front cover of Beyond the Numbers
Beyond the Numbers
A Reader on Population, Consumption and the Environment
Edited by Laurie Ann Mazur; Foreword by Timothy Wirth
Island Press, 1994

Beyond the Numbers presents a thought-provoking series of essays by leading authorities on issues of population and consumption. The essays both define the poles of debate and explore common ground beyond the polarized rhetoric.

Specific chapters consider each of the broad topics addressed at the International Conference on Population and Development held in September 1994 in Cairo, Egypt. The essays are supplemented by sidebars and short articles featuring more-impassioned voices that highlight issues of interest not fully explored in the overviews.

As well as providing a sense of the difficulties involved in dealing with these issues, the essays make clear that constructive action is possible.

Topics covered include:

  • the interrelationships between population, economic growth, consumption, and development
  • the history of population and family planning efforts
  • gender equality and the empowerment of women
  • reproductive rights, reproductive health, family planning, health and mortality
[more]

logo for Duke University Press
The Business of Racism
Labor and Environment in Brazil's Racial Capitalism
Ian Carrillo
Duke University Press, 2026
In The Business of Racism, Ian Carrillo employs a case study from Brazil’s sugarcane industry to show how racial capitalism is promulgated and maintained through politics and business. As Carrillo recounts, in the mid-2000s, Brazil embarked on a state-led project to improve environmental and labor conditions in sugarcane production. He describes how, seeing increased government regulation of their worksite as a threat to their power, the elites of Brazil’s sugar-ethanol industry repurposed long-standing racial ideologies to undermine progressive institutions and elevate their own leaders. Carrillo’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork in mills and plantations, as well as interviews with federal labor regulators and sugar-ethanol industry elites in Brazil, weaves together an account of how Brazil’s labor and environmental regulations are forged through racial and class struggles at worksites and within the state. The Business of Racism contributes to ongoing sociological debates about race, development, and the environment while highlighting future pathways for achieving racial justice, labor equality, and climate sustainability.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter