Inscribed in the margins : envisioning road colonization in Peru's age of development
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: History, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Sharon, Tucker
issued: 2017-10-19T17:06:23Z
issued: 2017
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Inscribed in the Margins chronicles the socio-ecological changes that attended the colonization of Peru’s Huallaga Valley from the 1950s through the 1980s. Focused on the project of road colonization, a style of both formal and informal colonization centered around the building of a 1,500-km highway called the Carretera Marginal de la Selva, the study examines the Huallaga’s hodgepodge of stymied development schemes in a way that transcends the terse logic of political economy to implicate development’s broader epistemological regime, one that enlisted architecture, photography, cartography and criminality as much as science and politics to impose its vision on the land. Throughout, the author develops the concept of inscription as a way of understanding how environmental imaginings effect tangible socio-ecological change, arguing that the epistemological features that undergirded nature’s (primarily visual) representation as an object of development are crucial, yet often overlooked, factors in the Huallaga’s reconfiguration as a vast matrix of eco-assemblages adapted to an amalgam of capitalism and patriarchy. The study explores how photographic rituals figured in processes of imagining development; how Cold War technoscience facilitated the Huallaga’s emergence as a developable site; and how the very gendered environmental narrative constructed around the Huallaga’s colonial project all conspired to inscribe a myopic vision of Amazonian nature into the landscape. The primary sources consulted include photographs and documents from the community development program Cooperación Popular; the writings of early climate scientist, Leslie Holdridge; aerial photography from Peru’s Servicio Aerofotográfico Nacional; feasibility studies; and criminal cases from the superior courts of Huánuco and San Martín. By emphasizing the transnational dimensions of road colonization, as well as the wide variety of professional, cultural, political and historical notions that fuelled i…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/63367
note: INSCRIBED IN THE MARGINS: ENVISIONING ROAD COLONIZATION IN PERU’S AGE OF DEVELOPMENT by Tucker Sharon A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (History) The University of British Columbia (Vancouver) October, 2017 © Tucker Sharon, 2017 ii Abstract Inscribed in the Margins chronicles the socio-­‐ecological changes that attended the colonization of Peru’s Huallaga Valley from the 1950s through the 1980s. Focused on the project of road colonization, a style of both formal and informal colonization centered around the building of a 1,500-­‐km highway called the Carretera Marginal de la Selva, the study examines the Huallaga’s hodgepodge of stymied development schemes in a way that transcends the terse logic of political economy to implicate development’s broader epistemological regime, one that enlisted architecture, photography, cartography and criminality as much as science and politics to impose its vision on the land. Throughout, the author develops the concept of inscription as a way of understanding how environmental imaginings effect tangible socio-­‐ecological change, arguing that the epistemological features that undergirded nature’s (primarily visual) representation as an object of development are crucial, yet often overlooked, factors in the Huallaga’s reconfiguration as a vast matrix of eco-­‐assemblages adapted to an amalgam of capitalism and patriarchy. The study explores how photographic rituals figured in processes of imagining development; how Cold War technoscience facilitated the Huallaga’s emergence as a developable site; and how the very gendered environmental narrative constructed around the Huallaga’s colonial project all conspired to inscribe a myopic vision of Amazonian nature into the landscape. The primary sources consulted include photographs and documents from the community development program Cooperación Popular; the writings of e…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2017-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0357189
language: eng
degree discipline: History
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/63367