Discovery in the Amazon Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Discovery in the Amazon - Case Study Example It can also be speculated that the pipeline will give rise to cases of dispossession. The orthodox frame might argue that the pipeline will finally help in the integration of the tribes into the market economy and thus introduce them to the benefits o the development, but a more critical perspective would go further and question, â€Å"what/who has kept them out?† – thus referencing a historical divergence point that has created a global system wherein the wealth of one class limits the development possibilities of the other. In diametric opposition to the claim that it was the birth of capitalism (and the ability to produce capital) that was the turning point in the West and what freed people from poverty, there are arguments that the beginnings of formal property rights was what led to the extinction of customary and collective rights and the deprivation of access to land and other resources of the marginalized. And while the Capitalist-driven frame traces the roots of poverty to the existence of barriers to the market exchange of land and resources, the counter-frame questions the logic of this commodification and exposes the flaws of an unfettered market exchange. This would result in a slew of other human rights violations such as food sovereignty and land sovereignty. Moreover, there is a clear violation of the autonomy and self-determination of the indigenous tribes that occupy the areas in Ecuador to be affected by the pipeline. Western thought has cultivated the notion that there is but one trajectory towards progress and development, and this can be quantified in material terms. Development, according to Western thought, means roads and infrastructure, access to markets and trading, a quality life that approaches, if not approximates Western life as it is known. But this kind of thinking is in itself an imposition of a Western imaginary that obscures equally legitimate ways of living and