Book Launch: Fighting for Andean Resources

When: Friday, December 3 at 17:00 GMT, 12:00 PET, 9:00 CST

Where: Zoom

Participants
Bret Gustafson, Washington University in St. Louis, author of Bolivia in the Age of Gas

Barbara R. Johnston, Center for Political Ecology, author of Life and Death Matters: Human Rights and the Environment at the End of the Millennium

Mark P. Dries, Southeastern Lousiana University, author of Mercurial Colonialism: Identity and Power in Colonial Huancavelica, Peru

Host
Doreen Montag, University of London, Queen Mary

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.

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Vladimir R. Gil Ramón is faculty at the Environmental Development Master’s Program and the Department of Social Sciences at the Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), as well as an adjunct associate research scientist at the Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability at Columbia University.