Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Brazil Initiative

Bate-Papo Político com Fábio Zucker: Plantations, Autoritarismo e Guerra Ecológica no Brasil

Bate Papo

Thursday, April 13, 2023

6:00pm – 7:30pm

Kim Koo Library, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street

Plantations, Autoritarismo e Guerra Ecológica no Brasil
Durante a última eleição presidencial no Brasil (2022), uma série de mapas mostraram a correlação entre plantations contemporâneas com uma perspectiva política autoritária. O objetivo desta apresentação é trazer ideias seminais, e submetê-las a um debate público, acerca das relações entre plantations e autoritarismo como expressões de uma guerra ecológica. Importa, pensar que relações políticas, etnico-raciais, ecológicas, sanitárias e de desigualdade são ensejadas pelas plantations (levando em consideração uma perspectiva histórica das plantations como a própria forma de produção que possibilitou o habitar colonial).

Plantations, authoritarianism, and ecological warfare
During the last presidential election in Brazil (2022), a series of maps showed the correlation between contemporary plantations, with an authoritarian political perspective. The purpose of this presentation is to bring seminal ideas about the relationship between plantations and authoritarianism as expressions of an ecological war. It is important to think about which political, racial, ecological, sanitary, and inequality relations are enhanced by plantations (taking into account a historical perspective of plantations as the very form of production that made the settler-colonial enterprise possible).

Fábio Zuker é jornalista multimídia, antropólogo e ensaísta. Está agora como pós-doutorando no Brazil Lab da Princeton University. Como jornalista freelancer, já publicou com o Nexo Jornal, O Joio e o Trigo, Agência Pública, Thomson Reuters Foundation, InfoAmazonia, Amazônia Real, National Geographic Brasil, revista Piauí, Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Guardian, Wired, Mongabay entre outros meios. Foi bolsista do Rainforest Journalism Fund em parceria com o Pulitzer Center em três ocasiões. É autor de “Vida e morte de uma baleia minke no rio Tapajós e outras histórias da Amazônia” (Publication Studio SP, 2019 – publicado em inglês em 2022 pela Milkweed editions) e “Em rota de fuga: ensaios sobre escrita, medo e violência” (Hedra, 2020). Em 2022 finalizou seu doutorado em Antropologia Social pela Universidade de São Paulo, com período como pesquisador visitante na Cornell University, nos Estados Unidos.

Fábio Zuker holds his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), and his research focused on the destruction of life forms on the banks of the Tapajós River (Brazilian Amazon) and Indigenous ways of doing politics and creating worlds. His research interests span from Indigenous ecologies and politics, environmental violence, deforestation, plantations, and infrastructures - mainly in the Amazon region. In 2022, he was a visiting scholar at Cornell University. He is the author of "The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon: Dispatches from the Brazilian Rainforest" (Milkweeds, 2022), which was praised by the New York Times section of books in translation and The Los Angeles Review of Book. As a journalist, Zuker has been a Pulitzer Center grantee three times. He has published with a wide variety of media outlets, including National Geographic, Wired, The Guardian, and Thomson Reuters Foundation, as well as the main media outlets in Brazil. He is also the author of "Em Rota de Fuga: ensaios sobre escrita, medo e violência" (Hedra, 2020). He is now working on editing his Ph.D. dissertation, turning it into articles and a book. He has given talks and conferences at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, the IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and several Brazilian institutions.