Micah McKay In an essay entitled “Nunca fue tan hermosa la basura,” Spanish philosopher José Luis Pardo makes a simple modification to the famous opening line of Karl Marx’s Capital—“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’” (41)—in a way that underlines …
Ruth E. Goldstein In Peru’s biodiverse and mineral-rich Amazonian region of Madre de Dios there exists a rush for natural resources: gold, gas, and exotic plants and animals. Triangulated with the borders of Brazil and Bolivia, this southeastern zone of Peru has long been a site for human and environmental extraction. It bears the ironic …
Rachelle Wilson The meaning and function of work within many capitalist countries around the world has transformed radically in the 21st century. According to ecofeminist Yayo Herrero, during precapitalist times work used to encompass all the life-sustaining activities that protected the multispecies collective. Such activities centered around a gamut of labors of care: care for …
Ksenija Bilbija Some twenty years ago, in 2003, a student in one of my undergraduate classes brought to my attention a strange 14-page long book that looked like something his grade school sister could have made at home (hand painted cover included!) and asked me if he could write a final class paper about it. …
Patrick Iber In the last decade or so, people around the world have been having a global debate about income and wealth inequality. Seventy years ago, there was a similar conversation that was focused on poverty. The issues of poverty and inequality are obviously related but not identical. (The economist Branko Milanovic tells a story …
Glen Close My current book project is a study of documentary films from Latin America and elsewhere that contain representations of commercial animal slaughter. I propose to read these films in the historical context of the modern industrialization and concealment of livestock farming and meat processing. Over the last two centuries, slaughter and meat processing …
Claudia Irene Calderón, Margaret Baker, Otilio Marcelino Bravo Roblero, Gaby Nathaly Castillo Valle, Carlos Humberto Ramírez Santiago Motivados por un afán de trabajar de forma recíproca con nuestros colaboradores en Guatemala decidimos organizar un intercambio de Campesino-a-Campesino (iCaC) coordinado y financiado por varios fondos de la Universidad de Wisconsin-Madison y en colaboración con miembros de …
Anika M. Rice The global spread of Covid-19 in early 2020 led to travel and market restrictions that impacted food systems across Latin America (FAO & ECLAC; Tittonell et al.). Guatemala’s nation-wide curfew and myriad restrictions on movement created a distinct economic shock, shaping this pandemic era, or ‘tiempos de pandemia.’ In a study on …