This study analyses the narratives expressed by the Pataxó indigenous people of Brazil within their indigenous tourism project, the “Jaqueira Reserve”. Our findings show that the indigenous people's role as protagonists in this setting foregrounds their voices, allowing them to retell and reposition themselves in history and to re-envision the future by presenting different ways of thinking and being. We contend that this Pataxó experience illustrates how decolonial endeavours are being crafted on an everyday basis in ways that strengthen indigenous cultural and environmental rights. Accordingly, we conclude that indigenous tourism has a transformational potential in the sense that it can counter the colonialization of mind and ideas and coloniality's violent oppression/exploitation of culture and nature. 

This study analyses the emblematic experience of an indigenous group in Brazil, the Pataxó, who was able to set up and exercise strong control over an indigenous tourism project: the Jaqueira Reserve. Based on document analysis, interviews, and observations, we show how the Jaqueira Reserve was consolidated not only as a strongly autonomous initiative but also as constituent of a greater quest for autonomy (to craft aspired livelihoods conducive to cultural revitalization and environmental protection). The Pataxó experience shows that indigenous tourism can be an instrument in greater indigenous struggles, and as such can develop not only despite marginalization but also against it.

This article provides an analysis of Amazonian Indigenous peoples’ “artivism” – understood as artistic expressions with activist orientation. It approaches artivism within the context of the emergence of Contemporary Indigenous Art in Brazil and its significance in the resistance against the centuries-long oppression of native peoples, illustrated by the advancement of extractivism in the Amazon. We focus on the artworks by four prominent Indigenous artivists: Jaider Esbell’s critical engagements with art history; Denilson Baniwa’s reanthropophagy movement; Daiara Tukano’s critique of articide; and Emerson Pontes’ transformation into Uýra, the Walking Tree. Altogether, the messages embedded in their artworks contest the dominant growth-oriented development narrative anchored on the pre-eminence of the human-nature ontological dualism, where Nature is reduced to economic resource, along with a view of development that positions western ways of knowing, being and living at the forefront of a civilizational continuum. We conclude by elucidating the central decolonizing role of Indigenous artivism and its potential to strengthen Indigenous’ voices and agendas which include exercising self-determination, resisting extractivism, and crafting more plural and just worlds.

This article approaches livelihood alterations in Indigenous communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon as means of adaptation and resistance to socio-environmental impacts brought along by the expansion of global capitalism. The cases comprise collective Indigenous endeavors in typically capitalist sectors -tourism and mining -illustrated by the experiences of Kichwa community tourism in Shiripuno in the central Amazon, and sustainable mining in the southern Amazonian Shuar community of Congüime (Kenkuim). Theaim is to unravel these emerging livelihood strategies in relation to Indigenous ethno-cultural identity. Methodologically, we rely on comparative and ethnographic work in the field with Indigenous actors, and on a theoretical framework anchored in the concepts of innovators, cultural boundary changes (Fredrik Barth), social fields of force (William Roseberry), and intercultural regimes (Fernando Galindo and Xavier Albó). In both empirical cases -Indigenous-controlled tourism and mining -communities are framing their ethnic identity to engage with, and positively reposition themselves in relation to the wider society. We hold that these endeavors must be comprehended as highly innovative, and that indigeneity and cultural boundaries can be strengthened bysocio-cultural changes toward livelihoods previously considered as “unauthentic” or “non-Indigenous”. We also argue that these new livelihood orientations have (purposely) altered gender relations within the communities in benefit of women. Additionally, our cases suggest that cultural strengthening and gender empowerment, among other positive outcomes, requires a nuanced apprehension of indigeneity as a partly floating concept and instrument gaining ground amid the increasing interconnectedness of ancienttraditions and capitalist modernity.

Este artículo aborda alteraciones de los modos de subsistencia en comunidades indígenas de la Amazonía ecuatoriana como medios de adaptación y resistencia a los impactos socioambientales provocados por la expansión del capitalismo global. Los casos comprenden esfuerzos indígenas colectivos en sectores típicamente capitalistas -turismo y minería -ilustrados por las experiencias del turismo comunitario Kichwa en Shiripuno en la Amazonía central, y la minería sostenible en la comunidad Shuar de Congüime (Kenkuim) en el sur amazónico. El objetivo esdesentrañar estas estrategias emergentes de subsistencia en relación con la identidad étnico-cultural. Metodológicamente, nos basamos en el trabajo comparativo y etnográfico en el campo con actores indígenas, y en un marco teórico anclado en los conceptosde innovadores, cambios de límites culturales (Fredrik Barth), campos sociales de fuerza (William Roseberry), y regímenes interculturales (Fernando Galindo y Xavier Albó). En ambos casos empíricos -el turismo y la minería controlados por los indígenas -las comunidades están enmarcando su identidad étnica para comprometerse y reposicionarse positivamente en relación con la sociedad más amplia. Sostenemos que estos esfuerzos deben ser comprendidos como altamente innovadores, y que la indigeneidad y las fronteras culturales pueden fortalecerse mediante cambios socioculturales hacia modos de subsistencia previamente considerados como "no auténticos" o "no indígenas". Asimismo, argumentamos que estas nuevas orientaciones de subsistencia han alterado (deliberadamente) las relaciones de género dentro de las comunidades en beneficio de las mujeres. Además, nuestros casos sugieren que el fortalecimiento cultural y el empoderamiento de género, entre otros resultados positivos, requieren una aprehensión matizada de la indigeneidad como un concepto e instrumento parcialmente flotante que gana terreno en medio de la creciente interconexión de las tradiciones ancestrales y la modernidad capitalista.

Based on a case study from rural Mozambique, we stress that ecosystem services research may be enriched through gendered livelihood approaches, particularly in terms of experienced ecosystem services. Ecosystem services studies have been accused of being gender blind. We argue for the value of open narratives that are attentive to the gender dynamics underpinning the production and reproduction of livelihoods. By focusing on the experienced gender dimension of ecosystem services, livelihood perspectives fulfill the normative role of providing a people-centered means to assess the values of the environment “from below” and can therefore constitute an entry point to a holistic understanding of by whom, how, when, and why the environment is experienced as valuable. Our findings stress the dynamism and plurality of experienced ecosystem services (i.e., they vary across groups and time and cross-cut material and immaterial dimensions), as well as the asymmetrical gendered and fundamentally cultural relations that they enable. Accounting for the experienced gender dimension of ecosystem services is critical to contextualize the environment in people’s lifeworlds and to make understandings of ecosystem services representative of, and instrumental to, people’s voices and agendas. We show how such enriched, diverse, bottom-up ecosystem services perspectives form an essential foundation (together with ecological research) for resisting applications of reductionist top-down categories assumed to represent general local values.

This thesis examines the process and the implications of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) for local livelihoods, especially the livelihoods of those who make a living from farming. These individuals were historically known as peasants and are now more commonly referred to as smallholders, small-scale farmers or family farmers. What happens to their livelihoods as land under their control is allocated to investors?

Promoters of LSLAs stress that when land acquisitions are preceded by community consultations, there may be synergism between investors’ activities and local livelihoods. Accordingly, local farmers are expected to gain from, for example, closer ties to the market and new livelihood alternatives such as formal employment. Differently, critical voices contend that despite sound legislation on the matter, in practice LSLAs constitute drivers of dispossession, being therefore disguised land grabs. This research seeks to fill a knowledge gap on the immediate local livelihood implications of LSLAs. By employing a case study design in Mozambique (one of the countries targeted by recent LSLAs), this thesis adds empirical evidence that is crucial to the above-named theoretical debate involving LSLAs.

The analyzed case is pivoted by a Chinese company that in 2012 was granted 20,000 hectares in the lower Limpopo region. Despite legislation that asserts the legality of customary land occupation, in practice, land was seized without adequate consultation and compensation. Consequently, local farmers lost the most fertile areas. Nonetheless, farmers were able to regain or maintain access to farmland that was more peripheral and of worse quality. Concomitantly, the company generated a small number of jobs and created a contract farming scheme that, despite bottlenecks, benefited farmers who were able to handle risk. In general, families who lost land and those who entered the contract farming scheme strive to keep a foothold on farmland – a strategy that is partly explained by the economic rationale of seeking to meet the consumption needs of current and future generations. Additionally, family land is embedded with symbolic value (illustrated, for example, by individuals’ relations with ancestors buried in family land). The existence of symbolic and thus immaterial values that land embodies poses insurmountable challenges to the idea that it is possible to achieve fair compensation for the loss of land and the environment in general.

This study shows the renewed pressure (now through the hands of private actors backed by public efforts) placed on family farmers, derived livelihood trends (i.e., the overall precarization of family farming, the widening of economic inequality, and the feminization of poverty), and family farmers’ continuous endurance. Ultimately, this study illustrates local processes and livelihood implications of LSLAs in Mozambique, and likely also in contexts marked by similar democratic deficits and renewed incursions over valuable land that is intensively used. 

The local implications of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), commonly referred to as land grabs, are at the center of an exponential production of scientific literature that only seldom focuses on gender. Our case study aims to contribute to filling this analytical gap. Based on structured interviews and focus groups, we investigate local experiences in the lower Limpopo valley in Mozambique, where a Chinese investor was granted 20,000 hectares in 2012. Our findings show that land access in the affected area varied prior to land seizure due to historical land use differences and after land seizure mainly due to non-universal compensation. Furthermore, we show that as farming conditions deteriorate, a trend toward both the feminization of smallholder farming and the feminization of poverty is consolidated. Succinctly, as available land becomes increasingly constricted, labor is allocated differently to alternative activities. This process is by no means random or uniform among households, particularly in a context in which women prevail in farm activities and men prevail in off-farm work. As men disengage further from smallholder farming, women remain directly dependent on fields that are smaller and of worse quality or reliant on precarious day labor in the remaining farms. We contend that the categories female-headed and male-headed households, although not inviolable, are useful in explaining the different implications of LSLAs in areas in which gender strongly substantiates individuals’ livelihood alternatives. © 2018 The Author(s)

Community consultation prior to large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) is a cornerstone that justifies the portrayal of projects as partnerships or land grabs. This study focuses on one of the countries most targeted by LSLA in the last decade, namely, Mozambique. We examine the legal and theoretical bases that support community consultations and analyse their corresponding everyday practices in Mozambique. The article argues that, although the existence of these participatory forums is inspired by normative ideals of popular deliberation, the prevailing practices in these spaces are diametrically opposed to deliberative foundations and values. As shown in this study, this mismatch between theory that is institutionalized in legal frameworks and practice derives largely from the interplay of hierarchical relations anchored in, inter alia, formal and customary ethnically based realms, gender disparities, and livelihood orientations. A core argument of the article is that any attempt to ameliorate these practices must consider critical insights regarding the centrality of enhancing social equality and inclusion in participatory spaces —challenges that are immense in places marked by deep structural inequalities.