| The dissertation addresses the question of why, despite comparable approaches to social organization, (a) some Conservation and Development Projects (CDPs) are successful in creating strong organized social support for conservation and development, while others fail to do so; and (b) to what extent may the conservation and development results (positive, negative, or partial) be attributed to the characteristics and outcomes of CDPs' intervention in social mobilization and organization. Two CDPs in the Brazilian Amazon floodplain in the period between 1994 and 2004 were analyzed through a relational framework, covering social processes in the decades that led to the projects, their inception, and development. One project was highly successful in its conservation goals and modestly so in its development efforts. The second project had poor results in both spheres of intervention (conservation and development).;Results of analyses showed that within each, CDPs had a double relational logic: intervention occurred in the context of place-based social systems (tied to livelihoods and lifestyles, with historicity geo-ecologically and socially bound to the location of intervention) and of issue-based social systems (defined by the theme of intervention, with historicity that was geographically, ecologically, and socially dispersed). Results suggest that success (social change) beyond the scope of direct project investment may require that through time the project's intervention social system metamorphoses into a distinct social system that cannot be subsumed under the project. The research also suggests that CDPs' success on conservation objectives is not inherently dependent on success on the development objectives and treating them as interdependent in some cases may compromise the project's performance in one, the other, or both spheres. |
