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Eduardo S. Brondizio

Chair, Department of Anthropology
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Adjunt Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Assistant Director, Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT)
Faculty Associate:
Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC) 
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)
COAS Individualized Major Program (IMP)

(812) 855-2555 | Email | Office Hours
eduardo
  •   Ph.D. 1996. Indiana University

Geographical Areas of Specialization: Amazon, Brazil, Latin America

Topical Interests: Environmental and economic anthropology, land use and landscape history, ethnobotany, integrative methodologies and remote sensing applications in Anthropology, household economy and demographics, people-forest interaction.

Current Courses:
Graduate and authorized/senior undergraduates:
E600/E400: People and Plants: A graduate seminar in Ethnobotany
E600: The Human footprint: The study of land use and cover change
E600/E400: Human Ecology from Space: An Introduction to Remote Sensing in the Social Sciences
E600: People and Forest
E600: Forest foods
A495: Cultural ecology and environmental anthropology: Historical perspectives A495: Amazonian cultural ecology
A495: Brazilian and Amazonian cultural history
Undergraduate:
E105: Culture & Society
E322: Peoples of Brazil
I375: Brazilian and Amazonian history (in Portuguese)
A150: Adapting to the future: Human and Environment in the 21st. Century (Honors division)
E105: Native Amazonians (Topics course)
E101: Ecology and Society
International courses and workshops:
-Studying the Human dimensions land use change in Amazônia.
-Human dimensions of land use: Research frameworks and integrative methods -Spatial techniques in ethnographic research: Remote sensing applications
Other courses:
Bloomington Cooking School Brazilian culture and food I: Multicultural roots of Brazilian snacks (with Alfredo Minetti)
Brazilian culture and food II: Feijoada: the Brazilian national dish (with Alfredo Minetti)

Selected Publications


Profile:

As an environmental anthropologist, my research focuses on examining the ways rural populations and their environment co-evolve with shifts in the larger society. For the past 18 years, I have carried out longitudinal ethnography and cross-sectional survey research among Amazonian Caboclo and Colonist populations with particular attention to historical analysis of land use change, people-forest interaction, and ethnobotany. My work has examined the role of historical, economic, institutional, and demographic processes shaping people-environment interaction with a concern towards comparative analysis linking local, regional, and global processes. Currently, I have been working on ethnographic and historical analysis of commodity chains for forest products (such as the Açaí palm fruit [Euterpe oleracea mart.]), the interaction between global and national processes and local dynamics underlying the formation and transformation of rural communities, rural-urban household networks, and comparative, multi-scale analysis of historical trajectories of land use change and deforestation in the Amazon. My research is also concerned with developing integrative methodologies combining ethnographic and survey instruments, archival and historical research, field inventories and ecological measurements, and the application of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) to questions of anthropological interest.

Current Research Projects:

2005-2008 “Global Markets, Regional Landscapes, and Household Decisions: Modeling the History of Transformation of the Amazon Estuary.” Support: National Science Foundation, Human Social-Dynamics Program. [Collaborators: Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, Christine Padoch, Robin Sears, Peter Deadman, and Andrea Siqueira]
2006-2007 “High-level Expert Group on Human Well-being, Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital.” United Nations Environmental Programme, Division of Environmental Conventions [Expert consultant]
2005-2007 “Human and physical dimensions of land use and cover change in the Amazon: Towards a multi-scale synthesis.” Support: NASA LBA-Ecology [Collaborators: Emilio Moran, Mateus Batistela, Paul Mausel, Ryan Jensen, Diogenes Alves, D. Lu]
2003-2007 “Amazonian Deforestation and the Structure of Households. Phase II.” Support: National Institute of Health, NICHD, sub-project “Community formation and transformation in the Amazon” [Collaborators: Emilio Moran, Leah Vanwey, Alvaro D’Antona, Andrea Siqueira]


Selected Publications:

forthcoming 2007 The Amazonian Caboclo and the Açaí palm: Forest Farmers in the Global Market.New York: New York Botanical Garden Press.
2006 Landscapes of the past, footprints of the future: historical ecology and the analysis of land use change in the Amazon. In W. Balée and C. Erikson (eds.) Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology:  Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. NY: Columbia U. Press. Pp. 365-405.
2006 Intensificação agricola, identidade econômica, e invisibilidade de pequenos produtores Amazônicos: Caboclos e Colonos em uma perspectiva comparada.  In: Sociedades Caboclas Amazônicas: Modernidade e Invisibilidade. C. Adams, R.S.S. Murrieta, and W.A. Neves (eds.).  Sao Paulo: AnaBlume. Pp. 135-236
2006

Castro, F., A.D. Siqueira, E.S. Brondizio, and L.C. Ferreira. 2006. The use and misuse of the ‘traditional’ concept in environmental conservation in the Ribeira Valley, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ambiente e Sociedade Vol. IX nº. 1 Jan./Jun. 2006: 23-39

2005

Bhattacharya, D. K., Brondizio, E. S, M. Spiemberg, A. Ghosh, and M. Traverse, F. Castro, C. Morsello, A. Siqueira. 2005. Cultural services of ecosystems. In Kanchan Chopra et al. (eds.) Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Policy Responses : Findings of the Responses Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. London: Island Press. Chapter 14, Pp. 401-422

2005 Intraregional analysis of land use change in the Amazon. In Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Human-environment Interactions in Forest Ecosystems, E. Moran and E. Ostrom (eds.). MIT Press, Cambridge. Pp. 223-252.
2005

Moran, E., E. Brondizio, and L. VanWey. (2005) Population and Environment in Amazonia: Landscape and Household Dynamics. Population, Land Use, and Environment. B. Entwisle and P. Stern (eds.). Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Pp. 106-134.

2004 Agriculture intensification, economic identity, and shared invisibility in Amazonian peasantry: Caboclos and Colonists in comparative perspective. Culture and Agriculture 26(1 and 2): 1-24.
2004

Brondizio, E, Spierenburg, M.J. and Traverse, M. 2004. Cultural Perceptions, Responses and Services Relating to Ecosystems. In: Issues and Themes in Anthropology. Vinay Kumar Srivastava and Manoj Kumar Singh (eds). Published by Kamal Kishore for Palaka Prakashan. Chapter 27, Pp 557-600.

2004 From staple to fashion food:  Shifting cycles, shifting opportunities in the development of the  Açaí fruit (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) economy in the Amazon estuary. In: D. Zarin et al (eds.) Working forests in the American tropics: Conservation through sustainable management? New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 348-361.
2004

Cultural ecology.  Encyclopedia of World Environmental History.  Krech III, C. Merchant, and J. McNeil (eds.). New York: Berkshire/Routledge Press. Pp. 382-387.

2004

Deadman, P., D. Robinson, E. Moran, and E. Brondizio 2004. Colonists household decision making and land use change in the Amazon rainforest: an agent-based simulation. Environment and Planning 31:693-709.

2003

Futemma C. and E.S. Brondizio. 2003. Land reform and land use changes in the Lower Amazon: Implications to agricultural intensification. Human Ecology 31(3): 369-402.

2003

Siqueira, Andrea D., Stephen D. McCracken, Eduardo S. Brondízio, and Emilio F. Moran. 2003. Women in a Brazilian Agricultural Frontier. In Gender at Work in Economic Life, ed. Gracia Clark. Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph Series, No. 20. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press.

2003 Dolšak, Nives, Eduardo S. Brondízio, Lars Carlsson, David Cash, Clark Gibson, Matthew Hoffmann, Anna Knox, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, and Elinor Ostrom. 2003. Adaptation to Challenges. In The Commons at the Millennium, ed. Nives Dolšak and Elinor Ostrom. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Pp. 337-360.
2003 Letter: Revisiting Amazonian Circa 1492. Science 302: 2067-2068.
2002

Brondizio, E.S., C.C.M. Safar, and A.D. Siqueira. (2002). The urban market of Açaí fruit (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) and rural land use change: Ethnographic insights into the role of price and land tenure constraining agricultural choices in the Amazon estuary.  Urban ecosystems 6 (1/2): 67-98.

2002

Brondizio, E.S., S.D. McCracken, E.F. Moran, A.D. Siqueira, D.R. Nelson, and C. Rodriguez-Pedraza. 2002. The Colonist Footprint: Toward a Conceptual Framework of Deforestation Trajectories Among Small Farmers in Frontier Amazônia. In: Deforestation and Land Use in the Amazon. C. Wood and R. Porro (eds.) University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Pgs. 133-161.

1997

Brondízio E.S., and W.A. Neves. 1997. A percepção do ambiente natural por parte de populações Caboclas do Estuário do Amazonas: Uma experiên­cia piloto através do método de trilhas pré-fixadas. In C.Pavan (ed.) Uma estratégia Latino Americana para Amazônia, Vol. I, pp. 167-182. Editora UNESP, São Paulo.

1997

Brondízio E.S. and A.D. Siqueira. 1997. From extractivists to forest farmers: changing concepts of agricultural intensification and peasantry in the Amazon estuary. Research in Economic Anthropology, 18:233-279.

1996

Brondízio E.S., E.F. Moran, P. Mausel, and Y. Wu. 1996. Changes in land cover in the Amazon estuary: Integration of thematic mapper with botanical and historical data. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 62(8):921-929 (special issue: Vegetation & cover analysis)

1994

Brondízio E.S., E.F. Moran, P. Mausel, and Y. Wu. 1994. Land use change in the Amazon estuary: Patterns of Caboclo settlement and landscape management. Human Ecology, 22(3):249-278 (special issue: Recent Advances on the Regional Analysis of Indigenous Land Use and Tropical Deforestation).

 


 

 

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