PARENT SESSION
Symposium 3: Complex Interactions Between Human Population and the Environment: Integrating Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Ecological Perspectives .
Organized by: Jianguo(Jack) Liu and RL Clark
Monday, August 2, 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, Oregon Ballroom 204.
Household life cycle and land use in the Brazilian Amazon.
VanWey, Leah*,1, 2, Brondizio, Eduardo1, 3, D'Antona, Alvaro1, Moran, Emilio1, 3, Siqueira, Andrea1, 1 Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT), Bloomington, IN, USA2 Department of Sociology, Bloomington, IN, USA3 Department of Anthropology, Bloomington, IN, USA
ABSTRACT- This paper examines the role of the household life cycle in land use allocation and deforestation behavior of farming households in the Brazilian Amazon. A household forms when a young married couple sets up an independent residence. As this household moves through time, the demography (number of people, age and gender composition) of the household changes. Young households clear forest and plant annuals for immediate income. As children become old enough to work families change their land use to guarantee stable and long term productivity (e.g. through cattle ranching or perennial crops). Our work focuses on two study areas. The first is around the city of Altamira, site of a government settlement program along the TransAmazon highway in the 1970s. Families in this area are first generation on their land. The second, around the city of Santarem at the confluence of the Amazon and Tapajos Rivers, has been settled for centuries. In the two study areas, we collected sociodemographic information from 890 households living on 702 farm lots. We use remotely sensed data in the sample selection, in the collection of data from respondents, and in analyses. We describe the trajectories of household demographic change and land use change over the household life cycle, comparing families who have lived on their land for differing lengths of time. Households do follow the hypothesized pattern of labor availability and consumption needs across their life cycle. However, households are not completely constrained by them. Independent households on the same lot share resources, allowing land to be farmed (by children) even when owners are elderly and unable to work. Land use patterns follow the hypothesized trajectory, but later generation households move more quickly from the annuals stage to the perennials or pasture stage. We conclude by discussing the implications of these household level patterns for landscape level patterns.
Key words: household, land use, human demography, Amazon