Matthew Abel

Bio

Matthew Abel is an economic anthropologist whose research examines the emergence of global exchange networks and their influence on local processes of environmental governance and technological change. His current book project, The Forest and the Factory: Debt, Development, and Community in the Brazilian Amazon, recounts an intergenerational history of environmental justice organizing and the struggle of Amazonia’s farmers, fishers, and agroforesters to transform the failures of 20th century modernization policies into 21st century demands for healthcare, environmental protections, and other forms of social inclusion. He is currently engaged in two ongoing projects focused on the role of Indigenous environmental knowledge in shaping global markets for plant and animal products in the colonial Americas and the “containerization” of international shipping lines for industrial and agricultural commodities in the Amazon rainforest.

Abel’s scholarship has appeared in various academic journals, including Cultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, and Rural Sociology. This work has been funded by grants and fellowships from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the US Fulbright Scholars Program, and the National Science Foundation.

Research Interests

Political Economy • Historical Ecology • Food Systems • Ethnohistory • South America (Brazil)

Courses Taught

South America: Culture, Environment, History • Economic Anthropology • Political Economy: Global Processes and Problems • Good Eats: Culture, Food, and the Global Grocery Market • History of Anthropology, Part One • Introductory Cultural Anthropology

Current Graduate Students 

Madalyn White