Deforestation, Grass-Cutting Ants, and Multispecies Landscape Change in Postcolonial Brazil

Without denying its striking destructiveness, deforestation can be seen as a socio-ecological process through which humans negotiate their place-making with the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants. In this article I combine qualitative and geospatial methods to document and analyse how forest clearing drove the range expansion of Atta ants in southeast Brazil over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, I outline the main deforestation drivers and dynamics, focusing on the connections between clearing practices and Atta habitat formation. Then, using Historical GIS methods, I examine the regional process of ‘savannisation’ and how it fuelled the expansion of two grass-cutting species. Imported African grasses such as Melinis minutiflora played a key role in the historical assemblage that both produced and was produced by the savannised landscapes. I conclude by highlighting the multispecies agential character of the Anthropocene as a product not only of human doings but of what humans enable (or prevent) other living beings to do.

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UCL Institute of the Americas is delighted to collaborate with the Institute of Historical Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London) and other leading institutions in the organisation of this series