Control and intimacy in the Amazonian reality: Newspaper rhetoric on forest sector reform in Peru

: Matti Salo, Jukka-Pekka Puro, Karoliina Knuuti

Publisher: Elsevier

: 2013

: Land Use Policy

: 35

: 226

: 236

: 11

: 0264-8377

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2013.05.022

Public debates on the fate of the world’s rainforests stretch from local to global, and local newspaperrhetoric reveals complex engagements among different stakeholder groups in the ongoing strugglesover rainforest resources. We draw our case from Peruvian Amazonia, and focus on the public debateover the country’s forest sector reform. Newspaper rhetoric, as we call it in relation to local rainforestdiscussion, is unfolded by rhetorical apparatus via social movement rhetoric to ideological criticism. Weshow how the reform has created friction between the control orientation of the formal and the intimacyof the informal Amazonian realities, and discuss the ways in which the role of international rules andglobal trade have both exacerbated these struggles and offered new space for dialog. Amazonian realitiesare not closed to outsiders – but they easily reject interventions perceived lacking local insight.