1st Edition
Amazonian Geographies Emerging Identities and Landscapes
Amazonia exists in our imagination as well as on the ground. It is a mysterious and powerful construct in our psyches yet shares multiple (trans)national borders and diverse ecological and cultural landscapes. It is often presented as a seemingly homogeneous place: a lush tropical jungle teeming with exotic wildlife and plant diversity, as well as the various indigenous populations that inhabit the region. Yet, since Conquest, Amazonia has been linked to the global market and, after a long and varied history of colonization and development projects, Amazonia is peopled by many distinct cultural groups who remain largely invisible to the outside world despite their increasing integration into global markets and global politics. Millions of rubber tappers, neo-native groups, peasants, river dwellers, and urban residents continue to shape and re-shape the cultural landscape as they adapt their livelihood practices and political strategies in response to changing markets and shifting linkages with political and economic actors at local, regional, national, and international levels.
This book explores the diversity of changing identities and cultural landscapes emerging in different corners of this rapidly changing region.
This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Geography.
CH1. Introduction. J.M. Vadjunec (OSU) and Marianne Schmink (UF)
CH2. Nature, territory, citizenship, the struggle for and against governance through regional integration in South America. Sonja Pieck (Bates College).
CH3. Cinderella fruits and cultural forests in Amazonia. Nigel Smith (UF).
CH4. Redefining identities, redefining landscapes: Indegenous identity and land rights struggles in the Brazilian Amazon. Omaira Bolanos (UF/ Water Institute).
CH5. Rubber tapper citizens: Emerging institutions, policies, and rural-urban identities in Acre, Brazil. Jacqueline M. Vadjunec (OSU), Marianne Schmink (UF) and Carlos Valerio A. Gomes (Secretario de Estado de Meio Ambiente (SEMA), Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil).
CH6. Amazonian agriculturalists bound by subsistence hunting. Eric Minzenberg (Santa Monica College) and Richard Wallace (CSU-Stanislaus)
CH7. Building social visibility to reaffirm political identities: the struggles of the Babaçu Breaker Women for their traditional territories in the Amazon. Noemi M. Porro, Iran Veiga, Dalva Motta, and Luciene D. Figueiredo (Federal University of Para, Belem, Brazil).
CH8. Transboundary Political Ecology in the Amazon Borderlands. David Salisbury (University of Richmond).
CH9. Conclusion. Sussana Hecht (UCLA).
Biography
Jacqueline M. Vadjunec is an assistant professor of Geography at Oklahoma State University.
Marianne Schmink is Professor of Latin American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Florida, where she was Director of the Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) program.
