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Informationen zum Autor Antoine Acker earned his Ph.D. at the European University Institute, Florence and has extensively researched and taught in seven different countries on a broad range of topics including environmental and Brazilian history, German culture and language, as well as political sciences. He was a lecturer at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris (2013–2014), at the Université de La Rochelle, France (2014–2015) and a guest scholar at Universität Bielefeld, Germany, Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands and Universität Bern, Switzerland (2015–2016). He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy in affiliation with the Marie Curie Excellence Fellowships program co-funded by the European Commission. Klappentext From 1973 to 1987, Volkswagen's (VW) 140,000 hectare 'pioneer' cattle ranch on the Amazon frontier laid bare the limits of capitalist development. These limits were not only economic, with the core management of a multinational company engaged in the 'integration' of an extreme world periphery, but they were also legal and ethical, with the involvement of indentured labor and massive forest burning. Its physical limits were exposed by an unpredictable ecosystem refusing to submit to VW's technological arsenal. Antoine Acker reveals how the VW ranch, a major project supported by the Brazilian military dictatorship, was planned, negotiated, and eventually undone by the intervention of internationally connected actors and events. Zusammenfassung This book studies the interplay between deforestation! forced labor! and capitalist development in the Amazon through a case study involving Volkswagen in the years of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Focused on both international and local connections! it shows how an agenda for tropical rainforests emerged through economic globalization. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Setting the stage: the Amazon as a horizon; 2. The making of a model ranch (1973-1976); 3. Development in the age of scarcity (1976-1983); 4. Out-of-date modernity: forced labor at Cristalino (1983-1986); 5. Cristalino's unhappy ending....
