Anthropology Colloquium
Plants, Hair and the Aesthetic of Control in Frontier Amazonia
Jeffrey Hoelle, Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Barbara

In this talk, Jeffrey Hoelle traces the imprint of cultivation across the naturally growing covers of the land and body—plants and hair. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Brazilian Amazon, Hoelle moves from the cattle pastures and agricultural fields at the edge of the rainforest to domestic lawns and hair salons in Brazilian cities and beyond. Hoelle explains how replacing tangled forests with geometric, "clean" pastures and everyday lawn care share a cultural logic with the ways that hair is managed, categorized, and judged in the city.  He argues that these seemingly disparate domains of agriculture, landscaping, and personal grooming are governed by a similar aesthetic of control. This unique pairing of land and body expands our understanding of cultivation as a practice and an ideological system that influences how we conceptualize the covers that grow on and around us, and challenges how we imagine our future relationship with the natural world.