Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador

by Elisabeth Jean Wood

• ISBN13: 9780521811750
• ISBN10: 0521811759
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Widespread support among rural people for the leftist insurgency during the civil war in El Salvador challenges conventional interpretations of collective action. Those who supplied tortillas, information, and other aid to guerillas took mortal risks and yet stood to gain no more than those who did not. Wood's rich tapestry of explanation is based on oral histories gathered from peasants who supported the insurgency and those who did not over a period of many years during and immediately following the war, and interviews with military commanders of both sides. Peasants supported the FMLN, Wood found, not for any material gain that was contingent on their participation, but rather for moral and emotional reasons. Wood's alternative model places emotions and morals, as well as conventional interests, at the heart of collective action.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables	viii
Preface and Acknowledgments	xi
List of Abbreviations	xvii
1 THE PUZZLE OF INSURGENT COLLECTIVE ACTION	1	(30)
2 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN THE SHADOW OF CIVIL WAR	31	(20)
3 REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES OF CLASS AND CITIZENSHIP	51	(36)
4 FROM POLITICAL MOBILIZATION TO ARMED INSURGENCY	87	(34)
5 THE POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF DUAL SOVEREIGNTY	121	(39)
6 THE REEMERGENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY	160	(33)
7 CAMPESINO ACCOUNTS OF INSURGENT PARTICIPATION	193	(33)
8 EXPLAINING INSURGENT COLLECTIVE ACTION	226	(31)
Epilogue: Legacies of an Agrarian Insurgency	257	(10)
Appendix: A Model of High-Risk Collective Action by Subordinate Social Actors	267	(8)
Chronology of El Salvador's Civil War	275	(4)
References	279	(18)
Index	297