Books by 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.

Looking at what it meant to be mestizo (of mixed parentage) in early colonial Spanish America, Joanne Rappaport finds fluid identification processes rooted in an epistemology entirely distinct from modern racial discourses.

This book extends the conception of literacy beyond the written word to incorporate the visual. Focusing on the period of colonization in the Andean region the authors argue that the European cultural literacy that they imposed on the indigenous population was not just a tool for oppression and control but was used by the local people as a means to assert their own cultural identity.

Explores how participants in the indigenous movement in Cauca, Colombia - including indigenous, non-indigenous, scholars, and shamans - have helped define a new sense of Colombian nationhood

"Rappaport demonstrates how a long-oppressed people uses the available fragments of historical interpretation to create a highly politicized form of historical thought."--Jean E. Jackson, "Hispanic American Historical Review"