Borders, Traps and Walls: Theoretical-methodological contributions to the debate about territory

Abstract

This article addresses the principal theoretical-methodological matrixes of the debate about territory, considering studies from the fields of geography and the social sciences that are commonly used as references for understanding the issue in its broad epistemological spectrum. It is a detailed bibliographic study that indicates some frontiers, traps and walls that are subjacent to the theme. Territory rises as a key element in public polices and thus in social service, as a socio-historic construction of globalized capital in crisis in a situation of destruction of social guarantees, as a panacea to capitalist development in economically dependent countries. The articles raises the trends of this debate and shows how it can be constituted as a fundamental mediation in the analysis of the processes and flows found in social transformations and their space-time dialectic. Beyond abstract-formal and post-modern definitions, it is important to locate the theme of territory at the foundation of the class struggle that expresses social life in movement.