Political ecology, critical development studies, and sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon and urban United States. Also, bee-related politics and policies. Address: Washington, DC, United States
This paper discusses strategies for salvaging biodiversity through a case study exploring the rev... more This paper discusses strategies for salvaging biodiversity through a case study exploring the revitalisation of keeping stingless bees in the Yucatan Peninsula. While once Melipona beecheii was at risk of extinction, fifteen years later the species and meliponiculture practices are thriving. The paper highlights the history of the revitalisation and emphasises two factors underpinning stingless beekeeping's resurgence: agroecology orientations in environmental stewardship and inter-generational relationships, based upon a feminist ethic of inter-species care. This case illustrates the complex interactions of indigenous-led and grassroots approaches with biodiversity losses and ecosystem protection, and advances insights into the interdependencies and complexities involved in cultivating vital inter-species relationships.
The present study concentrates on the attitudes of high school students toward active doctor-assi... more The present study concentrates on the attitudes of high school students toward active doctor-assisted suicide as described in hypothetical doctor-patient scenarios, orthogonally manipulating doctor's reaction to patient's wishes to end his/her life (whether discussed, accepted or encouraged), presence of patient's physical pain, presence of patient's emotional pain, and the gender of the hypothetical patient. Doctor-assisted suicides thoroughly discussed with the patient are judged to be more moral, acceptable, and “legal” than assisted suicides that are simply accepted by the doctor or actively encouraged by him. Significantly, this is not a distinction that is relevant in the eyes of the law. Further, the presence of both physical and emotional pain on the part of the patient make the patient death more acceptable in the eyes of high school students. This latter effect is striking, given the result of the Wooddell and Kaplan (1999–2000) study showing that patient d...
Chapter 2 traces the ideational struggles over the Brazilian Amazon from the early explorations o... more Chapter 2 traces the ideational struggles over the Brazilian Amazon from the early explorations of the region by non-indigenous explorers into the 1980s. The chapter specifically highlights the important theoretical undercurrents of how seeing the tropics and the push for modernity in Amazonia became manifested through grandiose development projects and deeply symbolic exertions of state power. This chapter situates the Amazon region as a space fraught with the tension between ecological concerns and state economic planning priorities which often take uneven, incomplete, and erratic forms. These make lasting marks on the landscapes and societal structures in that region, and ultimately provide the ideational foundation for later sustainable development articulations.
For many, the Xingu River basin continues to be a site where projections of big dreams for attain... more For many, the Xingu River basin continues to be a site where projections of big dreams for attaining wealth and opportunity simultaneously collide with cultural losses and landscape transformation. The conclusion of the book, Chapter 7, zooms back out to explore the sustainable development framework as it informs state–society relations and uneven manifestations in lived experiences of place. The conclusion also examines prospects for the transformative potential of sustainable development as a utopic vision and offers reflections on the possibilities for sustainable development discourse to become more deeply emancipatory through adopting a new metaphor, involving embroilment—as a means of better grasping the fundamental realities of the concept as it is practiced.
Chapter 4 focuses on the legacy of modernization-oriented planning processes, which are reinforce... more Chapter 4 focuses on the legacy of modernization-oriented planning processes, which are reinforced through transposition into the language and logics of sustainable development planning concerning how lands bordering the Transamazon and BR-163 highways will be protected, even as those roads are paved. The experiences of sustainable development explored in this chapter reveal how techno-managerial coordination and institutional capacity plays out on vulnerable landscapes and frequently marginalized populations, with consequences that are full of friction and imbalanced privilege. They also reveal how historically constituted relationships and understandings of modernity inform development projects, often reproducing long-standing inequalities.
Chapter 5 explores the creation of conservation areas in the region known as the Terra do Meio, a... more Chapter 5 explores the creation of conservation areas in the region known as the Terra do Meio, a process that involved the collaborations of state actors with local and international civil society groups and ultimately transformed a region of substantial isolation and lawlessness into one of the world’s largest and most important biodiversity corridors. The chapter highlights how the sustainable development forms taking shape suggest how territories of conservation are circumscribed by strategic alliances and political moments and entail different, often contradictory, ideas of place and identity that are articulated by different actors.
Sustainable development is among the foremost ideas that guide societal aspirations around the wo... more Sustainable development is among the foremost ideas that guide societal aspirations around the world. This book interrogates the concept through a critical lens, examining both its history and the trajectory of its manifestations in the Brazilian Amazon. The book argues that sustainable development is a concept that is better understood as involving embroilments and ongoing processes of contestation rather than a single end goal. The research offers historical analysis of Amazonian development from the colonial era into the discourse and praxis of sustainable development in contemporary times, and then illustrates the tensions of sustainable development plans that are experienced by people living in the areas geographically the closest to where those plans are being implemented. The history of the Brazilian Amazon is introduced to readers through focused discussions on the tensions between making grand plans for the region and the everyday practices and experiences of sustainable de...
The introductory chapter highlights the significance of studying sustainable development, introdu... more The introductory chapter highlights the significance of studying sustainable development, introducing it as a concept that significantly marks approaches to environmental protection, economic growth, and social well-being in the present day. It highlights the main arguments of the entire book, which is first that sustainable development should be thought of as an ongoing set of processes that involve embroilments, rather than a point of balanced stasis where a particular goal has been reached. Centrally, the central argument of this book is that with few exceptions, sustainable development ultimately serves to reproduce and reinforce existing inequalities and yields highly uneven social and environmental results. The socio-natures of Amazonian realities show how injections of capital and state influence produce disproportionately consolidates the power of capital and the state, even as they are contested by members of civil society. The chapter situates the research presented in the book in theoretical context, building upon notions of socio-nature from the field of geography, and drawing upon environmental governance literatures in anthropology and political science to lay the foundations for interrogating sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon.
In Chapter 6, competing visions behind sustainable development articulations are analyzed based o... more In Chapter 6, competing visions behind sustainable development articulations are analyzed based on the case study of the Belo Monte hydroelectric project, which is located along the Xingu River. The chapter reveals how the framework of sustainable development promotes the logics of state planning for the promotion of macro-economic and growth-oriented goals, while concealing the social and environmental consequences of the infrastructure under the auspices of democratic engagement. In order to structure this chapter’s exposition of what is one of the world’s most controversial dams, the discussion is organized around three central arenas, all of which contributed to the creation and perpetuation of the sustainable development narrative surrounding Belo Monte: the legal disputes, civil society activism, and global-level policies over hydroelectric dams. The chapter concludes with a critical analysis of the divergence between articulations of sustainable development in its idealized f...
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2016
This article takes a sympathetic look at the university fossil fuel divestment movement. The push... more This article takes a sympathetic look at the university fossil fuel divestment movement. The push for divestment is changing the conversation about what “sustainability” means for college campuses. It is also generating a new, more critical and politically engaged cadre of climate activists. We use a shared auto-ethnographic approach from student activists’ and professors’ perspectives to analyze the campus divestment movement based on the experience of American University’s Fossil Free AU campaign. We argue that this issue is one where sustainability politics are re-politicized as they challenge traditional power relations and conceptualizations of what environmentalism entails. The case study explores how a climate justice framework, radical perspectives, and inside/outsider strategies were used within the campaign. We argue that the campus fossil fuel divestment movement holds potential to change the university’s expressed values from complicity with fossil fuel economies toward an emergent paradigm of climate justice, stemming predominantly from student activism. The work presents new vantage points for understanding the relationship of personal experience, local campaigns of ecological resistance, and sustainability politics more broadly.
Chapter 3 focuses centrally on the host of plans and policies for sustainable development conduct... more Chapter 3 focuses centrally on the host of plans and policies for sustainable development conducted in Brazil beginning in the late 1980s, when the concept of sustainable development was introduced into the mainstream of global environmental politics. The chapter also elaborates on the contemporary major players of Amazonian sustainable development politics, focusing on the roles and historical formations of the Catholic Church, social movement groups, and activism in relation to various projects and socio-environmental struggles of the late 1980s and into contemporary times. Illustrative cases of Brazilian infrastructure and developmental priorities for the Amazon are discussed in order to illustrate the primacy of national integration and consolidation of state power—in other words, economic priorities with a strong modernization orientation—well beyond environmental protection and social equity considerations.
Many academic disciplines are presently striving to reveal and dismantle structures of domination... more Many academic disciplines are presently striving to reveal and dismantle structures of domination by working to reform and reimagine their curricula, and the ethics and values that underpin classroom settings. This trend is impelled by momentum from the Black Lives Matter movement in tandem with a worldwide call from Indigenous scholars and their allies for more equality in research and epistemological plurality. We contribute to such efforts through applying perspective and analysis concerning anti-racist and decolonized approaches to teaching environmental studies and sciences (ESS). This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of embracing a decolonized and anti-racist approach with an emphasis on courses in higher education in North America. We conclude with guidance for educators about strategies for incorporating such approaches.
This paper discusses strategies for salvaging biodiversity through a case study exploring the rev... more This paper discusses strategies for salvaging biodiversity through a case study exploring the revitalisation of keeping stingless bees in the Yucatan Peninsula. While once Melipona beecheii was at risk of extinction, fifteen years later the species and meliponiculture practices are thriving. The paper highlights the history of the revitalisation and emphasises two factors underpinning stingless beekeeping's resurgence: agroecology orientations in environmental stewardship and inter-generational relationships, based upon a feminist ethic of inter-species care. This case illustrates the complex interactions of indigenous-led and grassroots approaches with biodiversity losses and ecosystem protection, and advances insights into the interdependencies and complexities involved in cultivating vital inter-species relationships.
The present study concentrates on the attitudes of high school students toward active doctor-assi... more The present study concentrates on the attitudes of high school students toward active doctor-assisted suicide as described in hypothetical doctor-patient scenarios, orthogonally manipulating doctor's reaction to patient's wishes to end his/her life (whether discussed, accepted or encouraged), presence of patient's physical pain, presence of patient's emotional pain, and the gender of the hypothetical patient. Doctor-assisted suicides thoroughly discussed with the patient are judged to be more moral, acceptable, and “legal” than assisted suicides that are simply accepted by the doctor or actively encouraged by him. Significantly, this is not a distinction that is relevant in the eyes of the law. Further, the presence of both physical and emotional pain on the part of the patient make the patient death more acceptable in the eyes of high school students. This latter effect is striking, given the result of the Wooddell and Kaplan (1999–2000) study showing that patient d...
Chapter 2 traces the ideational struggles over the Brazilian Amazon from the early explorations o... more Chapter 2 traces the ideational struggles over the Brazilian Amazon from the early explorations of the region by non-indigenous explorers into the 1980s. The chapter specifically highlights the important theoretical undercurrents of how seeing the tropics and the push for modernity in Amazonia became manifested through grandiose development projects and deeply symbolic exertions of state power. This chapter situates the Amazon region as a space fraught with the tension between ecological concerns and state economic planning priorities which often take uneven, incomplete, and erratic forms. These make lasting marks on the landscapes and societal structures in that region, and ultimately provide the ideational foundation for later sustainable development articulations.
For many, the Xingu River basin continues to be a site where projections of big dreams for attain... more For many, the Xingu River basin continues to be a site where projections of big dreams for attaining wealth and opportunity simultaneously collide with cultural losses and landscape transformation. The conclusion of the book, Chapter 7, zooms back out to explore the sustainable development framework as it informs state–society relations and uneven manifestations in lived experiences of place. The conclusion also examines prospects for the transformative potential of sustainable development as a utopic vision and offers reflections on the possibilities for sustainable development discourse to become more deeply emancipatory through adopting a new metaphor, involving embroilment—as a means of better grasping the fundamental realities of the concept as it is practiced.
Chapter 4 focuses on the legacy of modernization-oriented planning processes, which are reinforce... more Chapter 4 focuses on the legacy of modernization-oriented planning processes, which are reinforced through transposition into the language and logics of sustainable development planning concerning how lands bordering the Transamazon and BR-163 highways will be protected, even as those roads are paved. The experiences of sustainable development explored in this chapter reveal how techno-managerial coordination and institutional capacity plays out on vulnerable landscapes and frequently marginalized populations, with consequences that are full of friction and imbalanced privilege. They also reveal how historically constituted relationships and understandings of modernity inform development projects, often reproducing long-standing inequalities.
Chapter 5 explores the creation of conservation areas in the region known as the Terra do Meio, a... more Chapter 5 explores the creation of conservation areas in the region known as the Terra do Meio, a process that involved the collaborations of state actors with local and international civil society groups and ultimately transformed a region of substantial isolation and lawlessness into one of the world’s largest and most important biodiversity corridors. The chapter highlights how the sustainable development forms taking shape suggest how territories of conservation are circumscribed by strategic alliances and political moments and entail different, often contradictory, ideas of place and identity that are articulated by different actors.
Sustainable development is among the foremost ideas that guide societal aspirations around the wo... more Sustainable development is among the foremost ideas that guide societal aspirations around the world. This book interrogates the concept through a critical lens, examining both its history and the trajectory of its manifestations in the Brazilian Amazon. The book argues that sustainable development is a concept that is better understood as involving embroilments and ongoing processes of contestation rather than a single end goal. The research offers historical analysis of Amazonian development from the colonial era into the discourse and praxis of sustainable development in contemporary times, and then illustrates the tensions of sustainable development plans that are experienced by people living in the areas geographically the closest to where those plans are being implemented. The history of the Brazilian Amazon is introduced to readers through focused discussions on the tensions between making grand plans for the region and the everyday practices and experiences of sustainable de...
The introductory chapter highlights the significance of studying sustainable development, introdu... more The introductory chapter highlights the significance of studying sustainable development, introducing it as a concept that significantly marks approaches to environmental protection, economic growth, and social well-being in the present day. It highlights the main arguments of the entire book, which is first that sustainable development should be thought of as an ongoing set of processes that involve embroilments, rather than a point of balanced stasis where a particular goal has been reached. Centrally, the central argument of this book is that with few exceptions, sustainable development ultimately serves to reproduce and reinforce existing inequalities and yields highly uneven social and environmental results. The socio-natures of Amazonian realities show how injections of capital and state influence produce disproportionately consolidates the power of capital and the state, even as they are contested by members of civil society. The chapter situates the research presented in the book in theoretical context, building upon notions of socio-nature from the field of geography, and drawing upon environmental governance literatures in anthropology and political science to lay the foundations for interrogating sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon.
In Chapter 6, competing visions behind sustainable development articulations are analyzed based o... more In Chapter 6, competing visions behind sustainable development articulations are analyzed based on the case study of the Belo Monte hydroelectric project, which is located along the Xingu River. The chapter reveals how the framework of sustainable development promotes the logics of state planning for the promotion of macro-economic and growth-oriented goals, while concealing the social and environmental consequences of the infrastructure under the auspices of democratic engagement. In order to structure this chapter’s exposition of what is one of the world’s most controversial dams, the discussion is organized around three central arenas, all of which contributed to the creation and perpetuation of the sustainable development narrative surrounding Belo Monte: the legal disputes, civil society activism, and global-level policies over hydroelectric dams. The chapter concludes with a critical analysis of the divergence between articulations of sustainable development in its idealized f...
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2016
This article takes a sympathetic look at the university fossil fuel divestment movement. The push... more This article takes a sympathetic look at the university fossil fuel divestment movement. The push for divestment is changing the conversation about what “sustainability” means for college campuses. It is also generating a new, more critical and politically engaged cadre of climate activists. We use a shared auto-ethnographic approach from student activists’ and professors’ perspectives to analyze the campus divestment movement based on the experience of American University’s Fossil Free AU campaign. We argue that this issue is one where sustainability politics are re-politicized as they challenge traditional power relations and conceptualizations of what environmentalism entails. The case study explores how a climate justice framework, radical perspectives, and inside/outsider strategies were used within the campaign. We argue that the campus fossil fuel divestment movement holds potential to change the university’s expressed values from complicity with fossil fuel economies toward an emergent paradigm of climate justice, stemming predominantly from student activism. The work presents new vantage points for understanding the relationship of personal experience, local campaigns of ecological resistance, and sustainability politics more broadly.
Chapter 3 focuses centrally on the host of plans and policies for sustainable development conduct... more Chapter 3 focuses centrally on the host of plans and policies for sustainable development conducted in Brazil beginning in the late 1980s, when the concept of sustainable development was introduced into the mainstream of global environmental politics. The chapter also elaborates on the contemporary major players of Amazonian sustainable development politics, focusing on the roles and historical formations of the Catholic Church, social movement groups, and activism in relation to various projects and socio-environmental struggles of the late 1980s and into contemporary times. Illustrative cases of Brazilian infrastructure and developmental priorities for the Amazon are discussed in order to illustrate the primacy of national integration and consolidation of state power—in other words, economic priorities with a strong modernization orientation—well beyond environmental protection and social equity considerations.
Many academic disciplines are presently striving to reveal and dismantle structures of domination... more Many academic disciplines are presently striving to reveal and dismantle structures of domination by working to reform and reimagine their curricula, and the ethics and values that underpin classroom settings. This trend is impelled by momentum from the Black Lives Matter movement in tandem with a worldwide call from Indigenous scholars and their allies for more equality in research and epistemological plurality. We contribute to such efforts through applying perspective and analysis concerning anti-racist and decolonized approaches to teaching environmental studies and sciences (ESS). This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of embracing a decolonized and anti-racist approach with an emphasis on courses in higher education in North America. We conclude with guidance for educators about strategies for incorporating such approaches.
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