This book, paying attention to the axes of identity, strategy, and democracy, grew out of the authors' shared and growing interest in contemporary social movements and the vast theoretical literature on these movements produced during the 1980s, particularly in Latin America and Western Europe.

Offering a new political theory combining elements from the Marxist and liberal traditions, this book presents a disturbing view of the contemporary state at war with itself. This internal conflict stems from the state's having the double task of spurring on the economy and protecting the welfare and rights of all its citizens. Such conflict does not end at national boundaries but extends through the system of any imperial state. This perspective illuminates the fractures and instability within the imperial system.

This controversial book maintains that in Colombia the US has long supported a pervasive campaign of state violence directed against both armed insurgents and a wide range of unarmed progressive social forces. While the context may change from one decade to the next, the basic policies remain the same: maintain the pro-US Colombian state, protect US economic interests and preserve strategic access to oil. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world, and the largest by far in Latin America. Using extensive declassified documents, this book shows that the so-called "war on drugs", and now the new war on terror in Colombia are actually part of a long-term Colombian "war of state terror" that predates the end of the Cold War with US policy contributing directly to the human rights situation in Colombia today.

* Winner: International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Outstanding Book Award 2016 * “My father was born into war,” begins this remarkable saga in Alisse Waterston’s intimate ethnography, a story that is also twentieth-century social history. This is an anthropologist’s vivid account of her father’s journey across continents, countries, cultures, languages, generations—and wars. It is a daughter’s moving portrait of a charming, funny, wounded, and difficult man, his relationships with those he loved, and his most sacred of beliefs. And it is a scholar’s reflection on the dramatic forces of history, the experience of exile and immigration, the legacies of culture, and the enduring power of memory. This book is for Anthropology and Sociology courses in qualitative methods, ethnography, violence, migration, and ethnicity.

Discusses the religious and political context of liberation theology, the state of the Latin American economy, Marxist-Christian tensions, and the ethics of reform