- Migration, forced displacement and border (de)construction
Human mobility has historically been analyzed from the economic, social and cultural angle, but also from the security one. Borders between States, far from disappearing with globalization, have been strengthened and have played a strategic role in the international scenario and in contemporary migratory flows. Today, when mixed migration (economic and forced) is more visible, given the magnitude of the forced displacements that accompany the historical routes of migratory flows, a profound critical reflection is urgently needed. This topic invites to reflect on this social problem, from a theoretical and methodological perspective, but also from a historical and political point of view.
- Movements in defense of territory, autonomy projects, geographies for peace and human rights
The thematic sessions of this topic seek to generate a space for meeting, dialogue and critical reflection on different experiences of struggle of movements in defense of territory, life and those who aim to build counter-hegemonic autonomies. It is our interest to problematize and share theoretical, methodological, political and practical approaches, situated from each territory and from each social formation, around these struggles, movements and autonomous projects from the horizon of Human Rights and peace studies in general; but, above all, from different proposals that have emerged regarding geographies for peace and socio-territorial rights in context of armed and unarmed violence, in processes of militarization and paramilitarization or other social conflicts.
- Socio-spatial (in)justice and uneven development ahead of megaprojects and urban realities
The territorial models imposed by capitalism are processes based on the uneven geographical development, which result in socio-spatial injustice at multiple scales (both in the inner space of cities and in the territories with which they are related by energetic, demographic, political, economic reasons, etc). In this topic we are looking for works that delve into the impacts suffered by communities that are exposed to the injustice of neoliberal urbanization, as well as the strategies of resistance of these communities against megaprojects or other dynamics of dispossession and unequal appropriation of resources.
- Counter-cartographies, corpocartographies and other expanded cartographies
Cartography as a language of expression and spatial representation allows us to explore and reveal multiple territorialities, proposing counter-hegemonic narratives, as well as an analysis of territories and their actors that bring into play different dimensions of the experience of space. In this sense, the body and corporeality are revealed as spatial categories that are socially, culturally, environmentally and politically traversed; they embody spatial experiences and, therefore, are constantly transformed with their mobile cartographies. We call here to participate with investigations and reflections that, from the cartographic language, account for both the different scales in which the extractivist model is evident, as well as the equally multi-scale resistances that are built against it.
- Climate crises, ecopolitics, environmental (in)justice and non-human territorialities
The evident planetary deterioration, as a consequence of human action and exacerbated by the extractivist model, has led us to deepen our understanding of the Earth as a complex entity. New perspectives force us to abandon and question the anthropocentric stance and lead us to take greater responsibility for the future of the planet; and, at the same time, to observe the territorial inequalities generated by power relations and economic interests exercised on the environment. This topic integrates works that, from critical geography, evidence structures and power relations responsible for the climate crisis, as well as its consequences; or that propose alternatives to the capitalist self-destructive evolution that allow us to have a better relationship with the Earth and transform the current environmental reality.
- Feminisms, gender, bodies and sexualities
Feminist geographies have made visible the inequalities experienced by women and girls facing discrimination, male violence and patriarchal structures. They also integrate the geographies of gender and sexualities that broaden the critical view from dissidence, in search of affective territories and rights for all ways of being, loving and inhabiting the world. It is from the body that struggles are framed and a multiplicity of sex-gendered and performative identities in resistance are positioned. Community and decolonial feminisms have woven a theoretical basis of making political the act of healing through the territory-body-earth. Understanding the body as a historical territory, meant and linked to the web of life, the defense of the territories from collective care is proposed.
- Geographies of racism and racialization, inter-ethnic conflict and variegated landscapes
In this topic we seek to put the many genealogies that make up anti-racist and anticolonial thought and struggle in Abya Yala and other regions of the planet at the center of the discussion. The objectives are: to establish dialogues with struggles against structural racism in other parts of the world, with particular emphasis on the Global South, to share theoretical and analytical tools and generate spaces for practical intervention to build different worlds, as well as to consider the anti-racist perspective to mobilize intersectional analyses of our complex realities. We seek, then, to incorporate works that critically analyze environmental, structural and systemic racism, the dispossession of racialized populations, and histories of struggle against global systems of oppression. Priority will be given to works by scholars and/or activists traditionally marginalized by the academy: indigenous and native people, Afrodescendants, black people and other racialized groups in both the Global North and South.
- Teaching-learning geography, geopedagogies and decolonial didactics
In this topic we seek to share and exchange ideas and knowledge that, through didactic proposals and the implementation of alternative and interdisciplinary teaching-learning tools and strategies, allow both students and teachers to become active subjects in the transformation of their social and geographical reality from a critical, decolonial and liberating stance. Also, as a point of discussion to be developed for this topic, we believe it necessary to give importance to the way in which Geography is taught and how geographic knowledge is taught and learned in different social contexts and educational levels, as well as in non-formal and popular education.
- (Counter)geopolitics from Latin America and the Caribbean: dialogues between the Global South and the North
The World System, as a category that allows us to analyze the spatial expression of power exercised by historically hegemonic territories, has been integrated into an emerging epistemological transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Relevant contributions have been made in this region to understand the role that the extractivist model plays in this sense, proposing paradigms that deconstruct coloniality and offer alternatives. We invite to participate in this dialogue between the global souths and norths with works that focus on the tensions, conflicts, hegemonies and counter-hegemonies that are generated in the disputed territories.
- Artivisms and territorial practices from the arts
We consider dance, theater, music, visual arts and literature to be territorial practices and representations that have a powerful political discourse for both resistance and social transformation. Likewise, beyond being cultural expressions, they are vehicles for peace building, since they promote channels of communication and points of encounter in the midst of territorial divergences and tensions. But also, the arts are presented to the world as a range of possibilities for self-defense, as they have the power to resist and protect vulnerable identities in conflict zones. Through artistic actions, other ways of constructing and inhabiting fragmented and forgotten territories re-emerge. Therefore, art is a political instrument for territorial and identity vindication, an action tool for activism, which merge and define artivism. In this topic we invite to share and make geography from and in artivism, as a methodology for action and community research.
- Spaces for participation, virtual reality and new technologies
The globalization of content and the universalization of access to the Internet and new technologies, together with their ease to use, have made possible the incorporation of innovative tools for the field of action and social transformation. The access to data and the speed of the flow of information that these instruments allow, male them important amplifiers of participatory methodologies. We call here for proposals and experiences that account for the challenges, scope and limitations of the use of technological instruments for the strengthening or awareness of territories and their collectives that resist and struggle against dispossession and extractivism.
