In my doctoral research, I ask: how does inequality shape and limit processes of climate change mitigation and development? With the support of a Fulbright IIE Fellowship and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, I answered this question by conducting a multi-sited ethnography of the sugar-ethanol industry in Brazil, where mills widely adopted new labor and environmental standards. My dissertation – Fire, Families, and Farmworkers: Changing the Nature of Power and Opportunity in the Cane Fields – examines how business growth and pro-poor policies challenged prevailing relations between owners, workers, and the environment on mills. I interviewed industry elites, such as the owners and managers of mills, and conducted observations of activities at mills. By viewing inequality and power from above, I was able to glean unique insight on how elites negotiated compliance with new policies for equity and sustainability while also seeking to preserve and expand existing privileges and advantages.
Three findings emerge. First, evidence illustrates that policies to improve labor conditions for seasonal farmworkers, such as cane-cutters, spurred owners and managers to mechanize harvesting activities. As I explain in a recent article in Environmental Sociology, a secondary effect of mechanization is the elimination of pre-harvest field burning, a labor-saving practice that generates CO2 emissions and atmospheric pollution. Second, I find that the ethanol boom triggered a race among cane elites to buy farmland and build new mills. In this scramble, elites sought to preserve power and advantage, as well as expand dynastic privilege and status for future heirs. Third, evidence shows that environmental racism can explain the persistence of straw burning on mills in northeast Brazil, where legacies of slavery and sharecropping continue to racialize attitudes, practices, and policies related to rural work and toxic exposure.
Three findings emerge. First, evidence illustrates that policies to improve labor conditions for seasonal farmworkers, such as cane-cutters, spurred owners and managers to mechanize harvesting activities. As I explain in a recent article in Environmental Sociology, a secondary effect of mechanization is the elimination of pre-harvest field burning, a labor-saving practice that generates CO2 emissions and atmospheric pollution. Second, I find that the ethanol boom triggered a race among cane elites to buy farmland and build new mills. In this scramble, elites sought to preserve power and advantage, as well as expand dynastic privilege and status for future heirs. Third, evidence shows that environmental racism can explain the persistence of straw burning on mills in northeast Brazil, where legacies of slavery and sharecropping continue to racialize attitudes, practices, and policies related to rural work and toxic exposure.
Sugarcane farmland in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil
Sugarcane farmland in the state of Alagoas, Brazil
A small farmer delivering harvested cane to a sugar-ethanol mill in the state of São Paulo, Brazil
