Geography

The Political Ecology of Soybean Infrastructure in Brazil

Document Type

Book Chapter

Abstract

Infrastructure has become more than objects of analysis in political ecology. It is now a fashionable ‘analytical lens’ in own right for theorizing ontology, relationality, materiality, and non-human agency. Yet the theory-driven character of this ‘infrastructural turn’ also creates great risks and limitations, while enduring traditions of political economy and the production of nature continue to generate valuable insights on the political ecology of infrastructure as well. The current challenge for the political ecology of infrastructure is to glean politically valuable insights from theoretical innovations while maintaining analytical precision. This chapter illustrates the possibilities, benefits, and challenges of such a strategic synthesis through research on soybeans in Brazil. This includes struggles through and over roads, railroads, waterways, warehouses, ports, means of communication, and discourses about such infrastructures, including competition among agribusinesses and government officials, class struggle between owners, workers, and those marginalized by these infrastructures, and political struggles that leverage control over bottlenecks and chokepoints of these infrastructures for various aims. The approach extends well beyond critique of deforestation and social marginalization resulting from expansion of infrastructures for ‘extractivism’ to a more nuanced effort to denaturalize both materialities and discourses about infrastructures and the socio-ecological relations they reflect and mediate. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Jessica Hope, Elia Apostolopoulou and Yolanda Ariadne Collins.

Publication Title

The New Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology

Publication Date

2025

First Page

377

Last Page

386

ISBN

9781040443187

DOI

10.4324/9781003430995-44

Keywords

infrastructure, soybeans, Brazil, marginalization

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