Rural conflicts and industrial activities in Brazil have long shaped territorial disputes and resistance movements. As renewable energy projects expand, established activist groups and local communities are repositioning themselves in response. This paper examines why some wind energy projects in Northeast Brazil face strong community resistance. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), the study analyses ten case projects selected through theoretical sampling. Drawing on social movements, environmental justice and intersectionality perspectives, four theoretical propositions are reached: historical local mobilisations, involvement of established social movements, pre-existing community organisational capacity and recognition of marginalised groups within collective action. Standardised case cards were developed from desk research and secondary sources. The theoretical propositions were then transformed into conditions and were coded, along with the outcome, strong resistance. The results show that strong resistance arises from configurations linking historical injustices, local organisational capacity and the explicit recognition of marginalised groups, with movement spillovers amplifying (and not determining) these grounded mobilisations. The paper contributes to three debates: the politics of renewable energy deployment in Brazil; the enduring influence of social movement legacies on contemporary conflicts; and methodological advances in applying QCA to contested energy transitions.
In the last decades, political theorists have turned their attention to territorial rights and their normative justification. Here I suggest that, despite their differences, normative theories of territory share five assumptions: statism, groupism, sedentarism, anthropocentrism and resourcism. These assumptions inform the questions asked, the units of analysis and the implications that follow, and are potentially problematic insofar as they can leave relevant phenomena under the radar and can become obstacles for the resolution of global challenges like growing migration and climate change. After showing how they are displayed in these theories, I suggest how we might reinterpret or drop them and sketch some ideas for moving forward.
Asteroid mining has had persistent traction for over a decade, with multiple valuations being touted despite mining activities having yet to take place. Private and State actors have advanced a series of discourses to enclose outer space: conceptually through (re)creating certain imaginaries and practically through creating various legislation, policies and accords. Indeed, moves to extend extractivist logics into outer space are rooted in the symbiotic relationship between capitalism and extraction. Stemming from these developments, this paper will utilise data produced during research conducted between 2017 and 2021 with European and American 'New Space Economy' (NSE) actors and materials associated with their activities. Through an assortment of interviews, participant observation and textual analysis of NSE documents, activities and actors, this paper explores how the asteroid mining sector is perpetuating extractivist logics into outer space. This is brought into discussion with geography's critical interactions and investigations into the histories of extractivism and the Anthropocene to explore how outer space is being territorialised and (geo)political tensions (re)created regarding the increasingly contested governance of outer space.
This article revisits the relationship between social movements and territory. While the literature is dominated by accounts of progressive movements in conflict with authoritarian states, there has been scant attention to social movements competing with each other. Our study of 1970s Istanbul shows how socialists, nationalists and Islamists sought to expand their territories to recruit, organise and control strategic spaces in the city. Through the concept of territorial constellations, we trace how movements forged intricate ties within and across contested spaces. These constellations, we argue, were shaped by movement ideology, relationship to the state and entanglement in broader struggles.
This article analyses criminal organisation dynamics and their impacts in the tri-national MAP region (Madre de Dios/Peru, Acre/Brazil and Pando/Bolivia) in the Southern Amazonia. Using qualitative fieldwork, document analysis and literature review, it examines how criminal organisations' governance operates in the MAP region. The study shows that criminal actors control drug trafficking routes, commit environmental crimes and assert territorial authority, affecting especially women, youth, indigenous peoples and extractivist populations (local communities) through recruitment, violence, displacement and economic exploitation. The research highlights the intersection of criminality and territorial governance, revealing how non-state actors reshape territorial dynamics hindering sustainable development in Amazonia.
