Global Economic Integration and Local Community Resilience

Road Paving and Rural Demographic Change in the Southwestern Amazon

Bibliographic Data

ID2281494
AuthorsStephen G Perz (0000-0002-7922-6672, University of Florida), Liliana Cabrera (Universidad Amazonica de Pando), Lucas Araujo Carvalho (0000-0002-3124-4185, Universidade Federal do Acre), Jorge Castillo (0000-0002-6937-3556, Amazon National University of Madre de Dios), Grenville Barnes (University of Florida)
Year2010
Volume75
Issue2
Pages300-325
Publication date2010-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRural Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0036-0112 • E-ISSN: 1549-0831
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1549-0831.2009.00008.x
OpenAlexW1944668252
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited39

Recent years have witnessed an expansion in international investment in large-scale infrastructure projects with the goal of achieving global economic integration. We focus on one such project, the Inter-Oceanic Highway in the "MAP" region, a trinational frontier where Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru meet in the southwestern Amazon. We adopt a resilience approach as an integrative framework to understand various types of road-paving impacts. We focus on migration activity as an indicator of retention of collective memory, a concept associated with resilience. We pursue a comparative analysis of the three sides of the MAP frontier as well as subregions within each side. Since road paving may be mediated by other factors, we distinguish among the effects of multiple explanatory factors. Data come from a multinational survey of rural communities. The findings show considerable net migration and turnover, both indicative of eroding collective memory and a lack of demographic resilience to externally induced change in the MAP frontier. The findings indicate variation across the frontier, which road paving helps explain, along with some of the mediating factors. These findings contribute to the literature on the impacts of new infrastructure and integration as well as the study of social-ecological resilience

Amazon rainforest · Cartography · Community resilience · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental resource management · Frontier · Geography · Investment (military · Political science · Psychological resilience · Regional science · Resilience (materials science · Scale (ratio · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Ecology · Engineering · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Mining and Resource Management · Psychology