ABSTRACT
People are dying in the Peruvian Amazon, poisoned by the dangerous effluents of unregulated gold mining, and killed by profiteers who value profits over people and their places. The land is dying, too, pockmarked by pools of noxious chemicals. Places are manufactured at the intersection of humans, habitats, and the other-than-human beings who share them, and this place is undergoing a transformation, a Frankenstein’s monster created from the intersection of global markets and industrial interest. Knowing place from multiple historical/cultural/ethnic/ethical points of view, as well as from scientific ones, is crucially important for a full understanding—and for the educational efficacy—of places. A place is something more than the geographical space, and it is necessarily greater than mere cultural descriptors and narratives. Places are spaces with stories upon stories written into them like living palimpsests.
