What does counter-pedagogy mean today? Within the framework of governmentality studies, the book provides some answers as it takes us through critical ethnographic narratives on school life and life in the streets of Oaxaca and Mexico City. The author describes counter-pedagogy as "an action within the normative frameworks of state-funded public education where the actors enact their education in a different way," to then conclude that "government, the conduct of conducts, leads to chances for counter-pedagogies, not in spite of the state that drafts educational reforms and deploys repressive force but rather through these measures." Detailed ethnographic research carried out over years and lucid analysis allows us to understand the complexity of everyday struggles for public education waged by teachers not only in school but also in the street. The book winds between struggles in Mexico that date back to the beginning of the 20th century and meticulous current fieldwork that gathers multiple voices. It sheds light on the tragedies_like the forty-three teachers in Ayotzinapa killed by government forces_that continue to ravish Mexico and the region in general. Talking about governmentality and resistance the book, then, has a lot to say about critical pedagogical practices and the everyday struggles for public education, not only in Mexico and Latin America but_most likely_in other regions as well. -- Silvia Grinberg, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina Stephen T. Sadlier_s book puts forth a refreshing and innovative piece of narrative-inquiry research that brings up to date Oaxacan (and Mexican) teachers_ political struggles to defend public education and democratize union practices (after 30 years of neoliberal reforms), while it theoretically interrupts common understandings based on entrenched categories regarding subaltern resistance and hegemonic dominance.

Teacher-researcher collaboration contributes to the power of the stories told here; contingencies and contexts of the research process itself are woven into an ethnographic, relational account of how some rural-based teachers_ everyday activities in and out of schools and during union protests reconfigure counterpedagogical topographies, opening them up for social and cultural interrogation. -- Susan Street, Professor and Researcher of Education at CIESAS-Occidente, Mexico.