The Social Life of Amazon Forests: From Geopolitical Scramble to Eco-Catastrophe to Tropical Paradigm?

Professor Hecht is a specialist on tropical development in Latin America, especially the Amazon Basin and Central America. Her research focuses political economies of development. She also studies their comparative environmental and social impacts. She explores the alternatives to destructive development, and analyzes the forms of conservation in inhabited landscapes whether through indigenous technologies, non timber extractive products, niche markets as new tenurial forms, social movements and globalization, including the role of remittances and migratory networks in reshaping rural land uses.