Madeline Brighouse
Graduate Student
I research economic development among rural indigenous households in the Ecuadorian Amazon, specifically how land – use decisions, household income, overlapping land tenure regimes, and participation in farmer cooperatives shape and are shaped by emerging global commodity chains. Two commodities in particular – cacao and Ilex guayusa – are marketed by Global Northern transnational corporations as environmentally sustainable, culturally authentic, and/or ethically produced commodities, through the attachment to geographic indicators of the Amazon and ethnic indicators of the smallholder farmers that produce them.