This book offers an innovative examination of the utopian impulse through performance as a proposition of practical engagement in the contemporary Americas. The volume compiles unique multidisciplinary and exploratory texts, applying diverse critical and artistic approaches. Its contributors reconceptualize utopia as a creative and theoretical method based on a commitment to sociopolitical transformation. Chapters are organized around notions of mapping utopias, indigenizing practices, political manifestations, and the construction of social identities.

This collection features four peer-reviewed literature reviews on biodiversity management practices in agriculture. The first chapter reviews biodiversity management practices and benefits in Conservation Agriculture (CA) systems. After looking at the importance of soil microorganisms, the chapter looks at how CA systems contribute to soil biological activity, particularly the way cover crops and rotations, with a no-till regime, can enrich soil and the multitude or organisms living in it. The second chapter synthesizes and reviews the published information on grass hedges and their soil benefits, to better understand the potential of grass hedges for managing water erosion as well as improving soil health in agricultural lands. The third chapter reviews research on ways of modifying the agricultural landscape to reverse the decline in a range of fauna and flora. The chapter also reviews the characteristics and types of field margins, as well as their role in agroecosystems. The chapter concludes with a discussion on managing field margins to promote insect biodiversity and rare arable plant populations. The final chapter considers the impact of agricultural intensification on agricultural landscapes, farming systems and biodiversity. The chapter highlights how hedgerows can contribute to the multifunctionality of agroecosystems in intensively-managed agricultural landscapes, focussing on improved pest regulation and enhanced pollination services.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo helped inaugurate the midnight movie phenomenon. Its success spawned The Holy Mountain, through interventions by John Lennon and Allen Klein. After a scandalous release and a 16-month midnight career, The Holy Mountain was relegated to the underground world of fan bootlegs for over thirty years until its limited restored release in 2007. This short study reveals how The Holy Mountain, a poetic, hilarious, and anarchist cult film by an international auteur, anchored in post-1968 critiques, is - at the same time - an archaeological capsule of the counterculture movement, a timely subversion of mystical tenets, and one of the most mysterious films in the history of world cinema.