From land to territory: new geographies of Amazonian struggle

This dissertation examines the relationship between new regimes of governance and resistance in the Brazilian Amazon in the contemporary context, where the progressive government that came to power with the support of anti-neoliberal social movements, continues to pursue commodity-driven, extractive development as a primary strategy of economic growth. Given that the Amazon region holds many of Brazil's natural resources, in this moment, Amazonia has once again been re-imagined as the key to Brazil's future. I sketch out the contours of contemporary strategies of and struggles over this neo-extractivism through an analysis of the issues raised by one particular project - the proposed (and ongoing) paving of the nearly 1000 kilometer stretch of the Santarém-Cuiaba highway (BR-163) that passes through Western Pará State (Brazil's second largest state). Embedded in issues of soy, timber, and cattle expansion, land zoning and property rights, indigenous, traditional, and migrant struggles, and the re-making of all of these issues by the progressive state, the BR-163 traverses, both literally and figuratively, the terrain of neo-extractivism. I argue that this neo-extractivism is made possible by a territorial re-organization that re-maps the entire region according to particular spatial, social, and development logics. This re-mapping happens in response to and overlaps already existing forms of territorial organization by traditional, indigenous, and migrant smallholder communities even as it partially incorporates their demands, namely through the granting property rights. Some Amazonian indigenous and traditional movements, however, increasingly recognize that attaining land rights within the field of the state does not meet their desires for justice or self-determination and in response are articulating new territorial strategies of struggle. I draw on ethnographic research from the Movement in Defense of Life and Culture on the Arapiuns River and the Movement in Defense of Renascer in the lower Brazilian Amazon to argue that their shift - from the demand for property and the right to economic productivity, to the demand for life and the production of subjects - is not simply the expression of a new form of discourse, but of new forms of territoriality that simultaneously invoke and transcend the categories of political economy and the state, giving rise to new tensions with previous forms of politics and political mediators.Doctor of Philosoph

KOMPOSISI PAKAN KELELAWAR FRUGIVORA DI HUTAN KOTA SRENGSENG DAN CIBUBUR BERDASARKAN ANALISIS FEKAL

Kelelawar frugivora merupakan anggota dari salah satu suku di bangsa Chiroptera yaitu, Pteropodidae. Anggota suku Pteropodiae dikenal sebagai Old world fruit bats karena beranggotakan kelelawar pemakan buah. Kelelawar frugivora diketahui sangat berperan sebagai penyebar biji. Biji tumbuhan yang berukuran kecil dapat tertelan dan disebarkan melalui fekal, biji yang disebarkan melalui fekal mendapatkan keuntunganberupa tingkat perkecambahan yang lebih tinggi. Penelitian ini penting dilakukan untuk mengetahui jenis buah yang dimanfaatkan oleh kelelawarfrugivora sebagai pakan berdasarkan analisis fekal untuk melihat biji yang telah melawati saluran pencernaan. Penelitian dilakukan pada bulan Juli – November 2020. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah deskriptif dengan teknik purposive sampling dengan 15 titik disetiaplokasi penelitian yaitu Hutan Kota Srengseng dan Cibubur. Sebanyak limajenis kelelawar frugivora dan lima jenis buah berdasarkan identifikasi biji didapatkan dalam penelitian ini. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa biji terbesar yang tertelan oleh kelelawar frugivora adalah Pohon terompet (C. peltata) dengan ukuran 0.15 mm dan biji terkecil yang tertelan adalah Kersen (M. calabura) dengan ukuran 0.01 mm. Berdasarkan uji PERMANOVA terlihat adanya perbedaan yang signifikan dalam penggunaan tumbuhan pakan diantara kelima jenis kelelawar frugivora

The Land Question in Amazonia: Cadastral Knowledge and Ignorance in Brazil’s Tenure Regularization Program

In the Brazilian Amazon, a quest˜ao fundi´aria (the land question) has been asked and answered in a variety of ways since the region was opened up tolarge-scale migration and development projects in the 1960s. The question of who is entitled to land and under what conditions is at the heart ofmost debates concerning the region’s future, but recent attempts to reform and simplify rural land tenure in Amazonia confront a history of contradictory land-use policies and a legacy of impunity. In response to economic and demographic pressures, the Brazilian state aims to combat the illicit occupation, sale, and transformation of lands. This article presents an ethnographic approach to the land question in Amazonia by studying the knowledgemaking practices associated with the Programa Terra Legal (Legal Land Program), Brazil’s effort to create a cadastral registry for rural holdings in the region. It argues that tenure regularization dedicated to securing smallholders’ rights and to instituting environmental regulations is being used by rural elites as a mechanism to accumulate land and power. By showing how a reform program gets remade in the thrall of local interests and vernacular dispositions of property, this article reveals how knowledge both illuminates and obscures subjects of governance

Territorialising movement: the politics of land occupation in Bangladesh

This paper considers the politics of land occupation in Bangladesh. Contentious politics have been conceptualised as 'societies in movement' by Raul Zibechi, defined through their attempts to disperse power through the reconfiguration of social relations between peasants, the state and capital. Drawing on the author's ethnographic engagement with peasant farmer movements in Bangladesh since 2002, the paper analyses the differential powers generated in, by and through the production of relations and connections involved in land occupations. This requires a consideration of both relational and structural understandings of contentious politics. Organisational structures and dynamics, as well as the 'resourcefulness' of social movements (e.g. their capacities to deploy material resources, skills and knowledges), enable land occupation since these are crucial in creating and maintaining the socio-material relations necessary for political activity to be prosecuted. Drawing together these insights, the paper conceptualises land occupation as a process of 'territorialising movement' articulated through three interwoven spatial practices: strategic occupation, reconfiguration of social relations and territorialisation of translocal solidarities

Amazonian Struggles for Recognition

Since the 1988 Constitution, forest peoples of Brazilian Amazonia have been struggling for territorial recognition. Yet studies of recognition in post-colonial contexts, based on cases with clear settler/indigenous distinctions, are highly critical of recognition, seeing it as a form of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism,’ a co-option of subaltern identities with limited emancipatory potential. I question these critiques by examining struggles for legal and intersubjective recognition of subaltern identity categories ‘Índio’ and ‘Agroextractivista’ and corresponding territories of the ‘Terra Indigena’ and ‘Reserva Extractivista’ on the Madeira and Tapajós Rivers in Brazilian Amazonia, where heterogeneous origins of forest peoples belie simple settler/indigenous distinctions. I engage a key question–the relationships of subaltern peoples with state institutions, and highlight a finding – the relevance of the state’s ‘proximity’ - often underestimated in the literature. I build a theory of decolonial recognition combining Axel Honneth’s idea of recognition as love, rights and solidarity with David Scott’s late-Foucauldian reworking of Frantz Fanon. Herein, the Fanonian colonized subjectivity is shaped by the negation of love, rights and solidarity, that is to say, misrecognition. The subject requires legal and intersubjective recognition in order to positively incorporate love, rights and solidarity into their ‘practices of techniques of the self.’ On the Tapajos, territorial struggles are more successful owing to a stronger sphere of legal recognition - the presence of state institutions - and a history of Church and union grassroots organisation, both supporting greater intersubjective recognition among forest peoples. On the Madeira, a much weaker sphere of legal recognition has resulted in a situation of intractable conflict around territorial struggles which have correspondingly less intersubjective recognition. I conclude that a theory of decolonial recognition is of considerable utility in elucidating the dynamics of subaltern emancipatory struggles for territory

Soybean supply chain management and sustainability : a systematic literature review

As a globally consumed agricultural product, soybeans have long been one of the most important commodities in the current international market. In this regard, the governance of the global soybean supply chain has become one of the central themes in both industry and academia. However, existing scholarly works focusing on sustainability issues and mechanisms for better governance in the soybean chain are rare. Moreover, the relationship among soybean supply chain governance mechanisms remains unclear. In this study, we conducted a systematic review of the existing literature to identify key themes or topics and to develop a conceptual framework to guide future research. Based on our inclusion criteria and by considering the Scopus database, we identified and reviewed 55 articles published between 2000 and 2019. In our analysis, four themes were identified in soybean supply chain management: drivers (e.g., land-use conflict), global value chain governance (e.g., REDD+), consequences (e.g., reduced CO2 emissions) and potential barriers (e.g., low market demand). Finally, a conceptual model was proposed that elaborates the linkage of the themes, and a research agenda was proposed to direct studies in the future

Brazil's landless movement and rights 'from below'

Recent literature has recognised the value of food sovereignty and human rights frameworks in agrarian struggles. Relatively little attention has gone toward how agrarian movements develop and apply their own rights discourses to further demands for social justice. This study considers Brazil's landless movement (MST) between 1984 and 1995, revealing three distinct rights discourses that recruited and mobilised protest by linking local issues to the movement's broader political project. The findings illustrate the value of rights, frames and ideology as analytical tools, shedding light on how movement-generated rights emerge through processes of reflexivity and in response to dynamic social-political contexts

CLASPO Field Research Reports

Latin American Studie