Contested territory: political strategies and socioterritorial movements

Abstract

Territory has been focus of analysis in diverse literatures. In much anglophone literature it has been conceptualized as a top-down outcome of controlling space, usually by the state. Latin American literatures, in contrast, have tended to emphasize the emancipatory potential of bottom-up struggles seeking territory for autonomy. This paper advances on the understanding of territory as a set of entangled and overlapping strategies and, in doing so, moves away from attempts to conceptualize it through a bottom-up (e.g. social movements) versus top-down (e.g. the state) dichotomy. In order to do so, recent literature on socioterritorial movements –movements for whom territory is central to their strategy– and some of the overlapping and entangled power relations will be examined and explored. The article is organized in three sections, which corresponds to particularly visible strategies of socioterritorial movements in the region from recent decades.