This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Angela M. Steward to work with Dr. Deborah de Magalhaes Lima at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.
In recent years there has been a marked increase in the number of studies on the African diaspora in Brazil. Quilombo communities, towns and villages first settled by African slaves escaping bondage, represent a particularly burgeoning field. With few exceptions, however, research on Afro-Brazilians has been restricted to the Northeast and Southern regions of Brazil. Despite the presence of Afro-Brazilians in Amazonia for over 400 years, virtually no research on Afro- Brazilians has been conducted in this area. Moreover, almost no research on the African diaspora in Brazil has emerged from the human-environment sciences. While patterns of resource management practices by other cultural groups in Amazonia, such as Amerindians and the mixed peasantry (caboclos) have been widely documented, almost few studies have been conducted in Afro-Amazonian societies. Working in two quilombo communities in the Amazonian state of Amapá, Brazil this research seeks to document local perceptions of nature, environmental knowledge systems, and patterns of natural resource management. The project employs an interdisciplinary approach to determine if residents in the study area maintain a natural resource management system distinct from other cultural groups in the region. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, the project further documents changes in land-use throughout history and the shifting role of rural activities to local economies and to residents? sense of personal identity.
This project enhances research in the human-environment sciences by examining the role of African descended peoples to natural resource management practices, patterns of biodiversity, and landscape formations in Brazil.
