This book builds upon Irina Carlota [Lotti] Silber's nearly 25 years of ethnographic research centered in Chalatenango, El Salvador, to follow the trajectories-geographic, temporal, storied-of several extended Salvadoran families. Traveling back and forth in time and across borders, Silber narrates the everyday unfolding of diasporic lives rich with acts of labor, love, and renewed calls for memory, truth, and accountability in El Salvador's long postwar. Through a retrospective and intimate ethnographic method that examines archives of memories and troubles the categories that have come to stand for "El Salvador" such as alarming violent numbers, Silber considers the lives of young Salvadorans who were brought up in an everyday radical politics and then migrated to the United States after more than a decade of peace and democracy. She reflects on this generation of migrants-the 1.5 insurgent generation born to forgotten former rank-and-file militants-as well as their intergenerational, transnational families to unpack the assumptions and typical ways of knowing in postwar ethnography. As the 1.5 generation sustains their radical political project across borders, circulates the products of their migrant labor through remittances, and engages in collective social care for the debilitated bodies of their loved ones, they transform and depart from expectations of the wounded postwar that offer us hope for the making of more just global futures.

This innovative volume makes a key contribution to debates around the role of the university as a space of resistance by highlighting the liberatory practices undertaken to oppose dual pressures of state repression and neoliberal reform at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua. Using a critical ethnographic approach to frame the experiences of faculty and students through vignettes, chapters present contextualized, analytical contributions from students, scholars, and university leaders to draw attention to the activism present within teaching, research, and administration while simultaneously calling attention to critical higher education and international solidarity as crucial means of maintaining academic freedom, university autonomy, oppositional knowledge production, and social outreach in higher education globally. This text will benefit researchers, students, and academics in the fields of higher education, educational policy and politics, and international and comparative education. Those interested in equality and human rights, Central America, and the themes of revolution and protest more broadly will also benefit from this volume.

This innovative volume makes a key contribution to debates around the role of the university as a space of resistance by highlighting the liberatory practices undertaken to oppose dual pressures of state repression and neoliberal reform at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua. Using a critical ethnographic approach to frame the experiences of faculty and students through vignettes, chapters present contextualized, analytical contributions from students, scholars, and university leaders to draw attention to the activism present within teaching, research, and administration while simultaneously calling attention to critical higher education and international solidarity as crucial means of maintaining academic freedom, university autonomy, oppositional knowledge production, and social outreach in higher education globally. This text will benefit researchers, students, and academics in the fields of higher education, educational policy and politics, and international and comparative education. Those interested in equality and human rights, Central America, and the themes of revolution and protest more broadly will also benefit from this volume.

In Revolutionaries on the Postwar Highway: Disillusionment in El Salvador, the author chronicles the political violence, collective trauma, and continued injustice for the people of El Salvador as they transition to peace and democracy following the twelve-year civil war between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the Salvadoran government. The book is centered largely upon twenty months of fieldwork spanning from 1993-2007 in the former war zone of Chalatenango. Following the war, this area was the focus of national and international reconstruction projects. The book is mainly structured around two central moments, the immediate postwar period of reconstruction (1993-1998), and the more recent period of emigration to the United States (2000-2007). Giving a long term view of what happens in the aftermath of a protracted war, Silber traces the lives of the rank and file members of this historic struggle for justice and reconstruction, following community members along their journey from revolutionary activists to postwar development recipients and ambivalent grassroots actors, to in many cases now undocumented migrants. Silber pays particular attention to the gendered dimensions of the clash between a revolutionary social project and the demands of postwar reconstruction and neoliberalism. She argues that the dynamics of postwar rebuilding served to remarginalize members of destroyed communities. This book will contribute to the recent wave of anthropological scholarship on political violence, providing an important case study on transitional justice and reconciliation.

This book builds upon Irina Carlota [Lotti] Silber's nearly 25 years of ethnographic research centered in Chalatenango, El Salvador, to follow the trajectories-geographic, temporal, storied-of several extended Salvadoran families. Traveling back and forth in time and across borders, Silber narrates the everyday unfolding of diasporic lives rich with acts of labor, love, and renewed calls for memory, truth, and accountability in El Salvador's long postwar. Through a retrospective and intimate ethnographic method that examines archives of memories and troubles the categories that have come to stand for "El Salvador" such as alarming violent numbers, Silber considers the lives of young Salvadorans who were brought up in an everyday radical politics and then migrated to the United States after more than a decade of peace and democracy. She reflects on this generation of migrants-the 1.5 insurgent generation born to forgotten former rank-and-file militants-as well as their intergenerational, transnational families to unpack the assumptions and typical ways of knowing in postwar ethnography. As the 1.5 generation sustains their radical political project across borders, circulates the products of their migrant labor through remittances, and engages in collective social care for the debilitated bodies of their loved ones, they transform and depart from expectations of the wounded postwar that offer us hope for the making of more just global futures.

In Revolutionaries on the Postwar Highway: Disillusionment in El Salvador, the author chronicles the political violence, collective trauma, and continued injustice for the people of El Salvador as they transition to peace and democracy following the twelve-year civil war between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the Salvadoran government. The book is centered largely upon twenty months of fieldwork spanning from 1993-2007 in the former war zone of Chalatenango. Following the war, this area was the focus of national and international reconstruction projects. The book is mainly structured around two central moments, the immediate postwar period of reconstruction (1993-1998), and the more recent period of emigration to the United States (2000-2007). Giving a long term view of what happens in the aftermath of a protracted war, Silber traces the lives of the rank and file members of this historic struggle for justice and reconstruction, following community members along their journey from revolutionary activists to postwar development recipients and ambivalent grassroots actors, to in many cases now undocumented migrants. Silber pays particular attention to the gendered dimensions of the clash between a revolutionary social project and the demands of postwar reconstruction and neoliberalism. She argues that the dynamics of postwar rebuilding served to remarginalize members of destroyed communities. This book will contribute to the recent wave of anthropological scholarship on political violence, providing an important case study on transitional justice and reconciliation.

"With this book, anthropology takes its place in the world: breaking innovative ground, creating new sensibilities, offering academic inspiration to a crisis."--Carolyn Nordstrom, professor of anthropology, University of Notre Dame "Engaged Observer includes rich ethnographic insights into the personal and social aspects of suffering and represents a significant contribution to debates on anthropological ethics and the place of advocacy in scholarship."--Richard A. Wilson, author of The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa "This engaging and compelling volume uses a wide range of case studies to suggest ways that anthropologists and other types of observers can be politically, emotionally, and personally engaged with the work they carry out."--Lynn Stephen, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon Anthropology has long been associated with an ethos of "engagement." The field's core methods and practices involve long-term interpersonal contact between researchers and their study participants, giving major research topics in the field a distinctively human face. Can research findings be authentic and objective? Are anthropologists able to use their data to aid the participants of their study, and is that aid always welcome? In Engaged Observer, Victoria Sanford and Asale Angel-Ajani bring together an international array of scholars who have been embedded in some of the most conflict-ridden and dangerous zones in the world to reflect the role and responsibility of anthropological inquiry. They explore issues of truth and objectivity, the role of the academic, the politics of memory, and the impact of race, gender, and social position on the research process. Through ethnographic case studies, they offer models for conducting engaged research and illustrate the contradictions and challenges of doing so. Victoria Sanford is an associate professor of anthropology at Lehman College, City University of New York. Asale Angel-Ajani is and assistant professor in the Gallatin School at New York University.