On the Gran Chaco plains in northern Argentina, industrial agriculture is leading to the destruction of the forest that once covered this region. Gordillo explores the concept of "terrain" through his analysis of how the brutal and violent deforestation is changing the nature, agriculture, and human living conditions.
– I explore the concept of 'terrain' by drawing on everything I have learned in the humanities about the social, cultural, and political nature of places, but at the same time delving deeply into the materiality of the terrain. In my fieldwork, this means, for example, taking into account the simple but often overlooked fact that a forest physically consists of millions of closely growing trees that attract and provide shelter for a variety of species of insects and animals, says Gordillo.
The social anthropologist aims to contribute to a better understanding of the materiality of the profound environmental and social destruction the world is experiencing today. He points out that deforestation for industrial agriculture is one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions in the world, and an understanding of its local dynamics is therefore central to the ongoing discussion of climate change.
During his fieldwork in Argentina, he saw firsthand the profound effects of deforestation in the region. The deeply material nature of these effects convinced him that the most popular concepts used in the humanities to describe spatial processes, "place" and "territory," do not fully capture the profound ruptures that are created, for example by bulldozers attacking a forest.