4th Political Ecology Meeting

The Political Ecology Network invites participation in the 4th Political Ecology Meeting, under the theme “Territories and Resistances”, which will take place from 23 to 25 May in Coimbra, and on 30 and 31 May and 1 June in Lisbon.

The frontiers of capitalism are advancing, increasing the demand for new territories for the accumulation of wealth and power. Facing the destruction of territories and their human and non-human communities, we see the emergence of a pluriverse of resistances in defence of life. From the villages of Barroso against the mines, to the Alentejo facing the siege of monocultures, to the struggles for housing and against police violence in the cities, populations resist predatory extractivism and seek to make their territories live. From these and other struggles, maxims emerge regarding the centrality of territory as both concept and practice. They tell us that “territory is dignity, and that has no price” or that “territory is life, and life is not sold, it is loved and defended”, suggesting that territory goes beyond its hegemonic assumption.

In this Meeting, we seek to challenge and confront dominant narratives and practices of territory as ‘property’ or ‘resource’ to be controlled, colonized, developed, exploited, and sacrificed. Looking at territories as a geopolitical-economic space allows us to understand the extractivist dynamics of capitalism, while enabling us to advance alternative understandings and practices of/on/with territories. We want to look at territory(ies) as places of collective organization and resistance(s), as a way to recreate culture and the relationship between people and the non-human ecologies that sustain them. Terrestrial territories, rural and urban, but also maritime ones (‘maritory’), digital, virtual, and ideological ones. Territory not as a physical space outside of us, but as a body that connects experiences — as well as violences — between our surroundings and our being.

We also seek to understand the different forms of resistance, human and non-human, their ‘ecology’ (how they interact with each other), reflections on territoriality, and the possibilities of them becoming forms of re-existence, of making territories of life, of creating new utopias and possible futures. Furthermore, we also want to understand territories of violence, of re-patriarchalization and re-colonization, and the multiple contexts of the production of absences of these resistances, in a context of exhaustion of body-territories. Our intention is not to essentialize territory as the preferred scale of analysis and political action, but to expand the very understanding of what a territory is — its relevance, limitations, contradictions, and potentialities for political-ecological resistances and re/existences.

The Meeting is organized by an emerging collective of groups and people constituted within the Political Ecology Network, which includes: the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra, through the Ecology and Society Workshop (ECOSOC) and with the support of the TRANS-Lighthouses project; the Research Centre for Anthropology and Health; the Network Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) and the Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies (DINAMIA'CET) of ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon; the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL); the Environment, Territory and Society research group (SHIFT) of the University of Lisbon; Malha Cooperativa; and Jornal MAPA; in addition to the support and collaboration of other institutions and collectives including the Visual Anthropology Nucleus of the University of Coimbra, Real República de Bota-Abaixo, República dos Inkas, Cooperativa Rizoma, Coletivo à Mesa, and the La Salsa del Pueblo collective.

The Meeting itself aspires to be a territory of feeling, thinking, and acting together to exchange knowledge and foster collaborations and synergies between territories, movements, struggles, and resistances, inside and outside academia, including activists and local communities. To this end, we have included in the Programme a diversity of academic and artistic proposals, as well as those from civic organizations and social movements, including papers, workshops, conversation circles, films, photographic exhibitions, and other creative interventions.

Participation is free and does not require registration (except for 3 specific activities, specified in the programme).