Territorial Conflicts and Territories of Conflicts: How Do the Social Movements Interact with Space?

Abstract

This article questions the role of territories in power struggles and in the reconfiguration of social movements. It emphasizes the evolution of the perspectives provided by human geography to understand the complexity of domination relationships in their spatial dimension. The proposal focuses on Latin American empirical cases, and Mexican cases in particular, without leaving aside comparative views with other regions of the world, to make visible the articulation between social movements and socio-territorial transformations. The text is structured in three parts: (i) a review of the literature on the spatial and territorial dimension of social movements; (ii) an analysis of the spatial expression of the relations of domination, reviewing the evolution of the objects and socio-territorial processes in conflict as well as the emergence of a certain dilution of the “adversary” and of their symbolic or effective spaces of power; (iii) a redefinition of citizenship through resistance dynamics in two contexts of global geopolitics (Central American migrations in transit) and local (short food chains) in Mexico. It points to the importance of the digitalization of social movements and its effects in terms of new expressions of democracy, citizenship and territoriality.