Situated in geography's recent territorial (re)turn, and drawing on Latin American theory and research, this paper examines the relational and contested nature of territories and territorial praxis. Engaging with contemporary literatures, we note the centrality of power to territory.However, as we explore in this paper, many analyses of power are too simplistic, with a latent attachment to sovereignty which can marginalise counter-hegemonic territorial politics. To combat this we explore two conceptions of power, as found in open and autonomist Marxism poder (understood as power over) and potencia (understood as power to)and how they function territorially. While such an understanding of power frames the complex production of territories, it is important to also reflect on how movements intervene in producing their own territories. Accordingly, the paper examines the territorial struggles of the Zapatistas, and, drawing from original research, explores how territorial ideas operate in everyday contexts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Across these examples the paper illustrates the potential of 'territories in resistance', but also engages in how these are also contested. Led by our cases we emphasise the relational and contested construction of territory, ultimately developing a more nuanced understanding of territory and territorial praxis
In 2001, Argentina experienced a profound social political and economic crisis. In response, a broad and diverse social and economic movement was created, involving autonomous politics, horizontal organisation, autogestion, neighbourhood assemblies and state rupture. The creation of alternative economic systems played an important role in this challenge to capitalist hegemony, producing a different and more humanising kind of economics focused on the provision of opportunities for more stable, sustainable and dignified production. This paper uses an innovative theoretical approach, drawing on both Marxism and diverse economy literature, to explore data collected during empirical research between 2013 and 2016 into a solidarity retail market in Buenos Aires, the Mercado de Econom ıa Solidaria Bonpland. It argues that such interventions in the interstices of capitalism offer a radical and alternative solution through a politics of everyday antagonism. By insisting on economic plurality in the present via a series of oppositions and compromises, the Mercado both drew attention to the failings of capitalism, and created a genuine and visible social and economic alternative.
InTernATIonAl JournAl of urbAn And regIonAl reseArch publIshed by John WIley & sons lTd on behAlf of urbAn reseArch publIcATIons lImITedThe authors would like to thank participants in this research for their time and engagement, and the anonymous IJURR reviewers for their constructive comments. We would also like to acknowledge Mark Burton's empirical contributions generated as an independent researcher on the project. We would like to acknowledge all the participants in our focus groups and workshops. This article received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), grant reference numbers ES/N018818/1, ES/N005945/2. We have also received funding from Mistra Urban Futures, through the Mistra Strategic Environmental Research Foundation and the University of Sheffield. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
What is a life worth living and how is it concretely actualized by an urban majority making often unanticipated, unformatted uses of the urban to engender livelihoods in a dynamic and open-ended process? This is the key question undertaken in this collectively written piece. This means thinking about work, paid and unpaid, in ways that highlight the everyday practices of urban inhabitants as they put together territories in which to operate, which sustain their imaginations of well-being as part of a process of being with others—in households, neighborhoods, communities, and institutions. What is it that different kinds of workers have in common; what links them; where does the household begin and end; what is the difference between productive and reproductive work?
Abstract. In this paper we analyze the territorial organizing of two dissimilar social movements across Greater Buenos Aires, showing how urban struggles produce territory as a key element of their political practice. Through their relational, contested character, these Latin American territories foreground an alternative to state-centric, Anglo-American models of territorial politics. First, the unemployed workers' movements in the urban periphery show how the territorial organization of production and reproduction creates new social relations, and second, an assembly-organized market emphasizes the relationality of territory in constructing solidarity economies. This paper contributes to debates on urban social movements by showing that these movements use practices of territorial organizing to produce urban territory in distinct ways, and that territorial organizing is relational, contested, and central to movements' praxis.
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