The natural wealth of the Amazon and Andes has long attracted fortune seekers, from explorers, farmers, and gold panners to multimillion-dollar mining, oil and gas, and timber operations. Modern demands for commodities have given rise to new development schemes, including hydroelectric dams, open cast mines, and industrial agricultural operations. The history of human habitation in this region is intimately tied to its rich biodiversity, and the Amazon basin is home to scores of indigenous groups, many of whom have populations so small that their cultural and physical survival is endangered. Landscapes of Inequity explores the debate over rights to and use of resources and addresses fundamental questions that inform the debate in the western Amazon basin, from the Andes Mountains to the tropical lowlands. Beginning with an examination of the divergent conceptual interpretations of environmental justice, the volume explores the issue from two interlocking perspectives: of indigenous peoples and of economic development in a global economy. The volume concludes by examining the efficacy of laws and policies concerning the environment in the region, the viability and range of judicial recourse, and future directions in the field of environmental justice.

The twenty-first century opened with a rapidly growing array of markers of human misery: endemic warfare, natural disasters, global epidemics, climate change. Behind the dismal headlines are a series of closely connected, long-term political-economic processes, often glossed as the rise of neoliberal capitalism. This phenomenon rests on the presumption that capitalist trade "liberalization" will lead inevitably to market growth and optimal social ends. But so far the results have not been positive. Focusing on the United States, the contributors to this volume analyze how the globalization of newly untrammeled capitalism has exacerbated preexisting inequalities, how the retreat of the benevolent state and the rise of the punitive, imperial state are related, how poorly privatized welfare institutions provide services, how neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies are melding, and how recurrent moral panics misrepresent class, race, gendered, and sexual realities on the ground.

By examining environmental change through the lens of conflicting social agendas, Andrew Hurley uncovers the historical roots of environmental inequality in contemporary urban America. Hurley's study focuses on the steel mill community of Gary, Indiana, a city that was sacrificed, like a thousand other American places, to industrial priorities in the decades following World War II. Although this period witnessed the emergence of a powerful environmental crusade and a resilient quest for equality and social justice among blue-collar workers and African Americans, such efforts often conflicted with the needs of industry. To secure their own interests, manufacturers and affluent white suburbanites exploited divisions of race and class, and the poor frequently found themselves trapped in deteriorating neighborhoods and exposed to dangerous levels of industrial pollution. In telling the story of Gary, Hurley reveals liberal capitalism's difficulties in reconciling concerns about social justice and quality of life with the imperatives of economic growth. He also shows that the power to mold the urban landscape was intertwined with the ability to govern social relations.

Does psychoanalysis have anything to say about the emotional landscapes of class? How can class-inclusive psychoanalytic projects, historic and contemporary, inform theory and practice? Class and psychoanalysis are unusual bedfellows, but this original book shows how much is to be gained by exploring their relationship. Joanna Ryan provides a comprehensively researched and challenging overview in which she holds the tension between the radical and progressive potential of psychoanalysis, in its unique understandings of the unconscious, with its status as a mainly expensive and exclusive profession. Class and Psychoanalysis draws on existing historical scholarship, as well as on the experiences of the author and other writers in free or low-cost projects, to show what has been learned from transposing psychoanalysis into different social contexts. The book describes how class, although descriptively present, was excluded from the founding theories of psychoanalysis, leaving a problematic conceptual legacy that the book attempts to remedy. Joanna Ryan argues for an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on modern sociological and psychosocial research to understand the injuries of class, the complexities of social mobility, and the defenses of privilege. She brings together contemporary clinical writings with her own research about class within therapy relationships to illustrate the anxieties, ambivalences and inhibitions surrounding class, and the unconsciousness with which it may be enacted. Class and Psychoanalysis breaks new ground in providing frameworks for a critical psychoanalysis that includes class. It will be of interest to anyone who wishes to think psychoanalytically about how we are intimately formed by class, or who is concerned with the inequalities of access to psychoanalytic therapies, or with the future of psychoanalysis.

Based on qualitative research among industrial workers in a region that has undergone deindustrialisation and transformation to a service-based economy, this book examines the loss of status among former manual labourers. Focus lies on their emotional experiences, nostalgic memories, hauntings from the past and attachments to their former places of work, to transformed neighbourhoods, as well as to public space. Against this background the book explores the continued importance of class as workers attempt to manage the declining recognition of their skills and a loss of power in an "established-outsider figuration". A study of the transformation of everyday life and social positions wrought by changes in the social structure, in urban landscapes and in the "structures of feeling", this examination of the dynamic of social identity will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and geography with interests in post-industrial societies, social inequality, class and social identity.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

In a global landscape, the representational practices through which inequalities gain meaning are central- both within and across national boundaries. Social Inequality & The Politics of Representation takes a fresh look at how inequalities of class, race, sexuality, gender, and nation are constructed in twenty countries on five continents. It offers both rich insight and cultural critique- yet it does not offer a universal paradigm, nor is it concerned with debates about scholarship from "the center" or "the periphery". The collection de-centers North American/European paradigms by placing scholarship from countries around the globe on equal footing. Readers will find a variety of analytical styles including frame analysis, semiotics, poststructural discourse analysis, critical discourse studies, and conversation analysis. Each chapter provides an overview of relevant cultural and historical contexts for an international audience as well as a brief introduction to relevant methodological and theoretical frameworks. Consequently, it is both a richly diverse and easily accessible collection.