Seed roads and exchange routes: plant life and collection practices in the Middle Juruá (AM)

• Grant number: 21/06060-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2022
• End date: February 28, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Rural Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Artionka Manuela Goes Capiberibe
• Grantee: Bruno Campelo Pereira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research is about the transformation of economic dynamics in the Extractive Reserve of the Middle Jurua, located in the southwest of the state of Amazonas (BR). The population of this region is historically linked to the "rubber cycles" in Brazil, marked by the immigration of thousands of people from the Northeast to work in rubber states (seringais) in the Amazon since the 19thcentury and, in the last twenty years, to the formation of extensive logistic chains operated by riverside communities for the transportation and extraction of oilseeds to the "sustainable" sector of the global cosmetics market. The research includes field work with the objective of monitoring activities involving three native species: andiroba (Carapa guianensis), ucuuba (Virola surinamensis) and murumuru (Astrocaryum murumuru). Its guiding thread will be the collection seed roads, in one of the more than thirty communities where the boat of the local cooperative (CODAEMJ) docks to buy them and take them to the community of Roque, where their beneficiation. The trajectories will be reconstructed ethnographically against the background of the commercial partnerships with Natura, following the routes of buying and selling seeds for the production of vegetable oils and butters. By guiding the investigation towards exchanges and ways of characterizing species and relating to them, it is intended to understand the ways of producing and classifying what we will call "landscapes". The objective is to understand how meanings about value emerge, collaborating with reflections on traditional knowledge and sustainability, and to notice the socio-environmental problems that are present in the political economy, according to the residents themselves, their conceptions, practices and uses in a coexistence between species and commodities. (AU)