Dissertation Research

My dissertation is twofold and exposes two major findings. The first part exhibits how the concepts of "sustainability" and "sustainable development" were created, circulated and consumed in Ecuadorean society and Latin America at large in the late 20th and 21st centuries. The second part reveals the racial, environmental, and legal injustices caused by sustainable development projects in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

I conducted ethnographic field work and archival research to better understand:

1. the history of sustainable development projects in Latin America
2. the cultural production sponsored by the Ecuadorean government to promote the concepts of "sustainability" and "sustainable development." This included studying government websites, social media campaigns, the Constitution, films, books, art, monuments, postages, the construction of new cities or towns, and conducting 1:1 interviews with communities in the Amazon
3. the impact sustainable development projects had in neighboring communities

In the first part of my dissertation I conducted fieldwork to study the cultural production created or sponsored by the Ecuadorean government concerning the concepts of "sustainability" and "sustainable development." This allowed me to understand what ideas and concepts Ecuadorean citizens consumed, and their reception. I recruited and moderated focus groups to understand citizens' feelings towards billboards, commercials, and laws involving these two concepts. I conducted research in six cities to identify a pattern in the creation and circulation of ideas.

For the second part of my dissertation, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in indigenous and peasant communities who were most affected by sustainable development projects in the Amazon. My work was groundbreaking as it shed light on the Millennium Cities Project - an urban development project in the Amazon created in 2013. I exposed how the city's infrastructure was failing after just five years, and how several oil spills caused irreparable damage to local communities and their environments.

Though my interdisciplinary research specializes in the remoteness of the Ecuadorean Amazon, it offers an expansive scope of the global interdependencies between the climate crisis, resurgent nationalisms and environmental racism.