This book forges a new approach to historical and geographical change by asking how gender arrangements and dynamics influence the evolution of institutions and environments. This new theoretical approach is applied via mixed methods and a multi-scale framework to bring together unusually diverse phenomena. Regional trends demonstrated with quantitative data include the massive incorporation of women into paid work, demographic masculinization of the countryside and feminization of cities, rapidly increasing gaps that favor women over men in education and life expectancy, and extraordinarily high levels of violence against men. Case studies in Mexico, Chile and Bolivia explore changes influenced by gender practices and expectations that involve men in different ways than women; they also highlight dissimilarities and power relations between differently positioned masculine groups. Ethnographic studies of culturally diverse arrangements, together with particular attention to subordinate versus dominant masculinities, complicate the gender binaries that circumscribe so much research and policy. Drawing attention to imbalances and conflicts generated by inappropriate models and uneven developments, the book points to opportunities for experimenting with and adapting the sociocultural institutions that govern relations among humans and between humans and their environment.

This book forges a new approach to historical and geographical change by asking how gender arrangements and dynamics influence the evolution of institutions and environments. This new theoretical approach is applied via mixed methods and a multi-scale framework to bring together unusually diverse phenomena. Regional trends demonstrated with quantitative data include the massive incorporation of women into paid work, demographic masculinization of the countryside and feminization of cities, rapidly increasing gaps that favor women over men in education and life expectancy, and extraordinarily high levels of violence against men. Case studies in Mexico, Chile and Bolivia explore changes influenced by gender practices and expectations that involve men in different ways than women; they also highlight dissimilarities and power relations between differently positioned masculine groups. Ethnographic studies of culturally diverse arrangements, together with particular attention to subordinate versus dominant masculinities, complicate the gender binaries that circumscribe so much research and policy. Drawing attention to imbalances and conflicts generated by inappropriate models and uneven developments, the book points to opportunities for experimenting with and adapting the sociocultural institutions that govern relations among humans and between humans and their environment.

"Political ecology is a strong and growing interdisciplinary field of inquiry, and this book makes a welcome and unique contribution. Susan Paulson and Lisa Gezon have put together an engaging and well-written collection that is full of fresh ideas and applications related to current theoretical debate, concepts, and methods."-Marianne Schmink, director, Tropical Conservation and Development Program, University of Florida "Political ecology and ecologists are sure to benefit from this splendid array of rigorous, richly contextualized, and far-reaching accounts that injects a masterful blend of political analysis and attention to the lifeworlds of diverse peoples worldwide into environmental studies."-Karl Zimmerer, professor and chair, Department of Geography and Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison "An ingenious mix of genealogy and the unfolding future of political ecology, bringing fresh insights to the dynamics of place, power, and people across the globe."-Dianne Rocheleau, coeditor of Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences As environmental issues become increasingly prominent in local struggles, national debates, and international policies, scholars are paying more attention to conventional politics and to more broadly defined relations of power and difference in the interactions between human groups and their biophysical environments. Such issues are at the heart of the relatively new interdisciplinary field of political ecology, forged at the intersection of political economy and cultural ecology. This volume provides a toolkit of vital concepts and a set of research models and analytic frameworks for researchers at all levels. Pointing to the entangled relationship between humans, politics, economies, and environments at the dawn of the twenty-first century, opening chapters trace rich traditions of thought and practice that inform current approaches to political ecology. The twelve case studies that follow explore sites located around the world as they describe uses of and conflicts over resources including land, water, soil, trees, biodiversity, money, knowledge, and information. Susan Paulson is the director of Latin American studies and an associate professor of anthropology at Miami University. Lisa Gezon is an associate professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the State University of West Georgia.

Territorio y genero son fenomenos historicos y geograficos: sus expresiones materiales e institucionales cambian con el tiempo y el espacio, mientras sus manifestaciones moldean la forma en que las personas perciben y actuan en cada contexto. Este libro analiza las interacciones entre los sistemas de genero y los procesos historicos en America Latina durante los ultimos 25 anos, sobre la base de varios estudios territoriales ubicados dentro de las tendencias nacionales y regionales. Propone una nueva conceptualizacion del genero como un sistema sociocultural que estructura e impregna de significado y poder las practicas y las relaciones humanas, y que influye en el desarrollo institucional y en la gestion de los recursos, todo con referencia simbolica al sexo y a la sexualidad. Con el fin de construir un acercamiento mas sistemico, el libro promueve un mayor interes por los cambios radicales que afectan a los hombres en formas diferentes que a las mujeres, asi como a los roles que juegan las normas y las expectativas masculinas en el cambio socioambiental.