raffles

In this book Raffles analyzes how a place that has always been conceived as the essence of nature, the Amazon, is in fact the result of human labour, and so a social construction. To give an account of this idea he develops a micro ethnography of how the opening of a canal is related to the production of hegemony of a family in an area, and the production of a particular type of relations of production. I will not develop the details of his argument, but rather I am interested in pointing out some original ideas the author presents.

The opening of the book shows how the settlers of the region have strategically created the rivers and canals that appear to be a total natural creation to the outside spectator. In a micro-historical analysis he shows how people leaving in the region have always transformed the natural landscape. After the introduction of the book he describes how channels are a fundamental feature of Amazonian landscape, as they make possible economic exploitation, transport and communication. They have been opened by the settlers of the region, mestizos recognized as cabolcos (not the stereotypical “Indians” object of numerous Amazonian ethnographies), with different purposes: access to timber woods, access to farmed lands, to hunting and gathering zones, communication with other settlers or ways to the town, among others. In this ways channels are social products but also the result of social contradictions.

What he is really proposing is that rather than considering that there is a natural system that is transformed by social production, natural places always the result of the particular social relations of the people inhabiting this place. In this way he inverts the logic of Cultural Ecological analysis in anthropology that emphasise the way nature constrains and determine economic organization of societies. He breaks with the division between environment and society. The author understands the natural environments as the result of a dialectic relation between natural forces and social agents. One example is how channels are opened in the surrounding area of Veigas family shop as a result of the work relations established in the aviamento. A system in which people are allowed to explode the lands of Veigas family only if they sell the product to him and buy in his shop. Channels then, are a dynamic place and also a place worth fighting for (cfr. Gordillo 2004).

The author considers the agency of nature and society as analogous processes. What can be objected from this position is that even both human and natural forces imply transformative effects over places; it is hard to consider a type of consciousness to natural processes. The concept of agency was developed to include the individual innovations and decision making effecting the shape of social structure. It implies interactions where social distinctions are shaped (see for eg. Bourdieu 2000). It is hard to include effects of climate, biological cycles and animal behaviour in the same category of this particular dialectic between subjects and cultural structure. In particular he is disregarding the implications of production of meaning as a constructive force of places. As we have seen, Taussig (1987) demonstrated the relevance of the imagination, fiction and symbols as an aspect of reality. In this sense considering the agency of nature is implicitly inconsistent with the conceptualization of social relations in Taussig’s analysis.

Raffles seems to be confused by the perceptions of the people he is working with is in that he analyses the natural forces, as well as social interactions, as agents shaping the landscape. The river’s over flooding and erosion appears to be a force challenging from an equal positioning, the humanly built places (as the house of the Veiga’s family). The confusion Raffles seems to follow to closely the people he is working with representations. In this way getting a close insight perspective permits Raffles to analyze the importance of the river as deeply social produced and conflictive place. He sees this processes through the cabolcos eyes that have memories over the production and transformation of streams. However, he takes this view literally and considers that the transformations due to natural processes, such as floods, of human localities is the result of a type of consciousness of the river challenging this human action. These ideas may also be the result of falling into the western traditional conceptions, which he is trying to deconstruct in chapter 3, of civilization versus nature, as two analogous competing potencies.

A final interesting implication of the microanalysis the author does is the way he shows how struggles over hegemony as producing and transforming places. In this way he shares with other approaches on place how they are the result but also the object and tools of struggles (see Feldman, Gordillo, Harvey). But unlike other authors, Raffles shows how places become relevant but also how they fade away as a result of shifts in the production of power. I consider this is a very original contribution as power formation is generally the object of study and not so much how power is lost and what happens in those cases.

The objection we can still make to this is again maybe the result of a kind of sympathy of Raffles with the people he is working with. In this way he shows a type of nostalgia with Veigas hegemony and its location. This nostalgia, even making a vivid connection with the way tha place was in the past shuts some possibilities of analysis. For example even he mentions the new hegemony of but could further explore the way this ruined place of Veigas is built in relation to the new hegemony of the Macedos leadership embedded of a leftist unionized discourse that attributes Veiga as an old authoritarian patron. In the elements Raffles presents it seems that this new social configuration is built not only by shifting the power is located but maybe making an explicit contradiction of places between the old decaying shop an the new political patronage Macedo represents.

To conclude I consider that even the subtle critics that can be done to Raffle’s work, his perspective offers a very original and a new perspective over the studies of the Amazone. He makes a very interesting overview river as a place that challenges the more common analysis of places as a result of processes of delimitation. Even the river is well defined and boundarized the river is a place of constant movement and of transformation, is then a particular type of place that pushes us to consider movement as a strong factor of the constitution of locations (cfr Grossberg and De Certau). From a theoretical perspective his analysis of the disempowered places is an interesting proposition that can be included in any analysis on social space.