Desynchronization in times of acceleration at agricultural frontiers: The case of the indigenous farm system in the southern Amazon region

Abstract

The Amazon region is one of the most biodiverse bioregions and home to, among different groups, indigenous peoples. It is also considered one of the last capitalist expansion spaces (Cardoso de Mello & Van Melkebeke, 2019; Coy et al., 2017), along with the effective occupation of the national states. A frontier space implies material and symbolic transformations where economies, land uses, and worldviews meet and contest (Rindfuss et al., 2007).

Taking the example of two communities of the indigenous Shuar in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon, this presentation aims at discussing the land-use changes and their implications within the household farms in light of the colonization process, including the opening to non-local markets and the expansion of the agricultural frontier. Inspired by the ideas of Rosa (2003) about “social acceleration” and downscaling them to the household level, the analysis addresses to what extent the different land uses (subsystems) interact in the whole farm system that is tending more and more towards modernity. The land-use classes under examination are forest, garden, pastures, and commercial crops.

Preliminary discussions state that this frontier area depicts a context of coexistence of market and non-market land uses as an alternative to face economic shocks. The fact that a farm allocates various land uses means that each space requires different input of production factors (money, labor, or time). Each land use has its own functioning pace, which would lead to the desynchronization of the whole farm system and an incomplete capitalist insertion. There are diverse implications, such as the fallow-period shortening due to commercial production demands or increasing forest loss. Concerning female work participation, besides their household and caring responsibilities, women have also assumed market-related tasks, which implies an additional work burden for them as there have been just marginal changes in the distribution of chores inside the household.