In this short article, Rob Nixon reflects on a visit to South Africa and the relationship of the various kinds of inequality present in societies.
This article considers the parallels between the community of Lady Selborne, a township near Pretoria, South Africa, and the neighbourhood of Cidade de Deus (City of God) in Rio de Janeiro.
This article looks at romantic and critical narratives around protected areas, and highlights how Jane Carruthers’ writing refuses to embrace either.
This article argues in favour of “audacity”: employing the practice of history fully to tell a complex story involving conservation science.
This article looks at the discovery and storming of the Americas in relation to narratives of sustainability.
The current mining “boom” in Latin America is the latest reincarnation of a colonial era business that intensified with industrialization in the nineteenth century. The continuities in the practice are as striking as the breaks are remarkable.
The expansion of ranching in South America is linked to the growth of both domestic and export market demand, as well as to the biological advantages of cattle over other types of livestock.
This article looks at the history of agrodiversity in Latin America using the example of three crop types—maize, potatoes, and coffee—where small-scale cultivators and local landraces have played a considerable role.
The urban experience in Latin America is explained less by the opposition between the countryside and the city, than by the image of a continuum—highlighting the integration of cities into rural economies, extractivist communities, and into the Latin American landscape in general.
The history of the tropical forests of Latin America and the Caribbean goes well beyond the much discussed deforestation that gathered such momentum starting in the 1960s and 70s. The extraction of timber and other resources, such as rubber, has altered the structure of some forests by depleting the species of precious woods and multiplying rubber trees. But despite efforts to nationalize these vast forested domains, their incorporation remains elusive.
