About

Ruth Goldstein is an Assistant Professor of Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research broadly focuses on the gendered aspects of human and nonhuman health, environmental racism, and the socio-environmental consequences of transnational infrastructure projects and climate change, particularly in Latin America. Her book, 'Life in Traffic: Women, Plants, and Gold Along South America's Interoceanic Highway,' examines the intersections of race, Indigeneity, cis and trans women’s health, and earth rights in Brazil and Peru, highlighting the socio-environmental impacts of infrastructure development and climate change. Her subsequent research investigates mercury as a global pollutant, analyzing its racialized impacts on toxic body burdens and maternal/fetal health. Goldstein has contributed to courses on gender, bodies, health, race, ecology, and ecofeminism, and her scholarly work includes publications on ethnobotany, environmental politics, and the political economy of natural resources in Latin America.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Art
• Political science
• Humanities
• Geography

Selected publications

• The cactus hunters: Desire and extinction in the illicit succulent trade By Jared D.Margulies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023. 392 pp.

  American Ethnologist · 2025-06-03

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Amalgamated Histories: Tracing Quicksilver's Legacy Through Environmental and Political Bodies in Andean and Amazonian Gold Mining

  Ambix · 2023-01-02 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  This article argues that the centuries-long history of mercury-gold amalgamation is crucial to contemporary debates surrounding global mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Drawing on historical findings that examine Spanish colonial and Indigenous metallurgical knowledge as well as ethnographic and scientific research, we resituate the history of mercury amalgamation in Latin America, focusing on the Colombian Andes and the Peruvian Amazon - two regions where mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining provokes international concern. We identify the policy pitfalls caused by overlooking the untold histories of the amalgamation process along with the European contribution to global mercury emissions rooted in these histories. By critically examining the curation of presentist narratives in UNESCO's memorialisation of Almadén's mercury mines as a World Heritage Site, narratives that also underpin initiatives by the United Nations to bring about a "mercury-free world," we demonstrate how such ahistorical framings contribute to the criminalisation of artisanal and small-scale gold miners, not only in Perú and Colombia but also worldwide. Our findings present an important first step in highlighting the histories of mercury and gold in the hands of artisanal and small-scale gold miners in Latin America.

  PublisherDOI

• Life in Traffic: Riddling Field Notes on the Political Economy of “Sex” and Nature

  Cultural Anthropology · 2022-05-23 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Engaging ethnographic fieldwork and archival research conducted between 2010 and 2021 along Latin America’s Interoceanic Highway in Peru’s mineral-rich Amazonian region of Madre de Dios, this article begins with a riddle that equates the exploitation of gold mines with that of women. I follow the riddle—revised and (re)told in rain forest mines, on the highway, by sex workers and Indigenous women leaders—through its different iterations to argue that the traffic in women and the political economy of sex/gender systems are discursively and materially linked with notions of the violability of feminized “nature” and associated racializations. The traffic in women also becomes a traffic in nature when economies of natural resource extraction create the grounds for the sex industry. Traffic as a methodological and analytical framework identifies the social, political, and economic interrelations and linguistic articulations that create (im)mobility, while also promoting reverse-ability. At the same time, this approach acknowledges collisions and jams, the realities of hard endings. Drawing inspiration from subversive retellings of the riddle, the concept of traffic underscores that while discursive framings can condition material possibilities and influence human actions by normalizing exploitation, they need not cement them. RESUMEN Integrando datos etnográficos recogidos en campo e investigación de archivo realizados entre 2010 y 2021 en el ámbito de la Carretera Interoceánica Sur, enfocando en la región de Madre de Dios de la Amazonia Peruana, este articulo parte de una adivinanza que equipara las minas de oro y las mujeres. Yo sigo la adivinanza – revisada y (re)contada por trabajadoras sexuales y lideresas indígenas en las minas de la selva y en la Carretera a través de sus diferentes iteraciones para argumentar que la trata de mujeres y la economía política de los sistemas de sexo/género están discursiva y materialmente articulados con nociones de la explotación de la “naturaleza” feminizada y sus racializaciones asociadas. La trata de mujeres es también es un tráfico de «naturaleza» cuando la economía de la extracción de recursos naturales genera las condiciones para la industria sexual. El tráfico como marco metodológico y analítico identifica las interrelaciones sociales, políticas, y económicas y las articulaciones lingüísticas que crean (in)movilidad, mientras promueven la capacidad de revertir. Al mismo tiempo, este enfoque reconoce colisiones y nudos, las realidades de conclusiones inmutables. Desde las versiones subversivas (re) contadas de la adivinanza, el concepto de tráfico destaca que mientras los marcos discursivos pueden condicionar las posibilidades materiales e influenciar las acciones humanas al normalizar la explotación, ellas no deberían consolidarse.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Etnobotânicas da recusa: metodologias de engajamento com a resistência humana-implantada

  Ilha Revista de Antropologia · 2021-10-04

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Este artigo examina o momento acadêmico da "Virada Vegetal" ou o que Natasha Myers chamou "The Plant Turn" (2015) na antropologia norte-americana e filosofia. É uma oportunidade de destacar o legado e continuar contribuições de cosmologias indígenas para a teoria social, sublinhando como as pessoas dentro-e-fora do pensamento ocidental há muito pensamos em "tornar-se-com" as plantas. Considerando as ramificações disciplinares e as políticas das relações botânico-humano, quando os curandeiros e os praticantes de plantas passam, em grande parte, não citados nestes discussões, este artigo envolve vários pensadores: Audra Simpson sobre uma etnográfica recusa, Emilia Sanabria sobre a Ayahuasca e as ciências psicodélicas, Michel-Rolph Trouillot sobre o 'Savage Slot', a crítica de Zoe Todd às práticas citacionais e contínua eliminação de pensadores indígenas, esforço conjunto de Davi Kopenawa e Bruce Albert, também como o trabalho de Natasha Myers e Michael Marder. Os quadros de análise de possíveis abordagens em etnobotânicas e metodologias de recusa em respeitar a resistência humano-implantada.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Género, sexualidades y mercados sexuales en sitios extractivos de América Latina

  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de Género eBooks · 2020-01-01

  bookOpen access

  Este volumen reúne once trabajos, centrados en el estudio de experiencias generizadas en en-tornos extractivos de recursos naturales, y se di-vide en dos partes: “La movilidad del género en economías extractivistas: roles y movilidades en disputa”; y “Mercados sexuales en contexto: re-presentaciones y prácticas sexoeconómicas en cuestión”. Su propósito principal es analizar la complejidad de los modos en que se entrelazan las actividades extractivas y de género en Latinoa-mérica, y desarrollar herramientas analíticas de mayor sofisticación.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ayahuasca and Arabidopsis: The Philosopher Plant and the Scientist’s Specimen

  Ethnos · 2020-06-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Moving among the laboratory, the Brazilian Amazon, and herbaria, this article cultivates a theoretical grafting of phytocommunicable strategies that stem from human interactions with ayahuasca and Arabidopsis, two plants that appear – at least geographically – worlds apart. Ayahuasca, a psychedelic Amazonian vine, represents the ‘Philosopher Plant’, guiding imbibers to greater self-knowledge and facilitating embodiment across species divides. It also links Amazonian indigenous claims to land and political sovereignty through cultural patrimony. Arabidopsis, also known as the ‘Botanical Drosophila’ and ‘rat-plant’ for its role as an experimental organism, is a ‘scientist’s specimen’ in laboratory research. These two plants demonstrate different ways that humans think, interact and communicate with or about plants, shaping and shaped by different conceptions of ‘the human’ in relation to other organisms. I take a ‘rhizomatic’ approach to provide multiple modes of analytical entry to phytocommunicable models, arguing for a cross-pollination of ideas in fertilising futures of human-plant collaborative survival.

  PublisherDOI

• Ethnobotanies of refusal: Methodologies in respecting plant(ed)‐human resistance

  Anthropology Today · 2019-04-01 · 36 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Elaborating on conversational exchanges with a Brazilian shaman about biopiracy and interweaving scholarly literature from the ontological and ‘botanical’ turn, the author examines the disciplinary as well as the political ramifications of plant healers and practitioners – particularly indigenous ones – going largely uncited in plant‐centred discussions. In Brazil, indigenous claims for territory and political sovereignty gain traction when they are linked to cultural patrimony. Highlighting ayahuasca as an example of the way that certain plants and people can be involved in collaborative survival, the author demonstrates the entwined semiotic‐material stakes of the botanical turn within claims for traditional knowledge and territory. Her analysis frames possible ethnobotanies and methodologies of refusal in respecting plant(ed)‐human resistance.

  PublisherDOI

• Género, sexualidades y mercados sexuales en sitios extractivos de América Latina

  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de Género eBooks · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  book

  El objetivo del CIEG es producir conocimiento teórico y aplicado de alto nivel académico en el campo de los Estudios de Género, desde un enfoque interdisciplinar, para la solución de problemas complejos y la contribución con propuestas que respondan a desafíos nacionales y globales.

  PublisherDOI

• From the side of the road to the borders of the page

  Pragmatics & beyond. New series · 2017-10-17

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Latin America’s Inter-Oceanic Road runs some 5800 kilometers from Peru’s Pacific coast to Brazil’s Atlantic coast. It is Latin America’s newest and longest East-West thoroughfare, a transnational development project involving Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and international sponsors. The road changes the social, political, and economic landscape – cutting through indigenous land in the Peruvian Andes as well as the Peruvian, Brazilian, and Bolivian Amazon. It traverses the analytical and linguistic terrain upon which international governing bodies construct and maintain human rights laws. Among the many people and things traveling along the road are men searching for menial jobs and women destined for the sex-trade. The wording of evolving human rights discourse concerning trafficked persons includes as it excludes, leaving many women who cross borders living in the interstices of society. In these “zones of abandonment” ( Biehl 2005 ) or zones of “non-being” ( Fanon 1967 ) women have no documentation of their existence, may not speak (any of) the (new) country’s language(s), and more often than not, do not know how to read and write. Often, but not always, these men and women are left without a voice, that is to say, without the right words with which to articulate and protect themselves.

  PublisherDOI

• Collaborations: Envisioning an Engaged Multimodal Future for Anthropology

  2017-01-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Abraham Harold Lass

  4 shared

• David Kiremidjian

  4 shared

• Patricia Alvarez Astacio

  Brandeis University

  3 shared

• Ugo Felicia Edu

  University of California, Los Angeles

  3 shared

• Camilo León

  2 shared

• Natalia García

  2 shared

• Lisset Coba

  2 shared

• Adriana Piscitelli

  2 shared

Education

• PhD, Medical Anthropology

  University of California, Berkeley

  2015

Awards & honors

• Winner of the 2023 Cultural Horizon's Prize