Toward A Latin American Conception of Territory and the Paradigmatic Debate
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48162/rev.40.091Keywords:
Space, territory, geographical theory, paradigmatic debate, Latin American conceptionAbstract
This article blends theoretical essay with an interpretation of the agrarian reality of Latin America and the Caribbean. Many of the reflections and propositions I make here are inspired by Milton Santos, undoubtedly one of the geographers who contributed most to the advancement of critical geography. We present our method for the conceptual construction of territory in Latin America and the Caribbean, focusing on territorial disputes in rural and urban areas. These disputes serve as points of reference for our realities, allowing us to understand territories beyond the space of governance, that is, through a typology of territories. Drawing on bibliographic references from the Global South and North, we analyze space in its multiscalarity and multidimensionality, understanding it as systems of action and object, as the materialization of existence—that which contains and that which is contained—in an inseparable, interconnected, and unequal manner. This understanding is essential in the analysis of space and territory, the material and the immaterial, the fixed and the fluid, such as the earth, the biosphere, people, and thoughts, breaking with the hegemonic understanding of space as absolute, linear, scenic, area, or surface. The paradigmatic debate confronts the concepts of absolute territory and relational territory, predatory and sustainable models in the context of the plantationocene.
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