activism that highlights the importance of ethnography as a set of methods largely neglected in traditional social movement research, a mode of analysis and writing, and a mechanism for creating more effective political strategies and tactics.

Share

COinS