Essays on the food industry devote special attention to technological change since 1970. Examines dairy, oil, rice, and fruit-related industries.

The Business of Leisure critically surveys a wide selection of travel practices, places, and time periods in considering the development of the hospitality industry in Latin America and the Caribbean. Considering tourism from early sojourners to contemporary dark tourism thrill seekers, contributors to The Business of Leisure examine key economic, political, social, and environmental issues. A number of eminent scholars in the field draw on original research focusing on Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. In addition to describing key aspects of industry development in a variety of settings, contributors also consider diverse ways in which histories of travel relate to larger political and cultural questions.  

Concerned with President Humala's return to the model of attracting investment for extractive industries, even if it means sacrificing socioenvironmental regulations, the Red Peruana por una Globalización con Equidad edited this volume of assessments of socioenvironmental issues and reforms such as: extractive industries and climate change; planning energy diversification; indigenous peoples' right to participation in investment decisions; sustainable fishing and agriculture; diversifying production; and alternative paths to extractivismo. The authors argue that the downturn in commodity prices should be the opportunity to move away from the extractive-export model, not to encourage more of the same. Extractivismo causes social conflicts, environmental degradation, and the "Dutch disease."

Presents a detailed overview of the human impacts that have caused the environmental crisis of today and indicate an imminent environmental collapse in the near future, if aggressive capitalist modes of thinking are not abandoned. In the fourteen chapters, the author, a renowned Brazilian historian, discusses the decline, decrease and degradation of important natural phenomena and systems such as forests, soils, biodiversity and climate, points out the devastating effects of trash and fossil fuels on the environment, and carries out a critical assessment of environmental sustainability based on capitalism.

Although its perspective is more critical, this book fits nicely with other analyses that point to the importance of the agricultural and petroleum sectors for generating foreign exchange, providing employment, and raising incomes. Considers recent changes in the petroleum, banana, and cut flower industries in Ecuador. The chapter by Korovkin on the cut flower industry is a welcome addition, as is the chapter by Martínez on recent changes in the banana industry. Carlos Larrea, who over the years has made important contributions to our understanding of poverty and income distribution in Ecuador, provides an analysis of dollarization, exports, and poverty. The final chapter looks at the health effects of these three exports.

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.

This book is an outstanding contribution to our knowledge of commercial activity in the Chilean capital. From initial excavations into the archeological remnants of commercial typologies to the mapping of contemporaneous metamalls, the text reverberates with insight and hard-won data. The author provides views of the culture of consumption as manifested in the changing locations of shops, galleries, stores, and markets that reflect both the changing behavior and habits of consumers, but also the shifting and responsive structure of the urban fabric. Many metropolitan contexts in Latin America demonstrate such evolutionary patterns. With a virtual honeycomb of perfectly selected images, photos, color maps, sketches and graphs, this is a book to relish. It deserves a prize.

This book addresses the political ecology of the Ecuadorian petro-state since the turn of the century and contextualizes state-civil society relations in contemporary Ecuador to produce an analysis of oil and Revolution in twenty-first century Latin America. Ecuador's recent history is marked by changes in state-citizen relations: the election of political firebrand, Rafael Correa; a new constitution recognizing the value of pluriculturality and nature's rights; and new rules for distributing state oil revenues. One of the most emblematic projects at this time is the Correa administration's Revolución Ciudadana, an oil-funded project of social investment and infrastructural development that claims to blaze a responsible and responsive path towards wellbeing for all Ecuadorians. The contributors to this book examine the key interventions of the recent political revolution--the investment of oil revenues into public works in Amazonia and across Ecuador; an initiative to keep oil underground; and the protection of the country's most marginalized peoples--to illustrate how new forms of citizenship are required and forged. Through a focus on Amazonia and the Waorani, this book analyzes the burdens and opportunities created by oil-financed social and environmental change, and how these alter life in Amazonian extraction sites and across Ecuador.

As regionalisation becomes an increasingly hot topic, the authors explain why regionalism has been most successful in Latin America and analyse current processes and opinions of possible future developments in the region, including the Caribbean, Central America, Brazil, and Mexico.