This Sussex Development Lecture discussed the evolution of a road beside a Communal Reserve in Peruvian Amazonia. It considered the use and narrative power of the concept of ‘sustainable development’ within local, national, and international cultures and discourses. Does the concept succeed in building local and global solidarities, working towards a shared vision for the future? Or do different interpretations of what ‘sustainable development’ is lead to tension between different actors.
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Based on over two decades of ethnographic fieldwork in indigenous and mixed-heritage communities on the Ucayali River, a current collaborative project on co-management of the Reserve and analysis of social media, the research discussed examines how competing and shared visions of desired futures interact with global conceptions of development in ongoing debates about local transformations of the landscape, the economy and solidarities between different groups.
By considering political rhetoric, public self-representation and actions on the ground, the lecture will consider the apparent convergences as well as divergences between understandings of individual wellbeing and collective social, economic and environmental well-being in this complex cultural matrix of the Peruvian Amazonia, as the permanence of the road and its associated cattle pastures seems ever more inevitable.
Speaker
Dr. Evan Killick (School of Global Studies, University of Sussex)
Chair
Professor Michael Collyer (School of Global Studies, University of Sussex)
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