“Latin American Dialogues: the Third Encounter of Sociospatial and Socioterritorial Movements” (LATIMOV) is an international and interdisciplinary space for dialogue on and with a range of social movements, grassroots organisations and insurgent practices in and beyond Latin America. It follows two previous Encuentros – in São Paulo (2019) and La Plata (2021) – which brought together academics and activists from across Latin America to debate the shifting form and nature of contemporary social movements. The central objective of the third encounter – which will be hosted by Queen Mary University of London on September 2nd-4th 2024 – will be to enhance the dialogues between Latin American and Anglophone (and in particular UK) Latin Americanist community, as well as scholars and activists more broadly.
Space and territory have been central to Latin American struggles for decades, from agrarian and rural based demands over resources, to indigenous and afro descendant strategies of survival and enhanced social rights, through to mobilization over the right to the city and popular neighborhood organising. The Encuentro is a unique space of dialogue as it brings together such differently positions struggles – traversing the campo and the ciudad – while also spanning academic and activist knowledges. It thus inherits a rich method of dialogo de saberes – knowledge dialogues - popularised in spaces such as the World Social Forum in the early 21st Century.
The organisers of the Third Encuentro – a group of over 20 academics and activists form several Latin American countries in addition to the UK, Canada and the USA are convinced that “our” dialogos, as Latin Americans and Latin Americanists – should not be confined to regional debates; they are of global importance. The UK in particular has too long invisibilized Latin American identities and knowledges. The Third Encuentro thus seeks to articulate both with UK-based scholars working on other regions (e.g. South Asia) and to speak to and with locally rooted social movements, working on similar issues (e.g. housing, climate change).
LATIMOV is organised across 6 themes, each of which speaks to key debates and issues that social movements in Latin America and beyond confront. We welcome participation through standalone presentations (these can be thought of as interventions rather than formal academic papers) and/or panels. The latter may include both a panel of presentations or a round table discussion.
The deadline for papers has now closed and details on registering will be posted in due course.
A note on format: LATINMOV will be hybrid. This means it will include some sessions that have both in-person and online activity, and some sessions that will be in-person only.
Themes
Contested
Territories
01
Different approaches to spaces and territories in a comparative perspective
Coordination: Fernanda Torres - UNLP, José Sobreiro Filho - UnB, Mariana Arzeno -UBA
The inseparability of movements-space leads us to investigate the different ways in which the spatiality of and in movements is expressed and deployed in different spatio-temporal contexts. The complexity of the subject and the diversity of situations requires the construction of problems-research agendas and methodological tools that recover the production of situated geographical thought, but at the same time open to establishing dialogues with other knowledge, with other disciplines, crossing axes: north-south and south-south.
A comparative perspective requires the analysis of different relationships, practices and meanings that run through the different processes of social production of spaces and territories; and the dialogues and counterpoints between the different locations of those processes. It is inserted in the search for theoretical and methodological approaches that manage to produce knowledge about experiences that can inspire social processes in different contexts, identifying conditions of possibility of the phenomena.
The objective of this theme is to put epistemological and theoretical perspectives in dialogue, that allow enriching the analyzes on socio-spatial and socio-territorial movements and in this way contribute to the construction of emancipatory knowledge.
Contributions could focus on some, but not exclusively, of the following themes:
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Analysis of different dimensions of the relationship between space and social subjects.
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Different approaches and geographical proposals for the analysis of socio-spatial and socio-territorial movements.
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Analysis of urban, rural, peri-urban, etc. spatio-temporal contexts and their implication for understanding the objectives, demands, organizational forms and repertoires of action of movements.
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Reflections on different approaches to comparison and their geographical methods (analytical comparison; globalizing or encompassing comparison; relational comparison).
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Comprehension/explanation/interpretation and its uses in comparison exercises.
02
Territorial Institutions
Coordination: Bernardo Mançano Fernandes- UNESP; Emiliano Ignacio Díaz Carnero-El Colef/Geopaz-IGP
Studies on socio-territorial movements lead us to readings and reflections on territorial institutions for at least two reasons: firstly because movements are one of the types of diversity of institutions and, secondly, because all institutions produce territories based on cultural, environmental, political, social and economic in the context of development models. Submissions in Territorial institutions can present studies on the territorial productions of institutions in general, understanding territorial production as the processes of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization (TDR). Or about the different institutional territorialities in territorial disputes and the production of multi-territorialities. Comparative, multiscalar, and multidimensional perspectives qualify the analysis of the institutions' territorial productions. These productions can also deal with intangible territories based on knowledge, technology, and ideology. Furthermore, theoretical works on territorial institutions can be presented from different paradigms of Geography and other areas of knowledge. Reflections, debates, and studies on territory and institutions interest us to advance the frontier of knowledge.
Contributions may focus on some, but not exclusively, of the following themes:
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Territorial institutions: studies on territorial production
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Building the concept of Territorial Institutions
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Material and immaterial territories of institutions
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Theoretical contributions of studies on Territorial Institutions
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Institutional multi-territorialities and TDR
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Territorial Institutions in Comparative Perspective
03
Debate goals of movements and goals of sustainable development (in connection with SDGs)
Coordination: Bernardo Mançano Fernandes- UNESP; Eduardo Paulon Girardi - UNESP.
This theme aims to discuss how the struggles and other actions of socio-territorial movements contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations (UN) in Agenda 2030. The 17 sustainable development goals constitute a global agenda for everyone on the planet and include global actions to end poverty, reduce inequalities, protect the environment and the climate, and promote gender equality, among others. Achieving these goals requires alliances involving as many people and their institutions as possible: States, companies, socio-spatial and socio-territorial movements, NGOs, associations, churches, etc. Thus, the focus of this axis is on the relations of conflict and resistance between socio-territorial movements and other institutions, which makes it possible to analyse the production of spaces, territories and their geographical processes to reduce inequalities, which can lead to the proposal of new SDGs. The papers submitted should analyse the actions of socio-territorial and socio-spatial movements involving the SDGs in different territories, making up their territorialities, which are directly related to their actions, highlighting the complexity of the themes and critical analyses.
Contributions could focus on some, but not exclusively, of the following themes:
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Relations between the struggles of socio-territorial and socio-spatial movements and
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the Sustainable Development Goals.
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Proposals for new Sustainable Development Goals.
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The SDGs from a comparative perspective of collective action
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Types of movements and types of SDGs
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The debate on the Sustainable Development Goals in socio-territorial movements
04
Contested Territories
Coordination: - Mónica Farías - UBA, Joana Moura - UFRN, Gabriel Silvestre - Newcastle .
Submissions to the Contested Territories stream should critically reflect on the conflicted dynamics of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation in times of post-pandemic global neoliberalism and particularly in the face of the advancement of the extreme right in the region. This Thematic Axis aims to include work that seeks to reflect on the dynamics of contestation and resistance by socio-territorial and socio-spatial movements in different territorial spheres in the face of attacks and advances against situations of inequality, oppression and violence in their various forms. In addition, we seek to reflect on other proposals for territorial organisation and management put forward by communities and movements. We seek to engage in dialogue with studies based on different theoretical and methodological matrices aimed at analysing sociospatial and socioterritorial movements and the dynamics of conflict and contestation. We seek to contribute to the debate on the forms of action of movements and their relations with the state and the various social and political institutions and the relationships they establish with other movements and organisations. We are particularly interested in highlighting the spatial dimension and the spatial production of these actions.
Contributions could focus on some, but not exclusively, of the following themes:
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Land grabbing and deterritorialization
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Global circuits of extractivism and financialisation
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Access to land and housing
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Activism, space and art
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Digital space and virtual collective actions
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Environmental disputes
05
Subjects, spaces, subjectivities and agencies
Coordination: Mónica Farías - UBA; Virgen Caceres - UPR; Wilder Robles - BU
This thematic axis seeks to bring together productions, reflections and debates on the role of subjectivity in socio-territorial and socio-spatial conflicts. It examines the processes of political subjectivation and the emergence of new identities, forms of organising and practices of socio-territorial and socio-spatial movements. We understand these movements as social constructions, producers of spaces and territories, which, while involving structural constraints of social relations, conflicts and social actions, also comprise ends, values, beliefs, decisions, and consciousness. It also proposes to discuss the agential role of nature and its interweaving in the establishment of objectives and the definition of movements’ strategies. This interpretative framework, which links the material and immaterial, subjective and cultural elements, makes it possible to understand the production of meaning, the symbolic elements that sensitise them and affirm their identity, as well as the range of individual and collective transgressions that they deploy. Particular attention will be paid to the role of space in shaping political subjectivities and the possibility of subject/nature agency.
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Nature’s agency
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Women’s environmental movements
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International NGOs and popular movements
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Indigenous movements and environmental issues
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Gender issues and popular struggles
06
Transnational Movements
Coordination: Melisa Slep - QMUL
In the context of deepening globalization and its planetary-scale polycrisis, various socio-spatial and socio-territorial movements have had an impact on the global scale with their struggles and demands. In this way, the global and local scales are increasingly interconnected in what various authors have called processes of glocalisation.
In this sense, socio-spatial and socio-territorial movements produce new spaces and re-territorialise on multiple scales, they trans-territorialise, just as the capitalist, colonial, patriarchal and anthropocentric world system does. In some cases, movements build networks and organisations on a global scale, such as the Vía Campesina or the environmental movement, in other cases their local constructions have an impact on a global scale, such as the Zapatista movement in southeast Mexico, or the Landless Movement from the territorial occupations in the Brazilian countryside; but some other movements also globalise in their own evolution, reconstructing territorialities in different spaces all over the planet, the paradigmatic example being the migrant social movement.
Within this framework, contributions are expected to address, although not exclusively, the following themes:
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Global activism: building networks, organisations and encounters of diverse movements.
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Trans-scalar territorialities: tensions and territorial constructions between the local, the global and the glocal.
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Human mobilities as a new social movement: local/global spaces and territories.
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Old and new internationalisms of territorial and spatial struggles of movements.