Space, social theory and peripheral imagination: Brazilian intellectual history and de-colonial debates

Abstract

The spatial turn is a much discussed theme in social theory. However, it is still based on a Eurocentric perspective that excludes other forms of reflection about space. In this article the author addresses the spatial turn from a perspective with a basis in Brazilian intellectual history, so as to argue that the Brazilian case presents a classical tradition of geographical thinking that provides a different framework for global spatial imagination. The author looks to de-colonial critiques in order to analyse this tradition from a contemporary point of view. The aim is to argue that this perspective helps to de-center social theory by providing new spatial images that diverge from those related both to the language of the city and the Eurocentric perspective that still characterizes the spatial turn.

Doing mobile ethnography: Grounded, situated and comparative

“…Coronil, 1996; Porto Gonçalves, 2006). For instance, João Marcelo Ehlert Maia diagnoses ‘a cognitive crisis concerning the city as a spatial framework for understanding Latin American territories’ (2011: 402). The above-outlined effort to destabilise the persistent methodological cityism resonates strongly with this approach.…”