A Amazônia na Geografia de Bertha Becker: concepções e contribuições aos desafios amazônicos contemporâneos

Abstract

This dissertation characterizes the geography produced by the geographer Bertha Koiffmann Becker based on her studies on the Amazon. The work is structured into two parts. In the first part, the author’s intellectual trajectory, her conception of Geography, as well as the concepts, methods, and epistemological foundations that guided her investigations of the Amazon and constitute her theoretical core are examined. In the second part, the themes, concepts, and geopolitical frameworks mobilized throughout her work are analyzed, as they express its empirical-analytical axis. This research is bibliographical in nature and grounded in the hermeneutic method. The results support the thesis that the studies developed by Bertha Koiffmann Becker on the Amazon redefined and expanded her intellectual production in the fields of Geopolitics and Political Geography, consolidating her as one of the main references in these domains of knowledge, from which she analyzed the emergence of new actors and the accelerated dynamics of regional transformation. This work rescues and systematizes central ideas and propositions present in the author’s oeuvre, inserting them into contemporary debates concerning policies directed toward the Amazon, especially in the environmental sphere. Furthermore, it seeks to continue her theoretical contributions through new investigations into themes proposed by her, with a view to updating analyses in light of the region’s recent and future challenges and dynamics.