Amazonian peasant livelihood differentiation as mutuality-market dialectics

ABSTRACT

Economistic approaches to the study of peasant livelihoods have considerable academic and policy influence, yet, we argue, perpetuate a partial misunderstanding – often reducing peasant livelihood to the management of capital assets by rational actors. In this paper, we propose to revitalize the original heterodox spirit of the sustainable livelihoods framework by drawing on Stephen Gudeman’s work on the dialectic between use values and mutuality on the one hand, and exchange values and the market on the other. We use this approach to examine how historically divergent mutuality-market dialectics in different Amazonian regions have shaped greater prominence of either extractivism or agriculture in current livelihoods. We conclude that an approach centered on the mutuality-market dialectic is of considerable utility in revealing the role of economic histories in shaping differential peasant livelihoods in tropical forests. More generally, it has considerable potential to contribute to a much-needed re-pluralization of approaches to livelihood in academia and policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental policy
• forest inhabitants
• political economy
• labor relations
• tropical forest agro-extractivism
• heterodox economics
• caboclo
• riberinho

Acknowledgements

We thank two anonyous reviewers for their comments which helped us signficantly improve an earlier version of the manuscript, and Jun and the JPS team for their efficient handling of the editorial process. James Fraser thanks the Leverhulme Trust [grant number F/00 230/W] and CNPq [grant number EXC 022/05]. Angela Steward thanks the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Institute (MCTI) for institutional support during writing. Luke Parry thanks the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ESRC; ES/K010018/1] and CNPq [grant number CsF PVE 313742/2013â 8].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 REDD+ is a policy framework for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing countries, along with the conservation and sustainable management of forests, and forest carbon stock enhancement. PES stands for payments for ecosystem services. These are market-based mechanisms to pay landowners for actions to manage ecological services provided by their land or watersheds. PES are, then, similar to subsidies or taxes, and seek to encourage the conservation of natural resources.

2 Over the past few decades agriculture has declined, from a livelihoods and economic perspective, due to the emergence of off-farm income streams such as retirement, bolsa familia and professional employment (i.e. teachers, health agents).

3 In critical theory and post-colonial studies, subaltern refers to the populations outside of the hegemonic power structure. The point of using it is that it works as a meta-category embracing marginalized indigenous, peasant, afro-descendant, mestizo, campesino etc. groups without conceptually privileging any of them.

4 This followed the decimation of the Indigenous chiefdoms of Amazonia by colonial epidemics; from the early 1600s, Jesuits founded missions along the major rivers (Solimões, Negro and Amazon) in Central Amazonia (Sweet 1974). Missions ran on a system of forced labor, with turtle oil, spices, hardwoods, vegetable oils and cocoa beans gathered by Native Amazonians and the emergent Amazonian peasantry. From 1758 to 1798, around 60 Portuguese missions in Amazonia were placed under the control of civil administrators, under a new administration known as the Directorate.

5 This system defined the production of rubber (Hevea spp.) Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), rosewood (Aniba roseiodora), sorva, jute (Corchorus capsularis) and balata (Manilkara spp.), each of which experienced a boom during the last 150 years.

6 Conditions in the Western Amazonia, notably those in the Brazilian State of Acre, and in Peru and Colombia were usually harsher than in Eastern Amazonia (Hecht 2013; Taussig 1987; Davis 1997). In the west, bosses monopolized the supply of manufactured goods which were sold in advance at highly inflated prices, and manioc agriculture was forbidden, thus ensuring continued indebtedness and dominance over workers, but also preventing the very formation of the community sphere, given the centrality of manioc farming to community formation.

7 Participant observation and open-ended life-history interviews were conducted with households (normally with both male and female adult family heads together); on the lower Negro River by JAF and TMC (n = 25, during March–June 2006) and on the middle Madeira River by JAF (n = 25, during September 2006–January 2007) (Figure 1).

8 The Abacaxis River is not black-water in the same sense that the Negro and its upper tributaries are. Black-water rivers in white-water regions feature greater concentrations of extractive resources, and more productive fisheries, than black-water rivers in black-water regions do.

9 The kinds of livelihoods in which people engage are therefore shaped by their particular agro-ecological trajectories. Many caboclos from the lower Negro River and its tributaries engaged more in extractive livelihoods (timber, fishing, extraction of forest products). Oral histories from the north and south banks of the lower Negro River reveal that the mainstay of the regional economy over the last half-century or more has been timber. The long-term residents of the region (related by kinship but not as closely as the caboclos of the middle Madeira River, and not co-resident) are those most involved in the (illegal) timber trade. Locals in community Sobrado suggest that this is because they have been involved in timber for so long, and therefore have the connections and knowledge to avoid getting caught by IBAMA (the Brazilian Environmental Protection Agency). Timber has long been a mainstay of the local economy owing to the massive demand for wood for boat-building and construction in the city of Manaus, which has expanded dramatically over the last 50 years. Elsewhere, on the Apuaú River, there has been serious conflict between local residents and IBAMA over rights to timber, fishing and hunting on the river. This conflict cumulated in the expulsion of many residents and the installation of a permanent IBAMA presence at the mouth of the river to monitor traffic.

10 Other factors that have contributed to this include the shifting of the population of Velho Airão (a now abandoned town on the middle Negro) to Novo Airão, and the expulsion of inhabitants of the River Jaú with the creation of the National Park in 1980 and the resulting disintegration of communities along the Unini River, which caused significant migration to the lower Negro, where people hoped to find better access to markets, health and education (Table 1). The communities and kinship ties that existed or had been expanding in the source regions were disrupted by these processes.

11 Some of those who fish often go away on trips of up to a month. There is also an economic influence of the ornamental fish and sports-fishing industries, particularly in the municipality of Barcelos, further upstream.

12 Copaiba oil is sold and used for several purposes including as a treatment for skin problems or stomach problems, or as a mosquito repellent, and is also a biofuel.

13 One key exception to this trend is found amongst indigenous families from the upper Negro River, that today inhabit the North Bank of the lower Negro River, west of Manaus. These families were attracted to settle this area during the crisis of extractivism, and urbanization of Manaus, starting around 60 years ago. Some families occupied areas of forest, where they continued with their agricultural traditions, organized in both nuclear and extended families. These families have reconstructed networks for the distribution of crops and landraces, including both indigenous and caboclo families (Cardoso 2010). Today these families work almost exclusively with agriculture. In contrast to this, non-indigenous families that originate in areas whose history has been characterized by extractivism are today heavily engaged in the timber trade (70 percent of indigenous families resident on the Cuieiras engage in manioc agriculture, while amongst non-indigenous people this figure drops to 40 percent (Cardoso 2010). Hence, on the lower Negro those who are farming tend to come from an agricultural trajectory, whether migrant peasant farmers from the Solimões River or indigenous people from the upper Negro River.

14 The ‘discovery’ of the Negro River by the Europeans occurred during the first explorations of the River Amazon, during the first half of the seventeenth century. The first colonizers during this period – ransom troops and missionaries financed by the colonial government – captured Native Amazonian inhabitants and forced them to extract forest products and wood (Leonardi 1999; Guzmán 2009). From 1755, with the creation of the Captaincy of São José do Rio Negro, the exploitation of Native Amazonas (brought down from the middle and upper Negro) intensified with the establishment of towns and villages where they were forced to work on plantations, in extractivism, construction and domestic service. This pattern of exploitation, associated with epidemics, food shortages and abuse, caused flight and revolt, and kept the lower Negro ‘empty’ of people, as the naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira noted around 1780. There were nine directorate settlements along the River Negro, the most important being located at Barcelos. During this period there was a strong Native Amazonian presence, but by the early nineteenth century they had been significantly depleted by disease (Leonardi 1999). Many Indigenous and Caboclos participated in the Cabanagem revolt.

15 Whilst extractivism prevailed on the lower and middle Negro River, its upper reaches are an important exception to this: they have remained the domain of a multi-ethnic population of Native Amazonian groups whose economic activity is based on slash-and-burn agriculture, fishing and the production of artisanal goods (Hugh-Jones 1979).

16 Leonardi (1999, 145) reported that while all of the rivers of the Jaú basin were inhabited seasonally by rubber tappers from 1880 to 1914, when the boom ended this population out-migrated, as workers sought new opportunities elsewhere, with hundreds even returning to the Northeast.

17 Private traders opened up the Madeira River in the early eighteenth century, before the creation in 1757 of a state monopoly company at a Directorate mission at Borba. From the mid 1700s to early 1800s the Madeira became a central part of Portuguese efforts to push westwards and conquer more territory (Davidson 1970). The formation of colonial society was delayed until the nineteenth century, with the creation of the state of Amazonas (1850) and the beginning of the rubber boom. Before this, European incursions were temporary, and limited to extractive expeditions and some Jesuit missions along the river.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Angus Fraser

James Angus Fraser is a lecturer in the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) at Lancaster University, UK. He is in the political ecology research group at LEC. His research focuses on social and environmental dimensions of smallholder natural resource management in the humid tropics of Latin America and Africa. He focuses in particular on local agro-ecological knowledge, and social and environmental justice issues. He investigates these with theory and methods from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, geography and development studies.

Thiago Cardoso

Thiago Mota Cardoso is a postdoctoral fellow in the postgraduate program in anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia. He lectures at the School of Conservation and Sustainability (ESCAS) and is a member of the research groups CANOA (the Environment, Practices and Perception Collective at the Federal University of Santa Catarina) and PACTA (Local Populations, Agrobiodiversity and Traditional Knowledge). He is also involved in the AURA project (Aarhus University Research on Anthropocene), “Uncovering the potential of unintentional design in anthropic landscapes”. He works primarily in Brazil, in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes, with traditional communities and indigenous peoples, on themes such as agriculture and agrobiodiversity, resilience and communal systems, political ecology and local-global transformations, landscape anthropology and traditional territories. Email: [email protected]

Angela Steward

Angela May Steward is an assistant professor at the Center for Agrarian Studies and Rural Development, Federal University of Pará, Brazil. She is also a research collaborator at the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, Amazonas state, Brazil, where she leads the Research Group in Amazonian Agriculture, Biodiversity and Sustainable Management. Her research focuses on questions of natural resource management and local knowledge systems, with a focus on agricultural systems. She works primarily in Brazil, with traditional and Quilombo peoples, examining practices and systems within the context of broad social, political and environmental transformations, including changes in land tenure, livelihood diversification, conservation and development policies, and climate change. Email: [email protected]

Luke Parry

Luke Parry is a lecturer in the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) at Lancaster University, UK. He is in the political ecology research group at LEC. He has also just finished a position (2014–2016) as a Special Visiting Researcher (PVE) at the Nucleus of Advanced Amazonian Studies (NAEA), Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil. His research interests include urbanization and linkages with extreme climatic events and food insecurity. The geographic focus of his research is the Brazilian Amazon, particularly in the roadless areas of Amazonas State. Email: [email protected]