Mobilising Territory: Socioterritorial Movements in Comparative Perspective

FERNANDA TORRES; BERNARDO MANÇANO FERNANDES ; SAM HALVORSEN

Annals of the American Association of Geographer

Taylor & Francis

Año: 2019 vol. 109 p. 1454 - 1470

2469-4452

Why does territory matter to social movements and what does it allow them to achieve? Despite the ever-apparent centrality of territory ? the appropriation and control of space through forms of power ? to social movements worldwide (e.g. protest camps, land occupations, indigenous activism, squatting, neighbourhood organising), there has been a surprising lack of attention to this question by Anglophone geographers. This paper develops Brazilian geographer Bernardo Mançano Fernandes? notion of ?socioterritorial movements? as an analytical category for social movements that have as their central objective the appropriation of space in pursuit of their political project. It does so by contrasting the concept of socioterritorial movement to those of social movement and sociospatial movement and proposing four axes of analysis for socioterritorial movements. First, territory is mobilised as the central strategy for realising a movement?s aims. Second, territory informs the identity of socioterritorial movements, generating new political subjectivities. Third, territory is a site of political socialisation that produces new encounters and values. Fourth, through processes of territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation (TDR), socioterritorial movements create new institutions. These axes are further elaborated through the comparative analysis of two case studies: the MST, a large peasant movement in Brazil, and the Tupac Amaru Neighborhood Organization, an urban social movement from North-West Argentina. Comparison is deployed as an expansive mode of analysis in order to open up the concept of socioterritorial movement and indicate potential lines of enquiry for further study.