Bernardo Mançano Fernandes and the territory as a spatial process of political construction.

Proposals on power, scale and multiterritoriality

Abstract

The territory is a concept with geographical origin
and for several decades it has gained visibility in the Social Sciences of Europe, North America, and Latin America. This concept has explained political, socio-economic, and cultural processes in contemporary urban and rural settings. Within this conceptual framework, this article argues that, due to its configuration as a construction based on spatial fragmentation/appropriation and with specific characteristics (sovereignty, totality, multidimensionality, multilevel), the territory proposal of the Brazilian geographer Bernardo Mançano Fernandes allows us to analyse political and socioeconomic processes of management and control of certain spaces, in the context of social agents and state and economic institutions. This work has two main contributions: 1) on the one hand, Fernandes’ proposal places at the centre of his analysis the unequal power relations between social subjects and in various levels; 2) on the other hand, this territory conception has a broad and multiscale understanding of the power relations between the social subjects and institutions that build territories. This allows a reading of the territory that is not only limited to the Nation state, but also considers other key actors (such as peasants and agribusiness).