| My work examines the role of intellectuals' sense of place and social positionalities in the production and consumption of Amazonian environment and imaginaries. It focuses on two sets of researchers working in two main governmental research institutions: INPA (National Institute of Research in Amazonia) in Brazil and SINCHI (The Amazonian Institute for Scientific Research) in Colombia. Despite the physically differentiated portions of Amazonia in which researchers focus their work, the different national and local contexts in which interwoven and substantially different political, economic and social processes have unfolded both during colonial and contemporary times, and the very distinct institutional structures in which researchers are embedded, distinct sets of intellectuals think about Amazonia in remarkably similar ways. My general argument is that local geographical imaginaries of the Amazon are inextricably connected to intellectual's identities, historically persistent themes in the construction of the Amazon as environment, and institutional embeddedness. Through in-depth interviews, a transnational, multi-sited research and multi-lingual endeavor, my research contributes to the field by demonstrating: First, local geographical imaginaries of the Amazon constructed by Brazilian and Colombian researchers are interwoven to social intellectuals' positionalities. Second, researchers' political views on material practices about the Amazon are interlinked with their experience of place and social processes that unfold in these places (e.g., local realities- conflict, use and production of knowledge). Third, local production of Amazonian imaginaries implies the process of cultural politics where local and global representations about the Amazon are negotiated in very particular ways. Brazilian and Colombian imaginaries both recognize the role of the Amazonian region in the global order, but they also assert a distinct local approach to nature that in part disregards imaginaries circulated internationally. Fourth, local Amazonian imaginaries constructed by Brazilian and Colombian researchers are historically produced. They are connected to persistent themes I found in representations and practices in the Amazon corresponding to colonial, post-independence, and postmodern eras. Finally, I demonstrate that foreign financial assistance shapes the image of research about Amazonia, impinging upon already uneven regional economic, social, and scientific institutional structures within countries such as Colombia and Brazil. |
