In Amazonia (48 page)

19
. Bakhtin,
The Dialogic Imagination
, 250. I have suppressed a paragraph break.

20
. Ibid.

21
. An honorific. On the implications of
Coronelismo
in Brazil, see Victor Nunes Leal,
Coronelismo, enxada e voto: O município e o regime representativo no Brasil
, 2nd ed. (São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1975). For a contemporary Amazonian account that is highly germane to the current discussion, see Jacky Picard, “O clientalismo nas colônias agrícolas do sudeste do Pará,” in
Amazônia e a crise da modernização
, org. Maria Angela D'Ínção and Isolda Maciel da Silveira (Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, 1994), 279–99.

22
. See Harrison Pollak, Marli Mattos, and Christopher Uhl, “A Profile of Palm Heart Extraction in the Amazon Estuary,”
Human Ecology
23, no. 3 (1995): 357–85, and Jeremy Strudwick, “Commercial Management for Palm Heart from
Euterpe oleracea
Mart. Palmae in the Amazon Estuary,” in
New Directions in the Study of Plants and People: Research Contributions from the Institute of Economic Botany
, ed. Ghillean T. Prance and Michael J. Balick (New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1990), 241–48.

23
. Given its regional importance, there has been remarkably little written on aviamento directly. For descriptions—from which one can get a sense of a regional diversity of political-economic form—see, particularly Stephen Hugh-Jones' exceptional “Yesterday's Luxuries, Tomorrow's Necessities: Business and Barter in Northwest Amazonia,” in
Barter, Exchange and Value: An Anthropological Approach
, ed. Caroline Humphrey and Stephen Hugh-Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 42–74; David Gibbs McGrath,
The Paraense Traders: Small-scale, Long-distance Trade in the Brazilian Amazon
(unpbd. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin. Ann Arbor: UMI Microfilms, 1989); Arthur Cézar Ferreira Reis,
O seringal e o seringueiro
, documentário da vida rural, no. 5 (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Agricultura, 1953); Roberto Santos,
História econômica da Amazônia (1800–1920)
(São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1980); Morio Ono and Nobue Miyazaki, “O aviamento na Amazônia: Estudo sócio-econômico sôbre a produção de juta,”
Sociologia
20, nos. 3–4 (1958): 366–96, 530–63; João Pacheco de Oliveira Filho, “O caboclo e o brabo: Notas sobre duas modalidades de força-de-trabalho na expansão da fronteira Amazônica no século XIX,”
Encontros com a civilização Brasileira
11 (1979): 101–40; Barbara Weinstein,
The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850–1920
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983); Michael Taussig,
Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Blanca Muratorio,
The Life and Times of Grandfather Alonso: Culture and History in the Upper Amazon
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991).

24
. The “modernizing” narrative is central to arguments made by Marianne Schmink and Charles H. Wood, for example. See their
Contested Frontiers in Amazonia
, in which they describe the waning of aviamento in southern Pará in the face of the rapid expansion of wage labor. While a useful corrective to general accounts of Amazonian economic organization that over-emphasize historical continuity, their case should not be generalized too readily. Heterogeneity of political-economic relations is a more reliable definitive character of regional realities. For a useful discussion of this point, see David Cleary, “After the Frontier: Problems With Political Economy in the Modern Brazilian Amazon,”
Journal of Latin American Studies
25, no. 2 (1993): 331–49.

25
. This argument is made by several members of the Viega family and by McGrath,
The Paraense Traders
, 95–105. For an illuminating discussion of gift and commodity exchange, see Charles Piot,
Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 62–66.

26
. Despite the endurance of the boom in açaí and the success of the fruit in penetrating potentially huge markets in the south of Brazil, there are at this point relatively few published social science studies. Most focus on management of the plant as a resource and technical possibilities for increasing income from its marketing. Among currently available discussions, see Mário Hiraoka, “Land Use Changes in the Amazon Estuary,”
Global Environmental Change
5, no. 4 (1995): 323–36; Anthony B. Anderson and Mário Augusto G. Jardim, “Costs and Benefits of Floodplain Forest Management by Rural Inhabitants in the Amazon Estuary: A Case Study of Açaí Palm Production,” in
Fragile Lands of Latin America: The Search for Sustainable Uses
, ed. John O. Browder (Boulder: Westview, 1989), 114–29; Stephen Nugent, “The Limitations of ‘Environmental Management': Forest Utilization in the Lower Amazon,” in
Environment and Development in Latin America: The Politics of Sustainability
, ed. David Goodman and Michael Redclift (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 141–54; N. Miret Muñiz, R. Vamos, M. Hiraoka, F. Montagnini, and R. O. Mendelsohn, “The Economic Value of Managing
Açaí
Palm (
Euterpe oleracea
Mart.) in the Floodplains of the Amazon Estuary, Pará, Brazil,”
Forest Ecology and Management
87, nos. 1–3 (1996): 163–73; Batista B. G. Calzavara, “As possibilidades do açaizeiro no estuário Amazônico,”
Boletim da Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias do Pará
5, 1972. NAEA/UFPa, MPEG, EMBRAPA, and SECTAM organized the important and timely conference
Seminário açaí: Possibilidades e limites em processos de desenvolvimento sustentável no estuário Amazônico
held at the Museu Goeldi, Belém, in October 1996.

27
.
See Christine Padoch and Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, “Farming Above the Flood in the Várzea of Amapá,” in
Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Floodplains
, ed. Christine Padoch, J. Márcio Ayres, Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, and Anthony Henderson (New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1999), 345–54; Hiraoka, “Land Use Changes in the Amazon Estuary”; Mário Augusto G. Jardim and John S. Rumbold, “Effects of Adubation and Thinning on
Açaí
Palm (
Euterpe oleracea
Mart.): Fruit Yield from a Natural Population,”
Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi
, Série Botânica 10, no. 2 (1994): 283–93.

28
. There is, inevitably, an entire series of class-based codes associated with açaí: when and how often it is eaten, at what point in the meal, with what utensils, with which additives. This becomes complex when we consider the questions of subject formation tied up in this urban appropriation of a distinctive aspect of rural life.

29
. For accounts of Amazonian urbanization, see Bertha K. Becker, “Fronteira e urbanização repensadas,”
Revista Brasileira de Geografia
47, nos. 3–4 (1985): 357–71; Browder and Godfrey,
Rainforest Cities
.

30
. A sack is measured out of four
latas
—rectangular, catering-size margarine tins.

31
. In Macapá, the
zona franca
free-trade zone is popularly known as the
zona fraca
, the weak/pathetic zone, because of its failure to emulate the (temporary) success of the Manaus model. In Belém, the pull of the zona franca is replaced by the push of extreme land conflict and violence in the south of Pará and Maranhão.

32
. For a fascinating discussion of the urban marketing of a very similar forest product that considers additional questions—for example, the fruit's significance in ancillary trades such as icecream manufacture—see Christine Padoch's “Aguaje (
Mauritia flexuosa
L.f.) in the economy of Iquitos, Peru,” in
The Palm—Tree of Life: Biology, Utilization and Conservation
, ed. Michael J. Balick (New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1988), 214–24.

33
. In times of shortfall in either Belém or Macapá, well-capitalized buyers like Jacaré make short-term profits by shipping fruit across the bay. They make a deal for a boat, pay someone to travel, pack the açaí in ice, and earn as much as R $120 per sack for the first few loads of açaí to arrive—although prices drop quickly as others enter the market.

34
. For valuable discussions of the politics of “talk,” see Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray, “Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation?”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
18, no. 2 (1993): 260–90; and Kathleen Stewart,
A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an “Other” America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

35
. Other, less economically important, produce is generally sold at a 30 percent markup (e.g., limes,
graviola
, oranges, bananas,
maxixe
, and watermelon).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, William M. “Rationalization and Conservation: Ecology and the Management of Nature in the United Kingdom.”
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
N.S. 22 (1997): 277–91.

Adonias, Isa.
A cartografia da região Amazônica: Catálogo descritivo (1500–1961)
. 2 vols. Rio de Janeiro: INPA, 1963.

Adorno, Rolena. “The Discursive Encounter of Spain and America: The Authority of Eyewitness Testimony in the Writing of History.”
The William and Mary Quarterly
49, no. 2 (1992): 210–28.

Agrawal, Arun. “Dismantling the Divide Between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge.”
Development and Change
26, no. 3 (1995): 413–39.

———. “State Formation in Community Spaces? Decentralization of Control Over Forests in the Kumaon Himalaya, India.”
Journal of Asian Studies
60, no. 1 (2001): 9–40.

Alcoff, Linda, and Laura Gray. “Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation?”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
18, no. 2 (1993): 260–90.

Allen, David Elliston.
The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History
. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Allen, Grant. “Bates of the Amazons.”
Fortnightly Review
58 (1892): 798–809.

Amadas, Philip, and Arthur Barlow. “The First Voyage Made to the Coasts of
America
, with Two Barks, Where in Were Captaines M.
Philip Amadas
, and M.
Arthur Barlowe
, who Discovered Part of the Countrey now called Virginia, Anno 1584. Written by One of the Said Captaines, and Sent to Sir
Walter Ralegh
, Knight, At Whose Charge and direction the Said Voyage was Set Forth.” In Richard Hakluyt,
The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation
, ed. David B. Quinn and Raleigh A. Skelton, vol. 3, 728–33. Hakluyt Society Extra Series No. 39. London: Hakluyt Society, 1965 [1589].

Anderson, Anthony B., and Mário Augusto G. Jardim, “Costs and Benefits of Floodplain Forest Management by Rural Inhabitants in the Amazon Estuary: A Case Study of Açaí Palm Production.” In
Fragile Lands of Latin America: The Search for Sustainable Uses
, ed. John O. Browder, 114–29. Boulder: Westview, 1989.

Anderson, Anthony B., Igor Mousasticoshvily Jr., and Domingo S. Macedo. “Logging of
Virola surinamensis
in the Amazon Floodplain: Impacts and Alternatives.” In
Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Floodplains
, ed. Christine Padoch, J. Márcio Ayres, Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, and Anthony Henderson, 119–34. New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1999.

Anderson, Benedict.
The Specter of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World
. London: Verso, 1998.

Anderson, David, and Richard Grove, eds.
Conservation in Africa: People, Policies, and Practice
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Anderson, S. D. “Engenhos na várzea: uma analise do declinio de uma sistema de produção tradicional na Amazônia.” In
Amazônia: A fronteira agrícola 20 anos depois
, org. Philippe Lenna and Adelia Engracia de Oliveira, 114–26. Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi/ORSTOM, 1991.

Andrews, Kenneth R.
Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering During the Spanish War 1585–1603
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.

———.
Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Andrews, Kenneth R., ed.
English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, 1588–1595
. Hakluyt Society Second Series No. 111. London: Hakluyt Society, 1956.

Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory.”
Cultural Anthropology
3, no. 1 (1988): 16–20.

Arnold, David.
The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion
. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Arvello-Jiménez, Nelly, and Horacio Biord. “The Impact of Conquest on Contemporary Indigenous Peoples of the Guiana Shield: The System of Orinoco Regional Interdependence.” In
Amazonian Indians: From Prehistory to the Present
, ed. Anna C. Roosevelt, 55–78. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994.

Atran, Scott.
Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Understanding of Science
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Aubrey, John.
Brief Lives
. Ed. Oliver Lawson Dick. London: Secker & Warburg, 1949.

Bachelard, Gaston.
Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter
. Trans. Edith R. Farrell. Dallas: The Pegasus Foundation, 1983.

Bacon, Francis.
The New Organon
. Ed. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1620].