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.

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.

Today, one-quarter of all the land in Latin America is set apart for nature protection. In Nationalizing Nature, Frederico Freitas uncovers the crucial role played by conservation in the region's territorial development by exploring how Brazil and Argentina used national parks to nationalize borderlands. In the 1930s, Brazil and Argentina created some of their first national parks around the massive Iguazu Falls, shared by the two countries. The parks were designed as tools to attract migrants from their densely populated Atlantic seaboards to a sparsely inhabited borderland. In the 1970s, a change in paradigm led the military regimes in Brazil and Argentina to violently evict settlers from their national parks, highlighting the complicated relationship between authoritarianism and conservation in the Southern Cone. By tracking almost one hundred years of national park history in Latin America's largest countries, Nationalizing Nature shows how conservation policy promoted national programs of frontier development and border control.

Today, one-quarter of all the land in Latin America is set apart for nature protection. In Nationalizing Nature, Frederico Freitas uncovers the crucial role played by conservation in the region's territorial development by exploring how Brazil and Argentina used national parks to nationalize borderlands. In the 1930s, Brazil and Argentina created some of their first national parks around the massive Iguazu Falls, shared by the two countries. The parks were designed as tools to attract migrants from their densely populated Atlantic seaboards to a sparsely inhabited borderland. In the 1970s, a change in paradigm led the military regimes in Brazil and Argentina to violently evict settlers from their national parks, highlighting the complicated relationship between authoritarianism and conservation in the Southern Cone. By tracking almost one hundred years of national park history in Latin America's largest countries, Nationalizing Nature shows how conservation policy promoted national programs of frontier development and border control.

Big Water explores four centuries of the overlapping histories of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (the Triple Frontier), and the colonies that preceded them. Examining an important area that includes some of the first national parks established in Latin America and one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams, this transnational approach illustrates how three nation-states have interacted over time. From the Jesuit reductions in the seventeenth century to the flows of capital and goods accelerated by contemporary trade agreements, the Triple Frontier region has proven fundamental to the development of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay as well as to the Southern Cone and South America itself. Although historians from each of these three countries have tended to construct narratives that stop at their respective borders, the contributors call for a reinterpretation that goes beyond the material and conceptual boundaries of the Triple Frontier. In offering a transnational approach, Big Water helps transcend nation-centered blind spots and approach new understanding of how space and society have developed throughout Latin America. The essays achieve the goals of complicating traditional frontier histories and also balancing the excessive weight previously given to empires, nations, and territorial expansion. Overcoming stagnant comparisons between national cases, the research explores regional identity beyond border and geopolitical divides. In so doing, Big Water focuses on the uniquely overlapping character of the Triple Frontier and emphasizes a perspective usually left at the periphery of national histories. Contributors: Shawn Michael Austin, Jacob Blanc, Bridget Maria Chesterton, Christine Folch, Zephyr Frank, Frederico Freitas, Michael Kenneth Huner, Evaldo Mendes da Silva, Eunice Nodari, Graciela Silvestri, Guillermo Wilde, Daryle Williams.