Doctoral Dissertation Research: Petro-Politics at the Grassroots: Big Oil, Environmental Education and Governance in Brazil

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Brown University doctoral student Paula S. Dias, guided by Dr. Jessaca Leinaweaver, will undertake research on how economic development projects linked to oil extraction affect and illuminate local politics and social dynamics. As some governments delegate development responsiblities to resource extraction corporations as a cost of doing business, the effects of these extraction activities are broadened, often in ways that are unanticipated. This project will trace how these impacts are understood and experienced and what these impacts reveal about local political processes and their relation to higher level politics more generally. The research will be conducted in Brazil, where government regulation of oil extraction is coupled with mandatory community-level, oil company-funded Environmental Education (EE) projects.Dias will carry out 12 months of ethnographic research in Quilombo da Rasa, a community of Afro-descendants ("maroons") located in northeast Brazil. She will collect data on the relationship between EE and community politics at two levels: (1) the broader level of political practices and relations with state agencies; and (2) the more micro level of community social dynamics. She will employ a mix of social science research methods including participant observation, interviews, and archival research. Findings from this research will contribute to social science theory of how political processes work throughout the chain of relationships, from national institutions to community-level power dynamics. The research also will help policy makers to understand the broader logics of governance that bridge strategic interests of resource extraction with progressive environmental legislation and state regulation of corporations. Funding this research supports the education of a graduate student.