This article shows how tourism has shaped Latin American environments by constructing touristic landscapes, causing environmental impacts, and affecting environmental problem solving. The author utilizes written records and interviews to document the environmental history of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. The transformation of the Inca Trail from overgrown path to global hiking destination began in the early twentieth century. Foreign and Peruvian scientific expeditions socially constructed the trail as natural and cultural heritage. State and corporate actors sought to advance regional and national development via tourism. In Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, this took the form of archaeological restoration and tourism infrastructure to showcase Cusco’s heritage and modernity. Backpacking guidebooks and trekking operators helped internationalize the trail in the 1970s. By the late 1990s, it had become an experiential pilgrimage for thousands of hikers. For state officials and tour agencies, it had become an environmental problem. In 2000, new regulations took measures to improve the trail’s environment and produce an aesthetic touristic landscape. The new rules also regimented commerce, labor, and trail users to promote tourism development. The author suggests new ways of conceiving heritage tourism and park policy as part of development as well as conservation.

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Environmental cleanup may involve decontaminating an area affected by a radiological release, containing an oil spill, or remediating a Superfund site or brownfield. It is a key component of how environmental agencies work to protect public health and the environment. There are many publications on technical protocols for cleanup and waste disposal. Additionally, there has been much social science work on the social problems of environmental contamination. However, social science research on cleanup itself has been much more scattered across disciplines and incidents. To date, there has not been a comprehensive review of the social factors that affect cleanup processes and outcomes. Such social factors may include cultural worldviews that shape stakeholder perspectives on 'how clean is clean' and social relationships among stakeholders. This article fills this gap by providing an interdisciplinary literature review of the social science of environmental cleanup. Three principal themes emerged from the 97 articles that met selection criteria: effects on cleanup worker health, public engagement and decision-making, and societal benefits of cleaned-up sites. The review points to areas where further research is needed. For example, there is a lack of mixed methods and interdisciplinary engagement within the literature. Additionally, few articles compare cleanup situations. There is also a need for further investigation into specific social science topics such as labor practices, gender, race, and power relationships. To address these gaps, we argue for the development of a comprehensive framework or model as well as the exploration of broader questions complicating cleanups. Overall, this area of research has significant potential to benefit environmental cleanup policy and practice worldwide, while advancing social theory about people and the environment.

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This paper analyzes the material, discursive, and biophysical dimensions of fuelscapes, or energy landscapes. Ethnographic and ecological fieldwork was conducted in the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, Peru. Andean land use studies have focused on agricultural patterns such as vertical production zones. Fuelscapes are an important, energy-based means of producing and representing landscape. They show how uncultivated lands fit into livelihood strategies and reflect historic sedimentation of landscape. Fuelscapes are shaped by ecological characteristics, historic settlement patterns and property rights, gendered and intergenerational divisions in household labor, and state conservation policies. Conservation policies delimit fuelscapes to privilege live trees, but the resultant denudation of dead wood may carry implications for ecosystem health. This study elucidates how official policies intersect with household and communal resource use strategies to produce Andean fuelscapes. It provides insight into how uncultivated ecosystems fit into land use politics, practices, and representation.