Call for papers N° 67

Revista Investigaciones Geográficas - UChile

Call for Papers for the Semi-Thematic Issue No. 67

 

(Re)defining rural territories, between the global South and North: actors, processes, scales.

 

The process of expansion of the globalization of the capitalist system reveals ever-deeper patterns of spatial transformations that point to a homogenization of economic practices and ways of life. At the same time, responses to this process emerge from the territories, drawing a global map of mosaics of places in constant reconfiguration, in dialectical relations between local "roughness" and spatial homogenization.

 

While one of the most obvious expressions of these transformations can be identified with the process of planetary urbanization, rural territories are undergoing reconfiguration as spaces of resource production, spatial anchoring and the persistence of traditional practices and ways of life.

 

Examples of this can be associated with the consolidation of China as the main economic and demographic power as well as the emergence of the BRICS, which have been blurring geopolitical scenarios, particularly in the territories of the global South, manifesting themselves in a race to control strategic resources (such as food production, mineral extraction, access to water, energy generation, etc.) which has, among its implications, the deepening of the determinants of climate change and, consequently, changes in the daily life of local communities.

 

In consideration of the above, the Revista Investigaciones Geográficas of the Universidad de Chile invites researchers from all latitudes to present their geographical analyses of the transformations that rural territories are undergoing in different political-economic contexts. The questions guiding this call are about critical thinking in order to look at the complexity of rural territories:

 

How is the rural defined in today's world? What are the ruralities that characterize a country or a territory? What kind of transformations are these territories undergoing? How do paradigm shifts interpellate the everyday life of local communities?

 

We invite you to address these questions through conceptual approaches or case analyses on a local scale, with a multi-scale geographical perspective that reflects comprehensively on rural spaces because of multiple social, cultural, physical, economic and political interactions. We position ourselves in the global south, but in constant dialogue with the north, including power asymmetries that influence global and local processes, environmental conservation, land grabbing, state formation/transformation (and maintenance) and their implications for the everyday life of rural communities.

 

We hope that contributions will focus on addressing mainly the following thematic lines:

 

• Theoretical debates and methodological proposals on the definition of rural life and its possible analytical approaches.

 

• Approaches to everyday rural life between genders, generations, networks and scales.

 

• Rural development policies and decentralization processes: what role does the state assume, at different scales, in rural territories? How does the state reproduce and evolve through these policies? What type of governance exists/is applied?

 

• Extractivism and commodification in rural territories in the global south and north: accumulation, resistance, resilience and territorial hegemony.

 

• Food security and access to water: how do health, production, sovereignty and territory relate?

 

• The process of agricultural land parcelling as a post-pandemic legacy: mobility, land use changes and new urbanization.

 

• The phenomenon of land accumulation or concentration in rural spaces: where is it situated and how does it develop? What scalar relations are associated? What economic and social transformations does it imply?

 

• Environmental conservation models and rural territories for whom? For which environmental model?

 

Full papers are invited to be submitted via the journal's official platform (see "Guidelines for authors") by 15 March 2024.

 

It is possible to send an abstract beforehand to corroborate the relevance of the article to the editorial line of RIG and to the specific focus of the call for papers.

 

Email:

investigacionesgeograficas@uchilefau.cl,

massimilianof@uchilefau.cl

cristian-alarcon.ferrari@slu.se

 

Keywords: rurality; rural territory, public policies; rural governance; extractivism; nature