Joanne Rappaport

Joanne Rappaport examines the work of a group of Colombian social scientists led by Orlando Fals Borda, who in the 1970s developed a model of "participatory action research" in which they embedded themselves into local communities to use their research in the service of social and political organizing.

Orlando Fals Borda and the Origins of Participatory Action Research

Cowards Don't Make History

Much of the scholarship on difference in colonial Spanish America has been based on the "racial" categorizations of indigeneity, Africanness, and the eighteenth-century Mexican castas system. Adopting an alternative approach to the question of difference, Joanne Rappaport examines what it meant to be mestizo (of mixed parentage) in the early colonial era. She draws on lively vignettes culled from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century archives of the New Kingdom of Granada (modern-day Colombia) to show that individuals classified as "mixed" were not members of coherent sociological groups. Rather, they slipped in and out of the mestizo category. Sometimes they were identified as mestizos, sometimes as Indians or Spaniards. In other instances, they identified themselves by attributes such as their status, the language that they spoke, or the place where they lived. The Disappearing Mestizo suggests that processes of identification in early colonial Spanish America were fluid and rooted in an epistemology entirely distinct from modern racial discourses.

Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada

The Disappearing Mestizo

A comienzos de la década de 1970, un grupo de intelectuales colombianos liderados por el innovador sociólogo Orlando Fals Borda creó un colectivo dedicado a la investigación-activista, llamado La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social. Mediante una combinación de sociología e investigación histórica con un compromiso firme con movimientos sociales de base, Fals Borda y sus colegas colaboraron con organizaciones indígenas y campesinas en diferentes regiones de Colombia. En El cobarde no hace historia, Joanne Rappaport analiza el desarrollo de la investigación-acción participativa en la Costa Caribe y explica que Fals Borda abandonó los marcos investigativos positivistas tradicionales para compartirsu autoridad como investigador con campesinos activistas. Fals Borda y sus colegas se insertaro como investigadores-activistas en laslabores de la Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC), establecieron prioridades investigativas junto con sus líderes, estudiaron la historia de las luchas campesinas y, en colaboración con investigadores campesinos, elaboraron material comprensible para la audiencia vinculada con ese sindicato. De esa forma, transformaron la investigación en una herramienta política sindical. Rappaport muestra que los conceptos fundamentales de la investigación-acción participativa, tal como fueron formulados por Fals Borda, siguen siendo importantes para científicos sociales comprometidos, así como para otros investigadores vinculados con el activismo político, tanto en América Latina como en otras regiones.

Orlando Fals Borda y los inicios de la investigaciónacción participativa

El cobarde no hace historia

Robert West

Michael Taussig

María Victoria Uribe

José María Rojas

Odile Hoffmann

Nina S. de Friedemann

Rolf Knight

Juan Friede

Enrique Jaramillo B.

Axel Rojas

Hermann Trimborn

Milcíades Chaves Chamorro

Kathleen Romoli

Germán Colmenares

Luis Duque Gómez

Víctor Daniel Bonilla S.

María Teresa Findji

Trino Morales

Segundo Bernal Villa

Myriam Jimeno Santoyo

Franz X. Faust

Ronald A. Schwarz

Charles David Collins

Jaime Arocha Rodríguez

Simeone Mancini M.

Eduardo Mejía Prado

Armando Moncayo Urrutia

Gustavo de Roux

Christian Gros

Cristina Restrepo

Luz Ángela Herrera

Antropología hecha en Colombia. Tomo III

Pensar el suroccidente

In the early 1970s, a group of Colombian intellectuals led by the pioneering sociologist Orlando Fals Borda created a research-activist collective called La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social (Circle of Research and Social Action). Combining sociological and historical research with a firm commitment to grassroots social movements, Fals Borda and his colleagues collaborated with indigenous and peasant organizations throughout Colombia. In Cowards Don't Make History Joanne Rappaport examines the development of participatory action research on the Caribbean coast, highlighting Fals Borda's rejection of traditional positivist research frameworks in favor of sharing his own authority as a researcher with peasant activists. Fals Borda and his colleagues inserted themselves as researcher-activists into the activities of the National Association of Peasant Users, coordinated research priorities with its leaders, studied the history of peasant struggles, and, in collaboration with peasant researchers, prepared accessible materials for an organizational readership, thereby transforming research into a political organizing tool. Rappaport shows how the fundamental concepts of participatory action research as they were framed by Fals Borda continue to be relevant to engaged social scientists and other researchers in Latin America and beyond.

According to legend, Cumbe ruled the Colombian community of Cumbal during the Spanish invasion. Although there is no documentation of Chief Cumbe's existence, today's Cumbales point to him as their ancestral link to Pasto ancestors. His image reappears often in popular music, theater, community organization, and militant politics as the Cumbales attempt to reinvigorate their indigenous heritage and reclaim the lands this heritage justifies. Joanne Rappaport examines the Cumbales' reappropriation of history and the resulting reinvention of tradition. She explores the ways in which personal memories are interpreted in nonverbal expression, such as ritual and material culture, as well as in oral and written communication. This novel approach to historical consciousness is grounded on a unique combination of historical and ethnographical analysis. Cumbe Reborn makes a significant contribution both to our understanding of ethnic militancy in the Americas and to the broader methodological discussion of non-western historical consciousness under colonial domination. It will attract a wide audience of anthropologists, historians, specialists in Andean ethnohistory and Latin American studies and literature, and folklore specialists interested in subaltern discourse.

An Andean Ethnography of History

Cumbe Reborn

Although only 2 percent of Colombia’s population identifies as indigenous, that figure belies the significance of the country’s indigenous movement. More than a quarter of the Colombian national territory belongs to indigenous groups, and 80 percent of the country’s mineral resources are located in native-owned lands. In this innovative ethnography, Joanne Rappaport draws on research she has conducted in Colombia over the past decade—and particularly on her collaborations with activists—to explore the country’s multifaceted indigenous movement, which, after almost 35 years, continues to press for rights to live as indigenous people in a pluralistic society that recognizes them as citizens. Focusing on the intellectuals involved in the movement, Rappaport traces the development of a distinctly indigenous modernity in Latin America—one that defies common stereotypes of separatism or a romantic return to the past. As she reveals, this emerging form of modernity is characterized by interethnic communication and the reframing of selectively appropriated Western research methodologies within indigenous philosophical frameworks. Intercultural Utopias centers on southwestern Colombia’s Cauca region, a culturally and linguistically heterogeneous area well known for its history of indigenous mobilization and its pluralist approach to ethnic politics. Rappaport interweaves the stories of individuals with an analysis of the history of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca and other indigenous organizations. She presents insights into the movement and the intercultural relationships that characterize it from the varying perspectives of regional indigenous activists, nonindigenous urban intellectuals dedicated to the fight for indigenous rights, anthropologists, local teachers, shamans, and native politicians.

Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia

Intercultural Utopias

Joanne Rappaport

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