Author(s):
J. Christopher Brown, Ph.D.* - University of Kansas
Abstract:
Current debates in Amazonian environment and development studies pit the directives of the "Washington consensus" (top-down development) against strategies of local resistance that empower traditional livelihood and cultural practices that are "in tune" with their environments. The debates do not lead to any resolution, but rather lead to relativistic or absolutist positions that cannot be reconciled with one another in practice. This paper employs a critical realist, moral geographic perspective akin to Robert Sack's "Geographical guide to the real and the good" to examine the current controversy about the expansion of mechanized soybean cultivation in the Amazon. Sack's framework is applied in an attempt to envision a process, discussion, and place-making policies that would be based on intrinsic geographic judgments. The conclusion points out how such criteria could be applied in other human/environmental conflicts around the world.
