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Jungle Cities: The Urbanisation of Amazonia
05 December 2022, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
An event part of the UCL Institute of the Americas Environment and Society in the Americas Seminar series
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
UCL Institute of the Americas
Location
-
IAS Common GroundSouth WingGower StreetLondonWC1E 6BT
The population of the Amazon Rainforest became predominantly urban in the twentieth century. In Brazil and Peru, the two countries that comprise the majority of Amazonia, 80% of the region’s people now live in cities. The process of accelerated urbanization and economic dynamism finally took off after decades of urban decline after the end of the Amazon Rubber Boom (c. 1850-1920). Far from inevitable, city growth was driven by contingent local and national sociopolitical processes, deliberate developmental and geopolitical agendas, and policy decisions. Focusing on the diverging histories of Manaus, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru, the largest Amazonian cities in each country and in the Upper Amazon, I argue that the military dictatorships that ruled Brazil (1964-1985) and Peru (1968-1980) constituted critical junctures in this process. Paying particular attention to the socio-environmental history of each city and their relationships with their hinterlands, I show how the military regimes set Manaus and Iquitos, and their vast rainforest surroundings, into different, long-lasting developmental paths.
An event part of the UCL Americas seminar series Environments and Society in the Americas, with kind support from the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS).
About the Speaker
Dr Adrián Lerner
Research Associate and Lecturer at Freie Universitaet Berlin
Adrián Lerner joined Freie Universität Berlin as a postdoc in Global History in 2021. He is a historian of cities, environmental history, the history of science, and Latin America. His current monograph, Jungle Cities: The Urbanization of Amazonia explores the parallel and divergent histories of Manaus (Brazil) and Iquitos (Peru), the crucial urban nodes of the Amazon rainforest. He is also working on two co-edited volumes: one about the links between capitalism and the formation of the ecological imagination in Peru (with Javier Puente, Smith College), and one about Peru from the perspective of global history (with Alberto Vergara, Universidad del Pacífico). He has also published widely on the histories of politics, international relations, gender, and public policy in Latin America. He has wide research interests in the history of Amazonia, the urbanization of the Global South, and, most recently, the rise of global infrastructure and business.
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