Geography, economy and rural territories in Latin America: an introduction to the dossier

Abstract

Through Milton Santos' concepts of horizontalities and verticalities, this article introduces a geographical perspective for studying the relationship between economy and rural territories in Latin America. Two dimensions of that relationship are approached: the spatio-temporal global impulses that take a material grounding at particular locations, and the production of scales of that grounding through the relationship between agents and localized economies. The analysis is organized into four themes: 1) state policies and economic-productive territorial restructuring, 2) extractivism and territorial inequities, 3) new spatial dynamics of the rural labor force, 4) spatiality of family farming. We argue that rural dynamics are not limited exclusively to the sphere of production, but encompass processes of reproduction and care of life, in its broadest sense. In addition, mobility, assemblages and networks are distinctive elements of current territorial dynamics, creating hybrid scales with greater flexibility, malleability and amorphous linkages between spaces and places.