Making aluminum in the rainforest: the socioeconomic impact of globalization in the Brazilian Amazon

摘要

The paper applies the theoretical model of the new historical materialism to the analysis of data from four raw materials-based communities in the Brazilian Amazon. New historical materialism argues that the characteristics of particular raw materials and the social processes of extraction, processing, and consumption shape both corporate and state development strategies, as well as the local, national, and international socioeconomic and environmental consequences of these strategies. The paper considers what the socioeconomic impacts are of incorporation based on aluminium raw materials in the current phase of globalization for one extractive periphery, the Brazilian Amazon. New historical materialism brings together the research questions and methods of the sociology of development, environmental sociology, and social impact assessment into a coherent analytic framework linking global and local processes. The four case study communities in the aluminium and linked hydroelectric industries analysed in the paper are critical cases of the effects of these linked global and local processes.