Mining investment in Peru has been presented as necessary for national progress; however, it also has brought socioenvironmental costs, left unfulfilled hopes for development, and has become a principal source of confrontation and conflict. Fighting for Andean Resources focuses on the competing agendas for mining benefits and the battles over their impact on proximate communities in the recent expansion of the Peruvian mining frontier. The book complements renewed scrutiny of how globalization nurtures not solely antagonism but also negotiation and participation. Having mastered an intimate knowledge of Peru, Vladimir R. Gil Ramón insightfully documents how social technologies of power are applied through social technical protocols of accountability invoked in defense of nature and vulnerable livelihoods. Although analyses point to improvements in human well-being, a political and technical debate has yet to occur in practice that would define what such improvements would be, the best way to achieve and measure them, and how to integrate dimensions such as sustainability and equity. Many confrontations stem from frustrated expectations, environmental impacts, and the virtual absence of state apparatus in the locations where new projects emerged. This book presents a multifaceted perspective on the processes of representation, the strategies in conflicts and negotiations of development and nature management, and the underlying political actions in sites affected by mining.

Maitreya’s Distinction between Phenomena and the Nature of Phenomena distinguishes the illusory phenomenal world of saṃsāra produced by the confused dualistic mind from the ultimate reality that is mind’s true nature. The transition from the one to the other is the process of "mining for wisdom within delusion." Maitreya’s text calls this "the fundamental change," which refers to the vanishing of delusive appearances through practicing the path, thus revealing the underlying changeless nature of these appearances. In this context, the main part of the text consists of the most detailed explanation of nonconceptual wisdom—the primary driving force of the path as well as its ultimate result—in Buddhist literature. The introduction of the book discusses these two topics (fundamental change and nonconceptual wisdom) at length and shows how they are treated in a number of other Buddhist scriptures. The three translated commentaries, by Vasubandhu, the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje, and Gö Lotsāwa, as well as excerpts from all other available commentaries on Maitreya’s text, put it in the larger context of the Indian Yogācāra School and further clarify its main themes. They also show how this text is not a mere scholarly document, but an essential foundation for practicing both the sūtrayāna and the vajrayāna and thus making what it describes a living experience. The book also discusses the remaining four of the five works of Maitreya, their transmission from India to Tibet, and various views about them in the Tibetan tradition.

Sigmund Freud’s essay 'The Uncanny' is celebrating a century since publication. It is arguably his greatest and most fruitful contribution to the study of culture and the environment. Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny brings into the open neglected aspects of the uncanny in this famous essay in its centenary year and in the work of those before and after him, such as Friedrich Schelling, Walter Benjamin, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Bram Stoker. This book does so by focussing on religion, especially at a time and for a world in which some sectors of the monotheisms are in aggressive, and sometimes violent, contention against those of other monotheisms, and even against other sectors within their own monotheism. The chapter on Schelling’s uncanny argues that monotheisms come out of polytheism and makes the plea for polytheism central to the whole book. It enables rethinking the relationships between mythology and monotheistic and polytheistic religions in a culturally and politically liberatory and progressive way. Succeeding chapters consider the uncanny cyborg, the uncanny and the fictional, and the uncanny and the Commonwealth, concluding with a chapter on Taoism as a polytheistic religion. Building on the author’s previous work in Environmental Humanities and Theologies in bringing together theories of religion and the environment, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, ecocultural studies and religion.

Contains abstracts of professional and technical papers.