Open AccessAMAZONIAN HOUSE‐ING: A Visual Anthropology Essay
Author(s) -
DA COSTA OLIVEIRA THIAGO,
FAUSTO CARLOS
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cultural anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.669
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1548-1360
pISSN - 0886-7356
DOI - 10.14506/ca36.4.06
Subject(s) - ethnography , livelihood , geography , sociology , visual anthropology , amazonian , humanities , archaeology , art , amazon rainforest , agriculture , ecology , biology
This visual essay documents the house‐ing practices of Amazonian river dwellers and urban and peri‐urban residents in the face of large‐scale development projects. In Altamira (Pará, Brazil), the construction of the third‐largest hydroelectric dam in the world, the Belo Monte Plant, has led to the flooding of housing areas along rivers and the displacement of residents into collective urban resettlements. Although the complexities of people's living did not enter the engineers' calculations or the public policy agenda, the residents improvised construction materials and aesthetic repertoires to preserve the relationships that constituted their local ecologies. Our visual ethnography aims to re‐center the situated purview of the resettled, re‐visibilizing the house as an index of ineffaceable livelihood and as an ongoing terrain of contestation and continuous Amazonization.