Amazonia is never quite what it seems. Despite regular attention in the media and numerous academic studies the Brazilian Amazon is rarely appreciated as a historical place home to a range of different societies. Often left invisible are the families who are making a living from the rivers and forests of the region. Broadly characterizing these people as peasants Amazon Peasant Societies in a Changing Environment seeks to bring together research by anthropologists, historians, political ecologists and biologists. A new paradigm emerges which helps understand the way in which Amazonian modernity has developed. This book addresses a comprehensive range of questions from the politics of conservation and sustainable development to the organization of women’s work and the diet and health of Amazonian people. Apart from offering an analysis of a neglected aspect of Amazonia this collection represents a unique interdisciplinary exercise on the nature of one of the most beguiling regions of the world.

Amazonia is never quite what it seems. Despite regular attention in the media and numerous academic studies the Brazilian Amazon is rarely appreciated as a historical place home to a range of different societies. Often left invisible are the families who are making a living from the rivers and forests of the region. Broadly characterizing these people as peasants Amazon Peasant Societies in a Changing Environment seeks to bring together research by anthropologists, historians, political ecologists and biologists. A new paradigm emerges which helps understand the way in which Amazonian modernity has developed. This book addresses a comprehensive range of questions from the politics of conservation and sustainable development to the organization of women’s work and the diet and health of Amazonian people. Apart from offering an analysis of a neglected aspect of Amazonia this collection represents a unique interdisciplinary exercise on the nature of one of the most beguiling regions of the world.

This book takes a multi-disciplinary and critical look at what has changed over the last ten years in one of the world's most important and dynamic ecosystems, the Amazon floodplain or várzea. It also looks forward, assessing the trends that will determine the fate of environments and people of the várzea over the next ten years and providing crucial information that is needed to formulate strategies for confronting these looming realities.

This book discusses the outcomes of more than ten years of research in the southern tracts of the Amazon region, and addresses the expansion of the agricultural frontier, consolidation of the agribusiness-based economy, and expansion of regional infrastructure (roads, dams, urban centres, etc). It combines extensive empirical evidence with the international literature on frontier-making and regional Amazonian development, and adopts a critical politico-geographical perspective that will benefit scholars in various other disciplines. This book is intended to push the current theoretical and methodological boundaries regarding the controversies and impacts of agribusiness in the region. A new international scientific network, led by the author, is investigating the broader context of the themes analysed here.

Frontiers of Development in the Amazon: Riches, Risks, and Resistances contributes to ongoing debates on the processes of change in the Amazon, a region inherently tied to the expansion of internal and external socio-economic and environmental frontiers. This book offers interdisciplinary analyses from a range of scholars in Europe, Latin America, and the United States that question the methods of development and the range of socio-ecological impacts of those methods by examining the theoretical, methodological, and empirical dimensions of frontier-making along with evaluating and refining existing frameworks. Contributors focus on the complex politics of border formation shaped by institutional, economic, and political forces, placing them in relation to ethical, imaginary, and symbolic elements. In doing so, contributors explore the dynamic production of identities, values, and subjectivities, covering matters of migratory patterns, complex power struggles, and intensive—at times violent—clashes. Among other topics, this book assesses the recent encroachment of export-driven agribusiness into the Amazon Region in the context of recolonization, resource exploitation and multiple programs of modernization and national integration. Scholars of Latin American studies, international development, environmental studies, and applied social sciences will find this book particularly useful.

Narratives of Environmental Challenges in Brazil and India: Losing Nature, edited by Zelia Bora and Murali Sivaramakrishnan, contextualizes the two subcontinents of India and Brazil and closely examines environmental issues from within and without. This collection focuses largely on the fate of forests and water in these two geographical terrains. This book explores narratives that reflect transformations: hitherto unprecedented demographic expansions, exploitation of natural resources, pollution and depletion of river and fresh water sources, uncontrollable demands on the energy front, waste and garbage disposal, drastic reduction of biodiversity. All of these are factors to research when one considers “losing nature.” In philosophical as well as theoretical terms the question of what is nature, what is gained and lost in human-nature interaction, what is the essential “balance” of nature, are all important queries on a similar scale. Societal reality in present day Brazil and India is reconstructed and deconstructed at will by the powerful influence of the past alongside that of globalization and technocratic market structures. The volume contemplates the representation and interrogation of environmental issues in both subcontinents, Brazil and India.

The Oxford Handbook of Children's Musical Cultures is a compendium of perspectives on children and their musical engagements as singers, dancers, players, and avid listeners. Over the course of 35 chapters, contributors from around the world provide an interdisciplinary enquiry into the musical lives of children in a variety of cultures, and their role as both preservers and innovators of music. Drawing on a wide array of fields from ethnomusicology and folklore to education and developmental psychology, the chapters presented in this handbook provide windows into the musical enculturation, education, and training of children, and the ways in which they learn, express, invent, and preserve music. Offering an understanding of the nature, structures, and styles of music preferred and used by children from toddlerhood through childhood and into adolescence, The Oxford Handbook of Children's Musical Cultures is an important step forward in the study of children and music.