Thinking with Bem Viver across rural and urban Amazonia

Indigenous and Black spaces of resistance

Bibliographic Data

ID4302200
AuthorsBenjamin Kantner (0009-0008-0237-3704, UCLA, corresponding author), Rocha Peixoto (0000-0003-3083-8771, Universidade Federal do Pará)
Year2023
Volume30
Issue1
Publication date2023-09-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Political Ecology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1073-0451 • E-ISSN: 1073-0451
PublisherUniversity of Arizona (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2458/jpe.5462
OpenAlexW4386810819
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited44

In Brazil, Bem Viver recently arrived as a compelling counter-narrative to development's vision of land and labor as resources to be exploited. Bem Viver challenges the reductionism of land-as-resource, reinforces community autonomy, and entails reciprocity in relations with the nonhuman world. The purpose of this article is to extend conversations surrounding Bem Viver to the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará, primarily through asking whether the relational ethics of Bem Viver are active within current resistance movements focused on opposing neoliberal capitalism and racially-motivated dispossession. These resistance movements struggle for the maintenance of traditional relations while safeguarding socioecologies through territory. The cases we discuss draw upon our ethnographic work conducted within an Indigenous community in the Tapajós Basin and the Afro-Brazilian market Porto da Palha in urban Belém. We also consider whether Bem Viver opens the possibility of a post-political ecology framing of contestation over natural resources and place. Bem Viver is fundamentally relational and creates territorialities conflicting with market logics centered on financialization, individual accumulation, and private property. On the ground, Bem Viver as praxis shapes everyday practices sustaining place-based lifeways and determining material realities for the Indigenous and Black communities of the Tapajós and Belém regions of Pará

Amazon rainforest · Appropriation · Autonomy · Capitalism · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Development, Ethics, and Society · Law · Ecology

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