Indigenous Urbanization and Amazonia's Post-Traditional Environmental Economy

This article examines the makings of post-traditional environments through processes of urban ethnogenesis among the Ese Eja, an indigenous Amazonian group living in the border areas of Peru and Bolivia. We argue that the use of "tradition" as social currency by the environmental service sector, particularly by a thriving international ecotourism industry, has exacerbated processes of urbanization, dislocation, and social and ecological alienation of indigenous peoples. We examine how far an Ese Eja "past" is selectively reinvented through discourse and appropriated by "participatory" projects and development. This unearthing and reburial of history is then used to "authenticate" the present and its environmental agenda in a postglobal world of environmental moral righteousness.