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This book offers a depth of ethnographic work that makes the following theoretical interventions: (a) to emphasize the significance of Brazil in the formation of the African Diaspora with specific attention to black women as social and political agents; (b) to highlight the political life of black communities, specifically those in urban contexts oftentimes represented as socially pathological and politically bankrupt; and (c) to offer a corrective perspective on how we think about politics by focusing on grassroots social movements in neighborhoods as key sites of struggle. The book describes in great detail the neighborhood association in Gamboa de Baixo located on the coast in the city-center of the northeastern city of Salvador. Local activists have been key in the city-wide movement for land and housing rights, and the geographic location of the neighborhood is crucial for understanding the gendered racial aspects of urban renewal and the formation of black women-led social movements. It makes connections between the local, national and international politics of race, gender and the modernization of global cities and provides an example of the kinds of resistance movements that have emerged as a result.

For two years, fieldwork was carried out in regions of Colombia where leftist guerillas, right-wing paramilitary groups, the army, and drug traffickers made their presence felt in the lives of unarmed civilians. This book tells the story of the ways in which people living in the shadow of these armed intruders use community radio, television, video, digital photography, and the Internet to shield their communities from armed violence’s negative impacts. Citizens’ media are most effective, the book posits, when they understand communication as performance rather than simply as persuasion or the transmission of information. Grassroots media that are deeply embedded in the communities they serve and responsive to local needs strengthen the ability of community members to productively react to violent incursions. The book demonstrates how citizens’ media privilege aspects of community life not hijacked by violence, providing people with the tools and the platform to forge lives for themselves and their families that are not entirely colonized by armed conflict and its effects. Ultimately, the book shows that unarmed civilian communities that have been cornered by armed conflict can use community media to repair torn social fabrics, reconstruct eroded bonds, reclaim public spaces, resolve conflict, and sow the seeds of peace and stability.