Abstract
Abstract The article seeks to shift away from the centrality attributed to the idea of ‘control’ in the debate on participatory fire management. To do so, it addresses three modes of existence of the phenomenon in the Brazilian savannah - queimada (burned place), fogos gerais (fire that spreads or general fires) and fogo fora do tempo (fire out of time) - aiming to explore the perceptual disparities between wanted and unwanted fires with quilombolas and environmental managers in the Jalapão region (Tocantins, Brazil). This problem is discussed in light of the concept of normativity formulated by the epistemologist George Canguilhem in dialogue with the anthropology of techniques. The goal is to contribute to a research agenda in which the distinction between ‘good fire’ and ‘bad fire’ is thematized in specific ethnographic contexts rather than from pre-given normative criteria. I conclude by arguing that the current fire management policies concern not only the legal protocol of fire authorization, but also the modulation of technical and vital processes.
Highlights
The article seeks to shift away from the centrality attributed to the idea of ‘control’ in the debate on participatory fire management
As Nadine Ribet (2018) astutely argues, inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s psychoanalysis of fire (1964), the ambivalence of fire does not reside in the combustion itself, but in the effect of the affections through which we relate to the phenomenon
The criteria for distinguishing between ‘good fire’ or ‘bad fire,’ between tool and contravention, are selected in a decontextualized – or more precisely, as I intend to argue in this text, a de-environmentalized – way
Summary
Is mobilized without any mention of the diverse forms of expression that fire can assume in correspondence with the phytophysiognomic quality of the vegetation, the season of the year and the associated forms of life This typological differentiation between controlled burn and wildfire, founded on the aspect of ‘control,’ is present in the ‘Firefighter Training Manual for Preventing and Fighting Forest Fires,’ where controlled burns and wildfire are respectively defined as (i) “an agricultural or forestry practice in which fire is used rationally, that is, controlling its intensity and confining it to a predetermined area, acting as a production factor,” and (ii) “any uncontrolled fire that impacts on any form of vegetation, whether provoked by human action (intentional and negligence) or by natural cause (lightning).”. In a context shaped by the territorial overlap between the natural park and the quilombola territory, I seek to demonstrate how the articulation between anthropology and the biological philosophy of techniques enables us to comprehend the divergences between desired and undesired fires in a more relational manner true to its modes of existence in the gerais environment
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