Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory.

Contributed research papers.

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

R. Aída Hernández Castillo synthesizes twenty-four years of research and activism among indigenous women's organizations in Latin America, offering a critical new contribution to the field of activist anthropology and for anyone interested in social justice.

A Chilean writer named Julio and his wife, Gloria, are at a low point in their lives. Constantly bickering, the pair are beset by worries about money, their writing, and their son (who may or may not be plying the oldest profession in Marrakesh). When Julio's boyhood best friend, now a famous artist, lends the couple his luxurious Madrid apartment for the summer, it is an escape for both - but in particular for Julio, who fantasizes about the garden next door and the erotic life of the lovely young aristocratic woman who inhabits it. But Julio's life - and career - unravel In Madrid: he is rebuffed by a famous literary agent, Nuria Monclus, who detests him and his novel; his son's friend from Marrakesh moves in and causes havoc; and Gloria begins to drink. In the face of pitiless adversity, Julio's talent inexorably begins to fade. The garden next door, however, is also Gloria, who has been doing some creating of her own. It is this twist that transforms Donoso's brilliant satire of the writer's life into something even greater: a carefully crafted and bitteily comic meditation on gardens, deceit, and the nature of a writer's muse.

An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy. When Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, Flint residents were repeatedly assured that the water was of the highest quality. At the switchover ceremony, the mayor and other officials performed a celebratory toast, declaring “Here's to Flint!” and downing glasses of freshly treated water. But as we now know, the water coming out of residents' taps harbored a variety of contaminants, including high levels of lead. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed “emergency managers.” Pauli distinguishes the political narrative of the water crisis from the historical and technical narratives, showing that Flint activists' emphasis on democracy helped them to overcome some of the limitations of standard environmental justice frameworks. He discusses the pro-democracy (anti–emergency manager) movement and traces the rise of the “water warriors”; describes the uncompromising activist culture that developed out of the experience of being dismissed and disparaged by officials; and examines the interplay of activism and scientific expertise. Finally, he explores efforts by activists to expand the struggle for water justice and to organize newly mobilized residents into a movement for a radically democratic Flint.