Frontier: Reflections on the Meaning and Fertility of This Concept in Amazonian Urban Studies

Abstract

Frontiers are generally defined as sparsely populated peripheral geographic areas compared to the political-economic centers in which demographic or accelerated technological processes are manifested. In Amazonia, the frontier have been characterized as the first wave of modernity to penetrate the coast of unexplored territories. The definitions of frontiers in the Amazon have been linked to colonial, imperial forces and capitalist economies. All have caused the arrival and formation of several social groups that, as a whole, have defined the long-term globalization process. But this region, in any case, does not fall within this definition. Modernity has reached its shores for centuries, and Amazonians have reacted in so many ways that Amazonian space and society is a fragmented skirt of time frames. In this sense, the hypothesis supported by this article, in urban and territorial studies, is that the common characterization of Amazonia as a frontier should be deeply revised. This territory has been part of the capitalist world system for more than five centuries and may be better be conceived and interpreted as a composition of enclave environments, economies and ecologies, whose relationships to external political and socio-economic powers is deeply rooted and far less fragile than the frontier usage implies. Methodologically, the analysis focuses on socio-spatial and territorial planning literature about Amazonia and concerning Amazonian territorial constructions highlighting those many factors that seem to contribute to the continued plausibility of the frontier notion. Principal results are related to the construction of a critique to the sense, value and fertility of the concept of 'frontier' un urban and territorial planning practices in contemporary Amazonian territories.