Vinicius de Aguiar Furuie is an anthropologist researching Amazonian river trade among riverside populations affected by climate change and large-scale infrastructure projects.

Vinicius earned a BA in journalism from the University of Sao Paulo and an MA in cultural studies from the University of Tokyo, where he wrote an ethnography on post-Fukushima antinuclear social movements. He received a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Princeton University with a dissertation based on 20 months of fieldwork conducted with Regatão river traders of the Xingu basin, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. His fieldwork was based in Altamira, the main site of recently built Belo Monte dam and a current hotspot of logging and forest fires. He studies local understanding of economic morality in communities that exchange non-timber forest products such as Brazil nuts, rubber, and medicinal oils for industrial goods.

As an Environmental Fellow, Vinicius works with host Professor Bruno Carvalho and co-host Professor Ajantha Subramanian on the importance of local categories of moral exchange for public policy design and registers the impact of dam construction on Amazonian urban populations.

Faculty Hosts

Bruno Carvalho and Ajantha Subramanian, Anthropology