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Inventing Wilderness: Field Scientists in the Brazilian Pantanal, 1910-1930

Sat, April 2, 8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Seattle Hotel, Grand Crescent

Abstract

This paper examines the role of field scientists – including anthropologists, zoologists, botanists, and others – in the social construction of wilderness in the Brazilian Pantanal. By the first decade of the twentieth century, field scientists from the United States and Europe came to the Pantanal in increasing numbers. Due to their expertise and authority they held significant power, perhaps more than any other social group, to shape wider perceptions about the Pantanal, its resources, and its people. After Theodore Roosevelt’s highly-publicized expedition (1913-14) – underwritten by the American Museum of Natural History – the Pantanal quickly gained a reputation as one of the best locations in South America for botanical and zoological specimen collection and multiple scientific institutions from both Brazil and the United States undertook collecting expeditions there in the following decades. Unlike nineteenth century naturalists, twentieth century field scientists had little interest in studying the region’s rural inhabitants, including the small indigenous communities who served as seasonal workers on the Pantanal’s isolated cattle ranches. Instead, they presented the inhabitants of the Pantanal as a poor and undifferentiated population of rural laborers, unworthy of anthropological study. While they depended upon these same people to serve as guides during collecting and research activities, field scientists rarely recognized their “helpers” as reliable sources of ecological knowledge. Through their writings and other emerging tools of mass media, twentieth century field scientists were thus crucial in disseminating and popularizing images of the Pantanal as an unpeopled and exotic landscape.

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