MOTOBOOM · The Current Impact of Motorcycle Motorisation on Amazonian Indigenous Peoples
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-02-01 → 2025-01-31
- EU contribution
- €188,590
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The Current Impact of Motorcycle Motorisation on Amazonian Indigenous Peoples
Over the last century, the indigenous landscape of the South American Lowlands has been increasingly shaped by steamboats, railways, trucks, chainsaws, and electric generators, introduced by missionaries, extractive industries, armies, development projects, and NGOs. However, anthropological and historical research has largely overlooked this ‘mechanical colonization’ of indigenous life. Notably, little to no research exists on a striking aspect of modernization in these marginalized territories: the rapid spread of motorcycles in recent decades and their profound social, economic, and environmental impacts. Therefore, the MOTOBOOM project seeks to conduct a groundbreaking interdisciplinary analysis of motorcycle dissemination among indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon, offering both academic and practical contributions. Academically, it will provide an ethnographic examination of indigenous motorcycle appropriation, mechanical knowledge, and the social, economic, environmental, health, symbolic, and gender-related repercussions of motorcycle use. Practically, it aims to inform public policy and local community initiatives on road safety and accident prevention in marginalized contexts. By undertaking this research program at my host institution, Ca’ Foscari University Venice (UNIVE), the project will fill a crucial gap in anthropological studies on indigenous modernity, societal transformation, and technological change. Additionally, it will strengthen my expertise as a professor and researcher in environmental anthropology, gender studies, science and technology studies, and digital humanities.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
During the last century, the indigenous South American Lowlands have been colonized by steamboats, railways, trucks, chainsaws, fire-weapons and electric generators introduced by missionaries, extractive industries, armies, development projects, and NGOs. However, anthropological and historical research has largely neglected this mechanic colonisation of indigenous life by focusing on topics such as ideologies of personhood, kinship, cosmology, and relations with animals, religious missions and non-human spirits. Aiming at understanding social change, some studies have dealt with some of the new materialities that model everyday experience: t-shirts, outboard motors, solar panels, and cell phones. Nevertheless, not even a single study has analysed a conspicuous fact of the modernization of these marginal territories: the current tide of motorcycles that during the last few decades altered dramatically the interethnic landscape, and its social, economic and environmental repercussions which are significantly reshaping current indigenous reality. Therefore, the goal is to develop a ground breaking and interdisciplinary analysis of the effects of motorcycle dissemination among the indigenous peoples of Bolivian Amazonia, and to achieve practical impact regarding public policies on road safety and prevention of accidents in marginal contexts. By accomplishing the Work-Packages in my host institution Ca’ Foscari University (UNIVE), the project will therefore fill a significant gap in anthropological studies regarding indigenous modernity, while at the same time consolidating my position as a professor and researcher with updated capacities on visual and environmental anthropology, gender issues, science and technology studies, and digital humanities.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101060942
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e502ee95b9&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e515e9ed6f&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5f87666c0&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union