Sam Halvorsen, ‘Decolonising Territory‘ at the Progress in Political Economy blog

In a recent paper I argue that Anglophone research on territory, particularly in human geography, has been too constrained to ideas and practices based on the experiences of the modern, Eurocentric state. In contrast, Latin America provides an alternative starting point for understanding territory rooted in grassroots struggles and ongoing strategies to rework, resist and “re-invent”, as Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves puts it, Eurocentric and Anglophone ideas of territory. From this perspective the paper seeks to open up greater dialogue between Anglophone and Latin American ideas/practices of territory while acknowledging the colonial power relations that have structured the unequal geographies of knowledge production around territory.