The 'Places' of the Amazon in International Relations: (Re)Thinking IR from the Meeting Amazônia Centro do Mundo

Abstract

In this paper, we have a double-fold objective. On the one hand, we ask: “what are the ‘places’ of the Amazonia in IR studies in Brazil?”. On the other hand, we asked about the potential to rethink some assumptions of the discipline based on a recent event, the Meeting Amazônia Centro do Mundo. To answer the first question, we systematized academic productions in IR presented/published in the last three National Meetings of the Brazilian Association of International Relations (ABRI) and in the journals Carta Internacional, Contexto Internacional and Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional. We organize the results obtained in terms of: (1) allocation in ABRI's thematic areas; (2) thematic divisions in categories identified by us; (3) productions by geographic region of Brazil and (4) thematic divisions by geographic region. Based on what we observed about the studies of Amazonia in Brazilian IR, we propose an “other inscription” of Amazonia in the discipline from the Amazônia Centro do Mundo Meeting (EACM) and the perspectives and demands of the “peoples of the forest” articulated there. On this basis, we present a brief critical reflection on the concepts of “power” and “resistance” in IR, and conclude by pointing out the potentialities of the EACM to think about the potential of a “cosmopolitics from Amazonia”.