"Uma Saideira" - The endless lessons I'm taking home from Brazil
Welcome to the first of this two part series: ‘Uma Saideira - The endless lessons I'm taking home from Brazil’. I hope you'll enjoy reading, delivered directly from my 'rede' (hammock) to your inbox.
Fun Fact: 'Uma Saideira' is like saying what Americans would call 'one for the road'. However, here in Brazil, that 'one' quickly turns into 2 or 3 more hours sat drinking with your friends, hence the 'endless' lessons I'm taking home from this one of a kind experience.
What is my research about?
For those of you who I’ve not bored with ramblings about every aspect of my research project, here’s the scoop - My PhD is essentially a study into how environments and human culture change together. Now, I understand if the link isn’t immediately clear, but think of the cultural differences between ‘city kids’ and ‘country bumpkins’: My friend Jacob goes walking in the peak district when it’s hailing outside. I tried to go with him in those conditions once, never again. Get the picture?
In order to investigate these changes, I’m here in the Amazon rainforest, or rather, a city within it - Belém do Pará. So far, my project has 3 main questions:
How can cultural change be measured at large scales? (municipality level - Brazil is HUGE, so even though it only has 26 states it has 5,570 municipalities, which provide a much better frame of reference);
How much do cultural changes influence environmental change when you control for other factors e.g. political pressure, economic incentives? And;
Do cultural changes accelerate environmental changes (in this case deforestation) or visa versa?
The original image of cultural change that was presented by my supervisors to me was the influence of ‘cowboy culture’ on Amazonian communities, a phenomenon where people become increasingly attached to ideals of owning a large ranch, listening to the Brazilian country music (sertanejo), going to a steak grill, attending rodeos, often donning boots, belt buckles and cowboys hats, among other things known as ‘cultural markers’. The key takeaway from this is that this cultural change is seen as being heavily linked with cattle ranching, the leading cause of deforestation across the entire Amazon (some statistics say as high as 80% since 2016). Although there are instances where a cultural shift occurs even among communities without the interest in owning or capital to acquire a ranch, the interesting part for me is how attitudes towards the natural environment change as these cultural markers become more prevalent, and what knock on effect that change in attitudes has down the line. I am currently in the midst of trying to understand whether similar changes take place when other land-use practices are introduced to certain communities and regions. For example, do people experience a similar shift in culture when the agri-business import is soy, açaí or rice, instead of cattle? Do these agricultural shifts still involve cultural markers associated with cattle? How do these other shifts influence the way people value the natural environment? You get the gist…
So, what have I learned?
What I’ve found out so far is that forest clearance and agriculture change often follows a pattern. First comes timber (from the initial deforestation), then cattle, then soy, then rice or other produce, however in some cases the pattern doesn’t graduate beyond cattle. At each stage of this progression brings different challenges and changes. In the case of soy for example, it requires the use of pesticides to grow, that isn’t necessarily used in other crops. When profitability rises due to the high demand for soy elsewhere, often those who initially benefited will look to buy other plots of land from their neighbours and other people, who’s bargaining power is now reduced. In other cases, more aggressive tactics, such as burning large plots of land to destroy its' value and buy on the cheap are employed, or simply just taking land (known as land grabbing). These changes can create a ‘monoculture’ - where a single crop is yielded in a given area. I find this naming quite apt though, considering what tends to come with these shifts is a complete overhaul of a way of life, all dependent on one crop, that quite literally drains the diversity from the human culture as well. In a Brazilian study on the use of pesticides as soy arrived to a new part of the Amazon, it was said that: “Soy doesn’t come alone, like a commodity. It brings dispossession, sickness, criminalization and marginalisation”. Given this account, it’s not difficult to see how culture would suffer, when livelihoods are affected.
For me, this holistic picture is important because I believe one of the only ways to get people to care about these changes is to show the all-encompassing changes that are taking place. For those who are “logically minded”, often quoting facts and figures with physical evidence is enough to get them to care. For others, maybe anecdotal stories of hardship are enough. Here, these agricultural changes can bring both and more. It isn’t just the case that the Amazon is being chopped down at an alarming rate. Yes, that is true, but there are other crises that are formed as these frontiers advance too. What occurs is a complete overhaul of life as people know it. If you’re having a tough time visualising that, it’s probably because much of the West or 'Global North' has benefited from colonialism to the extent that it has a high level of resilience against rapid societal changes based on the demand for primary products. The closest British example might be the extreme industrial decline in Manchester in the 1980’s, but even then, the very land that people lived on wasn’t drastically altered like it is in these cases. This power imbalance based on colonial extraction, and primary production being inequitably based in the “Global South” means that communities’ very way of life is much more sensitive to seasonal and industrial pressure. At this moment, the ‘season’ we are in is the season of big agribusiness supported by the Brazilian version of Donald Trump. It isn’t simply the case that people lose their jobs and have to ‘go on the dole’. Cancer rates rise with the onset of pesticide use, water sources become less safe, people are quite literally bullied out of their land at times and forced to look for alternative ways to live. Not to mention in the case of historically marginalised groups such as Indigenous or Quilombola communities, that are already being squeezed as the climate changes. At all stages of this cycle, significant changes to lifestyle force significant changes in culture, which in turn leads to new attitudes about how the land should and can be used. As you can see, this is a vicious cycle that can, over time, normalise these radical shifts and lead to a complete overhaul of attitudes and thus, contribute to further destruction.
A cultural index for the future
Given these monumental aspects that are all bundled together, you might be asking, how in the world am I going to actually break this up to look at culture separately? Well, good question - My idea is to create a ‘cultural index’, that measures how the aforementioned cultural markers change using mathematical principles to create said index. When it's finished, my hope is that future geographers, economists, historians, environmental scientists etc can plug in their own ‘cultural markers’ and use it as a tool to predict how environmental changes will lead to a degradation of culture, and eventually, the other way around too. This will start with bigger analyses such as the link between culture and deforestation, but I’d love to be able to refine it so that it can be used as a tool for use beyond land change too. Think about how the introduction of plastic bag charges not only led to less single use plastic bags being used due to price, but also created a seldom perceived, but often indirectly felt culture of shame in UK supermarkets. Bags for life are now a good idea and widespread, and not just for financial reasons. What began as a policy to discourage plastic bag use in the environment snowballed to have a greater impact than was initially imagined. Eventually, I’d like my index to be able to predict how seemingly small changes like this can balloon to encourage bigger cultural shifts with enormous environmental potential.
The index will likely range from 0.0 - 1.0, where 1.0 indicates a 100% U-turn on previously broadly held values, events, foods, pastimes etc. Please bare with me here; I’m aware of the inherent challenges in identifying something as a natural antithesis to previous iterations of culture and linking that with negative environmental consequences. Being completely honest, it's going to be extremely hard to pull off, but it feels like this has some potential, given that some of these cultural markers can be measured numerically:
Music - estimated market size (listeners) in an area based on radio and streaming services data
Clothing - estimated clothing sales and manufacturing trends that respond to seasonal demand
Cultural events - number of cultural events (e.g. rodeos, concerts, food festivals) that have started or grown in the last 5-10 year period
Food - change of nutrition breakdown per household over specified period, change in produce/meat/fish available in market stalls
Work - numbers of people in full-time/contractual employment vs agricultural smallholders compared to previous time periods
Land use - change in land ownership statistics that may show transition towards homogenisation of land-use
As you can see, some of these are related to literal land-use and production, and others are related to lifestyle changes. One key aspect of this project is to prove that culture (lifestyle, traditions, identity, values etc) and the ways that people use the land they live on and are sustained by are inextricably linked. However, moving beyond the construction of the index, I then hope to use the formula to compare with broader descriptive data (by municipality) on agricultural changes and deforestation statistics. With some luck, the index will be able to show clear pockets of where deforestation and land-use change is more prominent, accompanied by changes in the index that explains cultural shifts too.
Emfim
As I’ve hinted at on my profile page, this is a space to communicate some of my findings in real time, and should not be taken as gospel or a finished article. I am an aspiring social scientist with so much to learn, and this is a way of allowing those of you who are interested in keeping tabs with my progress in the loop, and for me to hone my writing style. Also, the publishing process in academia is literally years behind when research is actually done, so this also allows me to churn out some content before that maddening process begins. Thanks for giving this a read, and stay tuned for the second instalment of this blog post, where I'll discuss how I’ve navigated conducting independent research abroad as a first-gen academic, with a more reflective tone and some lessons I've learned going forwards.
Great beginnings ... Interesting take on cultural norms, formed from observation it seems. I’m sure that there is much that you will produce when a participant expresses their perception of how their culture is defined.
Even more exciting will be it’s impact on the community and whether they view the “innovations” as a threat to their way of life, survival or a denigration of “values” or what becomes valuable and to whom.
I’m excited by this because it’s such a meaningful research as you say it will become a tool for the future ... other users input!
Great read ... thank you!
PS. What was the translation of you Postscript please?