Geography and politics: Territory, scales of action and institutions

More than addressing the very general problem of the relationship between space and politics, which can say everything or nothing, Iná Elias de Castro's Geography and Politics seeks to understand how politics, in its institutional and operational sense, has invaded the most diverse dimensions of the contemporary world, and confronts us with the need to study how geography is informed by politics today. To this end, it proposes to go beyond the perspective of grand explanatory models, now questioned by their limitations, and resorts to a theoretical-conceptual pluralism more suited to analyzing the many dimensions of today's seemingly contradictory phenomena. Despite the disenchantment of the present, strongly marked by the frustrations of the unfulfilled promises of the Enlightenment, both liberal and socialist, and the end of the utopias that gave rise to political and social movements focused on building a better future, this book is careful not to fall into the trap of facile relativism and nihilism, which dismiss us from the tiring but necessary commitment to understanding reality through the incessant dialogue of theoretical elaboration with the phenomenon—a dialogue that only research and the construction of knowledge can facilitate. After all, only in this way is it possible to pose new questions and, with knowledge of reality, be able to transform it. Some themes are addressed here based on conceptual foundations and intellectual perspectives appropriate to a field of knowledge conventionally called political geography, as well as others, closer to political science, but which are undoubtedly relevant to understanding space as an arena of conflict. The choice of discussions was not casual or determined by a commitment to the discipline's intellectual tradition. On the contrary, it is quite innovative and oriented toward polemicizing what has been rejected within it, such as the discussion of the nation-state and what has been incorporated into geography—icons such as power and globalization. Furthermore, still from the perspective of polemics, specific questions about Brazilian political geography are included. The scale of phenomena is incorporated as a necessary reference and differentiation for the actions of political actors and for the construction of political spaces, understood as those of conflict and confrontation inherent in the coexistence of differences, but also of negotiation, cooperation, and agreements.