Culture and environmental relational values at Amazonian farm-forest frontiers

Lafayette, Jordan O. (2026) Culture and environmental relational values at Amazonian farm-forest frontiers. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Large-scale tropical deforestation threatens biodiversity, global climatic stability, and the livelihoods of forest-dependent people. The Brazilian Amazon harbours tremendous cultural diversity, rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, forest management practices, and centuries of adaptations by Amazonian peasantry. Yet annual deforestation has been high for decades, driven primarily by agricultural frontier expansion, characterized by violent dispossession of forest-dependent communities by illegal loggers and cattle ranchers. Quantitative analyses have focused on economic, spatial and political factors, largely neglecting the role of culture in land-use decisions. In contrast, ethnographic work demonstrates that forest clearance for pasture coincides with the emergence of an Amazonian cattle culture. This thesis examines the relationship between culture and regional-scale environmental change, investigating how cultural expression and environmental relational values are associated with land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) at deforestation frontiers. I employ novel demographic approaches to quantifying cultural expression at largespatial scales, analysing 3,427 songs played on 1,069 local radio stations across the Brazilian Amazon to perform the first cross-sectional culture~environment study to my knowledge. To link cultural expression and relational values to environmental histories and rural modes of production thousands of kilometres apart, I conducted fieldwork in four municipalities, ranging from one with 98% remaining forest cover and few cattle to another with 73% forest remaining and over 2.4 million cattle, the largest herd in Brazil. I developed and administered a novel survey to rural and urban people in each municipality, examining cultural expression associated with traditional Amazonian identities, cattle culture, and people’s relationships with their local environment. My results demonstrate that cultural identities and relational values across Amazonia are highly heterogenous and are associated with local land use, migration histories, and frontier expansion. I show that deforestation has complex and significant cultural dimensions and provide evidence that cattle culture is displacing traditional forest cultures as deforestation transforms landscapes. Recognising the cultural dimensions of LULCC in Amazonia is therefore critical to protecting forests and cultures of forestproximate people who have underpinned people-centred conservation in Brazil and elsewhere.