A Different Story in the Anthropocene: Brazil’s Post-Colonial Quest for Oil (1930–1975)*

2020 ◽  
Vol 249 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-211
Author(s):  
Antoine Acker
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Oil Production ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Western Industrial Society ◽  
Founding Myth ◽  
Insatiable Appetite

Abstract This article aims to identify new historical causes for the making of the Anthropocene (the rise of humans to a geological force) by addressing Brazil’s transformation into an oil producer and an oil-dependent country between 1930 and 1975. This example allows an escape from the essentialist explanation of the Anthropocene as the result of humans’ insatiable appetite for consumption, commonly rooted in an analysis of Western industrial society, and to focus instead on the notion of freedom in a former colony. Indeed, in the context of nation-building and modernization debates, petroleum appeared to many Brazilians as an opportunity to emancipate the country from its peripheral role as global raw material provider. The rise of petroleum gave a post-colonial sense to the nation-founding myth of Brazil’s exceptional nature, which served as romantic background for a movement towards resource sovereignty embedded into a global anti-imperialist context. In Brazil specifically, oil production became an opportunity for a process of ecological transformation that promised to rid the country of colonial landscapes of exploitation, and even appeared as a solution for stopping the unsustainable destruction of tropical forests. Ultimately, these petro-ideals of emancipation, by positively linking nature and the nation, also hindered fully detecting the scope of the pollution problems that oil was generating. As argued in the article’s conclusion, this example should rekindle the discussion about the unintended link between freedom and geological change in the analysis of Anthropocene causalities.

scholarly journals Recent (Re)Visions of Canlit: Partial Stock-Taking

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (s2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rzepa
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Current State ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
Globalising World

Abstract This article approaches recent discussions on the state of contemporary CanLit as a body of literary texts, an academic field, and an institution. The discussion is informed primarily by a number of recent or relatively recent publications, such as Trans.CanLit. Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (Kamboureli & Miki 2007), Refuse. CanLit in Ruins (McGregor, Rak & Wunker 2018), Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada (McWatt, Maharaj & Brand 2018), and the discussions and/or controversies some of those generated – expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly essays, but also through tweets, etc. The texts have been written as a response to the current state and – in some cases – scandals of CanLit. Many constitute attempts at starting or contributing to a discussion aimed at not only taking stock of, but also reinterpreting and re-defining the field and the institution in view of the challenges of the globalising world. Perhaps more importantly, they address also the challenges resulting from the rift between CanLit as implicated in the (post)colonial nation-building project and rigid institutional structures, perpetuating the silencings, erasures, and hierarchies resulting from such entanglements, and actual literary texts produced by an increasingly diversified group of writers working with a widening range of topics and genres, and creating often intimate, autobiographically inspired art with a sense of responsibility to marginalised communities. The article concludes with the example of Indigenous writing and the position some young Indigenous writers take in the current discussions.

1. Introduction to Africa and its politics

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ian Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Core ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The Impact

Africa is a continent of over a billion people, yet questions of underdevelopment, malgovernance, and a form of political life based upon patronage are characteristic of many African states. ‘Introduction to Africa and its politics’ explains that the core questions underpinning this VSI centre on how politics is typically practised on the continent; the nature of the state in Africa; and what accounts for Africa’s underdevelopment. This VSI aims to appraise sub-Saharan Africa’s recent political history, examining post-colonial political structures, the impact of colonialism, and the form and nature of post-colonial states. The type of politics practised in many African states continues to be hostile to genuine nation building and broad-based, sustainable development.

CONSERVATION, DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTALISM: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND FUTURE IMPERATIVES

1990 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 399
Author(s):  
P.G. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
World View ◽  
Petroleum Industry ◽  
Conservation Strategy ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Conservation Practice ◽  
Conservation And Development ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Western Industrial Society

Throughout history the city and the wilderness have been both idea and environment for urban man. The conflict between them is expressed in the earliest mythology and manifest today in the conservation versus development debate. The conflict is misdirected: conservation and development are interdependent. They are the same process on different time scales: the sustainance and security of life on earth. Their reconciliation is proposed in the concept of sustainable development.The widespread concern about the environment in the industrialised, developed societies today combines scientific and emotional components. The scientific component is a new and valuable appreciation of, and commitment to, the global ecology. The emotional component is more an anti-technology mood, an historically cyclic phenomenon of complex origins. Modern environmentalism is a complex amalgamation of those environmental concerns with wide ranging socio-economic and political reforms. Those reforms frequently involve the concept of no-growth or very limited economic growth, especially in Western industrial society, and derive from a pessimistic world view historically common among intellectuals. It is environmentalism, not conservationism, which is in conflict with the concept of development.A successful petroleum industry is vital to Australia's future security and welfare. The main threat to the industry comes from environmentalism, and the confusing myriad of legislation and regulation it has sponsored. Of particular significance is the policy of excluding exploration from conservation areas, rather than adopting a multiple and sequential land use approach. The single-usage approach to land management is inefficient balancing of resources and, correspondingly, is poor conservation practice. Multiple land use is a fundamental tenet of the sustainable development and the National Conservation Strategy of Australia.APEA, and business and industry generally, must improve communications with the public. The significance of primary resources in the daily life and national economy must be retaught. Industry must play a leading role in defining and implementing sustainable development, and in championing the concept. The concept will be attacked and manipulated by no-growth environmentalists, but they must not be allowed to prevail.Sustainable development offers the present generations the chance to reconcile conservation and development. That reconciliation is an imperative for the future.

The Power of Social Movements and the Limits of Pluralism: Tracing Rastafarianism and Indigenous Resurgence through Commonwealth Caribbean Law and Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2_3) ◽  
pp. 136-164
Author(s):  
Emily Becker
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Caribbean Culture ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
History Of ◽  
Commonwealth Caribbean

In the post-colonial era, social movements in the Commonwealth Caribbean have empowered citizens to reclaim, redefine and further develop their identity. These movements, combined with a history of colonialism and transatlantic slavery in the region, have yielded a Caribbean culture “too diverse to be labeled.” Indeed, the Caribbean culture is composed of “a bastion of discrete identities as well as quarries of very invaluable raw material that can be used to build the bridges across cultural boundaries.” These distinct but potentially overlapping identities make the Commonwealth Caribbean a truly pluralistic region, at least at the cultural and social level. As modern legal and political systems, however, the states of the Commonwealth Caribbean have, in many ways, failed to sufficiently protect the non-dominant groups within Caribbean. Indeed, attempts to balance the majoritarian demands of democracy against the pluralist notion of minority rights protection have landed largely on the side of majorities.

The New Environment of Nation-Building

1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Jordan ◽  
John P. Renninger
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Bureaucratic Corruption ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Building Process

What is Africa doing wrong? Africans as well as others are increasingly asking this question. We are, in effect, invited to consider that there are, perhaps, negative as well as positive aspects to the nation-building process in post-colonial Africa. To the layman, indeed, the image of Africa has tended to accentuate the negative. The strife in the Congo during the early 1960s, the civil war in Nigeria, numerous military coups d'etat and political assassinations, bureaucratic corruption, disappointing progress in the economic field, and more recently famine and drought, all could lead to the conclusion that efforts at nationbuilding have been less than successful.

Microbial Oil Production from Lignocellulosic Biomass – Recent Development and Prospect

2014 ◽  
Vol 541-542 ◽  
pp. 397-403
Author(s):  
Zhang Nan Lin ◽  
Hong Juan Liu ◽  
Zhi Qin Wang ◽  
Jia Nan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Lignocellulosic Biomass ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Oil Production ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Biodiesel Production ◽  
Microbial Oil ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Application Potential

Microbial oil is one of the ideal raw materials for biodiesel production because of its rapid reproduction and less influence by the climate and season variation. However, the high cost is one of the key issues that restricted its production in a large-scale. Lignocellulosic biomass, the cheap and renewable resource, might be the best raw material for microbial oil production by oleaginous microorganisms. Recent development on the microbial oil production from lignocellulosic biomass was summarized in this paper. Furthermore, the challenges and application potential of microbial oil were prospected.

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