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Society for Economic Anthropology
Oral Presentation Session
Thomas Hanson
University of Colorado
In the fire prone Chiquitanía region of eastern Bolivia the landscape is rapidly changing. These changes are due to the intersections of a constellation of emergent elements across scales. The confluence of development, climate change, resource grabs, natural resource policy, and land change is altering resource access, land tenure, and fire regimes. Within this shifting context risk and vulnerability are unevenly distributed across the landscape and population. Dynamics in the material and social landscape create new zones of risk and produce new forms of vulnerability in and for communities. In Bolivia’s eastern frontier, fire inhabits a liminal space between utilitarian and disastrous amid “21st century socialism” where many people must burn to make a living but fire also threatens life and livelihood.