A group of five British, Brazilian and Colombian universities (Cardiff, KCL, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Federal University of Rondonia, in Brazil, and the National University of Colombia) intend to organise five workshops (two in the UK and three in South America) to involve international experts, national scholars and regional academic and non-academic stakeholders (such as farmer associations, local authorities, community and church organisations, cooperatives, NGOs, artists, etc.) to take part in networking activities, discuss existing knowledge and identify gaps in the state-of-the-art of agricultural frontiers in the Amazon.
The series of workshops and a coordinated engagement during two years will led to the consolidation of the Agro-Cultures Research Network, which will include additional academics in the core universities and in other regional centres of research, speakers and participants in the various workshops, and the academic, policy-making and non-academic communities. This proposed network will especially examine the socio-cultural trajectory of change in the Amazon with a focus on what we describe as ‘agro-cultural’ frontiers.
The new network will, for the first time, jointly address the intensive cultural exchanges and historical transformation of the agricultural frontiers in the Amazon. The initiative will create an innovative space for discussion and North-South interaction between academics and non-academics focused on local knowledge, habits, language and subjectivities in the context of a rapidly changing cultural and spatial reality under the influence of (unsustainable) modernisation.