Making place-based sustainability initiatives visible in the Brazilian Amazon

Jane Androski
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Past Events

A special lecture and conversation with Dr. Eduardo Brondizio

MONDAY, APRIL 12 at 10:00 am | Zoom

Dr. Eduardo Brondizio is Distinguished Professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, where he directs the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes. He has served on numerous international scientific bodies, including as co-chair of the 2016-19 Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

He has also been a member of the Science Committee of the Future Earth program and the International Geosphere Biosphere Program and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Current Opinion on Environmental Sustainability. He has been committed for three decades to research on human-environment interaction and social-environmental change in the Amazon region, particularly eastern Amazonia, where he has studied small farmers and rural households as they have interacted with commodity markets, development programs and policies, social movements, and environmental-climate change.

For the past decade, his research has extended to the analysis of rural-urban household networks, urbanization and urban problems, and the governance of indigenous areas and conservation units in the region. As a microcosm of global predicaments and diversity, marked by development contradictions, social inequalities, and accelerated environmental change, the Amazon has provided him an entry point to engage in collaborative research that is field-based, comparative, and longitudinal. Eduardo’s work integrates a stunningly eclectic range of methodologies, including ethnography, surveys, institutional analysis, geospatial methods, ecological assessments, and historical investigation, grounded in a belief that empirical analysis, theory and methodological development are inter-dependent. Brought together, his research contributes to a ‘grounded complex systems perspective’ to the study of regional and global change. This implies examining regions such as the Amazon as dynamic social-ecological-political-historical landscapes emerging from interacting local, regional, and global processes, and defying simplistic interpretations and one-size-fits-all solutions and policies.