Milton Santos A Pioneer in Critical Geography From The Global South

Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 11
Lucas Melgaço
Carolyn Prouse Editors
Milton Santos:
A Pioneer in Critical
Geography from the
Global South
Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science,
Engineering, Practice
Volume 11
Series editor
Hans Günter Brauch, Mosbach, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15230
http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP.htm
http://afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP_Santos.htm
Lucas Melgaço Carolyn Prouse
•
Editors
Milton Santos: A Pioneer

in Critical Geography
from the Global South
123
Editors
Lucas Melgaço Carolyn Prouse
Department of Criminology Department of Geography
Vrije Universiteit Brussel University of British Columbia
Brussels Vancouver, BC
Belgium Canada
Acknowledgement: We would like to express our gratitude to Marie-Hélène Tiercelin,

Milton Santos’s wife, for her generous support throughout the writing of this book.
A book website with additional information on Milton Santos and his major book covers can
be accessed at: http://afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP_Santos.htm.
ISSN 2509-5579 ISSN 2509-5587 (electronic)

Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice
ISBN 978-3-319-53825-9 ISBN 978-3-319-53826-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53826-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932412
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

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Contents
1 Milton Santos and the Centrality of the Periphery . ............. 1

Lucas Melgaço and Carolyn Prouse
1.1 Milton Santos: A Geographer of the South? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 The Restless Thinker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 A Miltonian Epistemology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 Crossing Linguistic Divides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5 The Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2 The Return of the Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Milton Santos
3 Technical-Scientific-Informational Milieu, Networks
and Territories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 33
Sarita Albagli
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.2 Space, a Hybrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3 Technical-Scientific-Informational Milieu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4 The Geography of Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.5 Horizontalities and Verticalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.6 New Frontiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4 How Can Santos’s Theory and Concepts Help Us to Better
Understand Third World Dynamics and Problems? . . . . . . . . . .... 45
Aurélien Reys
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 45
4.2 Milton Santos and the Third World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 46
4.3 Cities of the Third World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 47
v
vi Contents
4.4 The Two Circuits and the Shared Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
5 Psychosphere and Technosphere: Complex Relations
in the Hospital Realm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Eliza Pinto de Almeida
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.2 The Psychosphere and the Technosphere of Fear: Hospitals
in the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.3 The Hospital’s Technosphere and Psychosphere
in the Scientific and Technical Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.4 The Complex Hospital Technosphere and Psychosphere
in the Technical-Scientific-Informational Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6 The Political Economy of Territory and Agribusiness
in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 67
Samuel Frederico and Marina Castro de Almeida
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 67
6.2 Toward a Political Economy of Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 68
6.3 Pact of the Political Economy of Territory
Based on Agribusiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 70
6.4 Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces: The Expansion
of the Agricultural Frontier and the Commanding Role
of the Metropolis of São Paulo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 71
6.5 Final Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 75
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 76
7 Territorial Planning in Brazil: An Interpretation
Based on the Ideas of Milton Santos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 79
Luís Angelo dos S. Aracri
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.2 The ‘First Era’ of Territorial Planning in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
7.3 The Current Dynamics of Territorial Planning in Brazil . . . . . . . 83
7.4 A Non-Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8 Rethinking Federalism through the Work of Milton Santos . . .... 91
Fabrício Gallo
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 91
8.2 The Relevancy of the Used Territory in the Analysis
of the Federation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 92
8.3 Federalism as Geographical Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 93
Contents vii
8.4 Selective Renovation of Materialities and the Distribution

of Tributary Resources Among Federate Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
8.5 Final Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9 Milton Santos’s Contribution to Understanding the
Transformations Underway at Modern Agricultural Frontiers . . . . 101
Júlia Adão Bernardes
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9.2 New Expansion of the Modern Agricultural Frontier
in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.3 Milton Santos on the Agricultural Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
9.4 New Space-Times of Mato Grosso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
9.5 New Contradictions in Mato Grosso and Pará: Competing
Values and the Exploitation of Labour
and Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
9.6 Concluding Remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
10 Geography and Indigenous Peoples: Milton Santos
and the Richness of the Present Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Roberta Carvalho Arruzzo
10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
10.2 Territory and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10.3 Slow People and Opaque Spaces: Proposing a Geographical
Perspective on Indigenous Land Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
10.4 Conclusion: Transforming Geographic Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
11 Milton Santos’s Thought and the Logic of Environmental
Conservation in the Contemporary Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 125
Maria Tereza Duarte Paes and Claudia Levy
11.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 126
11.2 Conservation Units: Vertically Imposed Scientific
and Informational Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
11.3 New Use and Management Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
11.4 Effects of Conservation Units in the Reshaping of Places. . . . . . 131
11.5 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12 Environmental Crisis Through the Theories
of Milton Santos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Francisco J. Toro
12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
12.2 Ontological . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
viii Contents
12.3 Epistemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 141

12.4 Technical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 144
12.5 Ethical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 146
12.6 Final Remarks: Santos and the Environmental Crisis
as ‘Deterritorialization’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 148
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 149
Milton Santos’s Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
About Milton Santos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
About the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
About the Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter 1
Milton Santos and the Centrality
of the Periphery
Lucas Melgaço and Carolyn Prouse
Abstract This chapter introduces Brazilian Geographer Milton Santos to

English-speaking academia. The text places Santos’s theorizations in conversation
with recent calls to expand, postcolonialize and decolonize knowledge production
in urban studies: to say that Santos is a geographer from the Global South and of the
periphery is to indicate the marginalization of theories produced from particular
social locations. The text then offers a biography of the author, highlighting the
plurality of his experiences and the diversity of contexts in which he lived during
his academic career. This introductory chapter also includes a discussion of the
particularities of what could be called a Miltonian epistemology of geography, and
concludes by briefly presenting the chapters that comprise the book Milton Santos:
A Pioneer in Geography from the Global South.
Many scholars consider the Vautrin Lud Prize the Nobel Prize for Geography.
Since 1991 the award has honored geographers who have made exceptional con-
tributions to the world of geography. Its track record of winners, however, indicates
the unequal distribution of value attributed to different geographies of thought. At
the time of writing 28 scholars have received this honorable distinction: seven are
from the United Kingdom, six from the United States, five from France, four from
Switzerland, two from Spain, one from Ireland, one from Sweden, one from Canada
and one from Brazil (Festival International de Géographie 2016). In other words,
only 3.6%—one person—from outside the Europe-North America axis has been
awarded the prize. These numbers demonstrate that what is considered ‘excellence’
in geography is restricted to a very specific circle, limited not only in terms of
country of origin, but also language: 53.6% of the awarded scholars are primary
English speakers, 22% speak French, 7.1% German, 7.1% Spanish, 3.6% Swedish,
and 3.6%—one—is a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. This Brazilian Portuguese
Lucas Melgaço, Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Email: [email protected].

be.
Carolyn Prouse, Ph.D. Candidate, University of British Columbia; Email: carolyn.prouse@geog.
ubc.ca.
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

L. Melgaço and C. Prouse (eds.), Milton Santos: A Pioneer in Critical
Geography from the Global South, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities,
Science, Engineering, Practice 11, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53826-6_1
2 L. Melgaço and C. Prouse
speaker, the only scholar from outside the ‘North’ to have received the Vautrin Lud
Prize, is Brazilian geographer Milton Santos.
Scholars of Anglo1 geography are recognizing and problematizing this uneven
pattern of what and who ‘counts’ within the discipline. This book has been written at
a moment when there is considerable interest in the English-speaking geography
world of learning from and with spaces and places in the South. Postcolonial theory,
in particular, has made reverberations throughout this discipline, and is throwing into
question truths of what counts as canonical knowledge and foundational models in
its subfields (see, for instance, Radcliffe 2005; Roy 2010, 2011; Wainwright 2008;
Lawson 2007; Robinson 2006; McFarlane 2008). The histories of colonialism that
shape geographic knowledge production have privileged the experiences of
Northern cities and nations, which have become the main sites of theory production,
while Southern experiences are treated as sites of ethnographic extraction (Robinson
2006) and empirical variation (Roy 2016). Santos himself anticipated this concern
over thirty years ago, worrying that ‘concepts formulated on the basis of data from
developed countries have been indiscriminately applied to Third World countries’
(Santos 1979: 6) and that geographers must ‘base an historical analysis on Third
World reality rather than on the assumption that all social evolution is simultane-
ously comparable and complementary’ (Santos 1979: 6). Eurocentrism emerges here
as an epistemological problem (Roy 2014), with the North granting itself the ‘per-
mission to narrate’ from an unseen, universal, and objective standpoint (Sundberg
2003). A postcolonial or decolonial methodology is, in part, a mapping exercise,
which points to the locatedness of all geographic knowledge production and ‘[-
places] the permission to narrate on a map’ (Roy 2016: 8).
This project represents a response to this postcolonial/decolonial problem space
in two major ways. First, it not only locates a permission to narrate in Brazil, but it
shows that Brazilian scholars like Santos have been narrating for decades without
permission from the English-speaking world. Milton Santos is but one figure who
theorized from the situated experiences of Brazilian urbanization before postcolonial
thought gained its contemporary academic traction. He did not need an Anglo
academy to grant him the permission to narrate, but claimed it for himself even when
invisibilized in hegemonic geographic thought. Second, Santos did not just theorize
about the oppressive political economic and colonial relations that have shaped
Brazil. Within his writings and practices he also, crucially, fought for and found
promise in counter-rational, non-hegemonic values and knowledges placed at risk by
global capital. In a moment when much academic attention was centered on glob-
alization Santos highlighted the importance of place amidst global flows: ‘Each
place is in its own way the world’ (Santos 1996a: 252) whereby globalization
represents not only perversity to places in the Global South, but also new possi-
bilities (Santos 2000a). By focusing on his own and his compatriots’ locatedness in
1
The term ‘Anglo’ is fraught, of course. We use it here to refer to the English-speaking world of
geography—manifest most hegemonically in high-impact journals—without trying to make
specific national, ethnic or racial assumptions. ‘Anglo geography’, then, is a synonym for
‘English-language geography’ in this text.
1 Milton Santos and the Centrality of the Periphery 3
Milton Santos, 1969. Retrieved from Santos’s United Nation identity card. This photograph was
taken from the personal photo collection of the author and his wife, Marie-Hélène Santos, who also
granted permission for publication. This and other photos can be found at: https://www.
miltonsantos.com.br/
Brazil, Santos shifted the locus of theoretical enunciation (Mignolo 2000) to two
different types of marginalized experiences: forms of urbanization and capital flows
not captured by hegemonic Northern theory; and spaces, places and values that are
increasingly under threat by these flows and forms of urbanization.
1.1 Milton Santos: A Geographer of the South?
We use the term Global South but recognize its fraught history as it often connotes
backwardness, tradition and underdevelopment. Recent scholarship in Anglo
geography2 has troubled the category of the Global South by arguing that it is not a
delineated space that can be neatly mapped through political economic relations or
nation-state borders. It should be, in other words, a fluid and contested category
(Parnell & Oldfield 2014). In this vein, the South has been characterized variously
as a concept-metaphor (Roy 2015) and relation ( Comaroff & Comaroff 2012). Just
as Rao argues for the term ‘slum’, we think of the Global South ‘in a normative
sense to gain visibility for certain histories and the landscapes of politics and action
that they imply’ (Rao 2006: 228). Milton Santos is thus a geographer of the Global
South because his ideas are peripheralized by colonial linguistic flows and relations
of knowledge that privilege Anglo geography and the experiences of Northern cities
and countries. We use the term Global South, then, to denote an uneven relation in
academic theorizations and to point to the political imperative in increasing the
visibility of scholars and ideas that have heretofore been marginalized. A major
purpose of this book is to increase the visibility of Santos’s theorizations to
Northern, Anglo audiences, thus subverting the unequal relation between Northern
and Southern knowledges such that these categories no longer make sense.3
The development of Milton Santos’s thought itself disrupts any neat binary
distinction between Northern and Southern theory. Santos did not exist in an
academic bubble in Brazil; his thinking was shaped in part by theories, models and
academics in the North. His time in exile in France was vital for shaping his ideas
about urbanization in Brazil and other Southern cities even as he realized these
French theoretical models could not fully account for his experiences. He does not
completely abandon ideas and notions that have been developed in the Northern
academy. Rather, he theorizes processes of urbanization from his particular situated
standpoint (Mohanty 2002): being an Afro-Brazilian geographer from Bahia who
worked with colleagues from Brazil to France to Tanzania to Canada. According to
2
Of course, there are many different English speakers whose works are marginalized in Anglo
geography for reasons of nationality, race and ethnicity. In other words, Anglo does not map neatly
onto the ‘North’. But we retain the usefulness of the term ‘Anglo’ to describe a linguistic divide
that must be traversed for thinkers from other linguistic schools to be properly understood and
engaged in English—the language that is hegemonic in curriculum and high-ranked journals.
3
The provocative idea of the ‘centrality of the periphery’ that serves as inspiration for our title was
borrowed from Santos’s book Toward an Other Globalization (Santos 2000a).
Santos himself (Yázigi 1996) his most important influences in Geography were
French Marxist geographers Pierre George and Jean Tricart, his Ph.D. supervisor,
from whom he ‘learned the rigor, the will for discipline, the obedience to projects
and the joy of argument’ (Silva 2002: 13). It was Brazilian physician and geog-
rapher Josué de Castro4 whose work Ensaios de Geografia Humana triggered
Santos’s deep interest in the discipline when he was still a high school student
(Vasconcelos 2001). Santos was also strongly influenced by philosophers like
Sartre and Whitehead; sociologists like Durkheim and Gurtvitch; and, of course,
political economists like Marx. When asked if he was a Marxist Santos affirmed:
My interest in history, above all the history of the present, led me to always take into
account the contradictory process, in a way that not being an orthodox Marxist – I am afraid
of that, of an orthodox Marxism – I believe that every doctrine that does not renew itself
risks of becoming a religion, a dogma, and consequently dumb down instead of clarify.
Having said that, I do consider myself a Marxist, or if you prefer, a marxizing. (Tendler
2006: 6:35)
Santos theorizes processes, too, that cannot be adequately captured by any of

these theories: the massive population growth of Brazilian and other Southern
cities; the informal circuits of the economy; and the conflicts over knowledges and
values found at the frontiers of global capitalism. Santos thus might be called what
Mignolo (2000) terms a ‘border thinker’: someone who operates within different
knowledge cultures, thinking from and along the borders of empire, whether these
empires be ongoing political economic histories or epistemicides within the acad-
emy. In the following section we trace the evolution of Santos’s thought through his
biography by looking at some of the experiences and major works that made Milton
Santos one of the most revered geographers in Brazil and Latin America. We then
discuss the fraught process of translation and conclude with a summary of this
volume’s contributions.
1.2 The Restless Thinker
Santos was born in Brotas de Macaúbas, a small town in the interior of the state of
Bahia, in the Northeast region of Brazil on 3 May 1926. He only lived there for a
year, however, as his parents were elementary school teachers and had to travel to
different towns in the interior of Bahia for work. As a young child Santos did not go
to school but was educated at home by his parents. They taught him how to read
and write and fomented an aptitude in mathematics and French (a language that
would facilitate his contacts with French academia throughout his life; Grimm
2011). At the age of ten he moved to Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia, for
4
Josué de Castro (1908–1973) is also the author of two other seminal works, The Geography of
Hunger and The Geopolitics of Hunger.
boarding school. As a descendent of slaves,5 it might be easy to assume Santos had

a difficult and poor childhood. However, this was not the case: Santos came from a
very well educated middle-class family, which was a situation that helped him to
excel as a student from his earliest years.
Santos’s first degree was not in geography but in law, which he obtained in
Salvador in 1948. He only sporadically worked as a lawyer. Immediately after his
legal training, Santos was hired as a geography teacher at the Municipal School of
Ilhéus, a medium-sized city on the southern coast of the state of Bahia, where he
lived until 1953. Even before achieving a doctorate in the discipline, then, Santos
had started work as a geography teacher.
Milton Santos, 1948. Graduation in bachelor of Law. This photograph was taken from the personal
photo collection of the author and his wife, Marie-Hélène Santos, who also granted permission for
publication. This and other photos can be found at: https://www.miltonsantos.com.br/
Santos became editor of the newspaper A Tarde, a prestigious local media

vehicle in the city of Salvador. As a journalist he was sent to missions in African
and European countries, which resulted in a dozen articles later integrated into
books such as Marianne em Preto e Branco (Santos 1960) and A Cidade do Países
Subdesenvolvidos (Santos 1965). In 1960 Santos was invited by President Janio
Quadros to document the latter’s trip to Cuba, which resulted in the series Visita a
uma Revolução (Silva & Silva 2004).
5
Brazil is a country with a high concentration of African descendants. However, very few
Afro-Brazilians attend university, much less achieve the rank of professor. Santos was one of the
exceptions. Despite being concerned about issues of racism and prejudice, having published about
them (Santos 1996b, 2000b) and answered questions about these topics in a handful of interviews,
Santos was often critical of certain strategies and approaches of black movements and always very
apprehensive about speaking in the name of Afro-Brazilians.
House of the family of Milton Santos in Salvador, Brazil, 1953. This photograph was taken from the
personal photo collection of the author and his wife, Marie-Hélène Santos, who also granted
permission for publication. This and other photos can be found at: https://www.miltonsantos.com.br/
Santos was also very active in local politics. He was the representative of the
President of the Civil House Janio Quadros in Bahia in 1961, and from 1962 to
1964 he held the position of president of the Foundation for the Economic Planning
Commission of the State of Bahia (during the mandate of President João Goulart
(1961–1964)). Santos was also active as a representative of geographers and served
as president of the Association of Brazilian Geographers from 1963 to 1964.
Despite his political activity, Santos considered himself somewhat of an ‘outsider’
in Brazil, not claiming any group membership—intellectual, political or otherwise
(Tendler 2006: 4:55).
Santos’s academic career began in 1956 when he was appointed lecturer of geog-
raphy in the Catholic University of Salvador. During this period Santos also travelled
to France to study for his doctorate in Geography at the University of Strasbourg,
France, under the supervision of Prof. Jean Tricart. He was awarded his doctorate in
1958 for the thesis ‘Le centre de la ville de Salvador. Étude de geographie urbaine’.
Santos returned to Brazil in 1959 and in 1961 he became professor at the Federal
University of Bahia. He lived in Salvador until 1964, when a military coup d’état
ousted Brazil’s democratically elected government. Santos was arrested by the mil-
itary police and spent three months in prison. Just like many arrests during the military
dictatorship, the reasons for his imprisonment were unclear, but were likely linked to
his proximity to left-wing President João Goulart, to his aforementioned trip to Cuba
and to the progressive content of his journalistic texts (Grimm 2011). He was released
from prison on the condition that he be deported. During thirteen years of exile Santos
worked as an academic in different countries in Europe, North America and Africa.
Milton Santos, 1991. Photo by Oswaldo José dos Santos, from the collection of the magazine
Jornal da USP (University of São Paulo)
In 1977 Santos returned to Brazil, and from 1983 onwards was affiliated with the
University of São Paulo where he worked until he passed away on 24 June 2001 at
the age of 75. Santos received the honoris causa distinction from twenty univer-
sities, including one in France, two in Spain, three in Argentina, one in Uruguay,
and 13 in Brazil. Milton Santos was the sole author of more than 40 books, edited
14 collections, published 58 book chapters and wrote almost 300 scientific articles
during his 50-year career (Santos 2001).
Santos’s wife Marie-Hélene Tiercenlin and geographer Jacques Levy periodize
the geographer’s career in three different phases (Tiercelin dos Santos & Levy 2011).
The first period, from 1948 to 1964, began with the publication of Santos’s first
book, O Povoamento da Bahia: Suas Causas Econômicas (Santos 1948), and was
characterized by the geographer’s strong commitment to the political and academic
context of Bahia (Grimm 2011). The second period, from 1964 to 1977, was his term
of exile during which Santos traveled to and worked in many different countries and
at universities throughout the world: Universities of Toulouse, Bordeaux and Paris
(Panthéon Sorbonne), MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Boston, USA),
University of Toronto (Canada), Caracas (Venezuela), Dar-es-Salam (Tanzania) and
Columbia University (New York—USA). During this period Santos achieved some
repute as a scholar specializing in theories of underdevelopment and the Third
World. Scholars from the Anglo-Europe axis who happened to know Milton Santos
still have fond memories of the geographer from this period of exile. It was also the
phase in which Santos authored two key works: Les Villes Du Tiers Monde (1971)
and The Shared Space (1979), the latter being thus far the only monograph of
Santos’s translated into English.
From 1977 to 2001 Santos experienced his must prolific and mature phase as a
geographer and thinker. This period remains, however, his most unknown to the
Anglo-world: almost none of his important works from this phase are available in
English. The 1970s were years of transformation in disciplinary geography
throughout the world, including Brazil. The traditional descriptive orientation of the
discipline was being questioned for its (im)possibility of explaining and under-
standing the complexity of the world. In Brazil, the influences of a burgeoning
critical and qualitative geography (mainly from France) and a quantitative and
technical geography (mainly from the United States) came into direct confrontation.
Santos was very active as a supporter of the so-called critical school in geography.
However, more than simply reproducing and applying foreign theories, he worked
on developing a Brazilian (and Global South) school of thought. In 1978 Santos
published one of his most important books, Por uma Geografia Nova (also avail-
able in Spanish and French), in which he analyzes the different geographic schools
of thought and presents his own ‘method’ of geography. In this book Santos argues
that geographers should focus on the object of study of geography—geographic
space—which, according to him, is simultaneously a social construction and social
factor, both constructed by and constructing society:
If the organized space is also a form, an objective result of the interaction of multiple
variables throughout history, its inertia, it can be said, is dynamic. By dynamic inertia I
want to say that the forms are both a result and a condition of processes. (Santos 2004: 185)
Those in the North who are familiar with Milton Santos generally consider him
to be a specialist in globalization, urban geography and the Third World. But this is
not entirely accurate—his importance exceeds these specific topics. Santos created
what he called ‘a method’: a set of coherent and complementary concepts and
categories that together explain different spatial phenomena. According to him:
The discussion [should be] about space and not geography; this points to the importance of
mastering the method. Speaking about the object without mentioning the method might just
be the announcement of a problem, without, however, enunciating it. An ontological
approach is essential – an interpretive effort from within, which both contributes to iden-
tifying the nature of space, and to finding the categories that allow the analysis of this space.
(Santos 1996a: 19, emphasis in original)
In addition to his focus on method, Santos was a very creative concept theorist.
He reinterpreted traditional geographic concepts and proposed new terms and
neologisms.6 His theorizations cover considerable much conceptual ground and
6
The array of terms that Santos employed was so vast that it motivated Ferreira (2000) to create a
glossary of the author’s terms that culmuniated in a Ph.D. dissertation in the field of linguistics.
have inspired such a great number of scholars that a ‘Miltonian’ school of geo-
graphic thought has emerged in Latin America, particularly Brazil. This book offers
readers a chance to become acquainted with this Miltonian school. The contributors
to the volume discuss Santos’s most important concepts and apply them in different
contexts and to different topics. In the next section we briefly introduce some of
Santos’s key works to give the reader a better sense of the trajectory and breadth of
the geographer’s thought.
Milton Santos, in front of the Department of Geography of the University of São Paulo, 1994.
Photo by Jorge Maruta, from the collection of the magazine Jornal da USP
1.3 A Miltonian Epistemology
Milton Santos reinterpreted ‘traditional’ geographic concepts in his own way.

Concepts such as space, place, region, landscape and technique acquired com-
pletely renewed meanings in Santos’s formulations. The notion of technique, in
particular, is a central organizing principle of his theories; Santos believed geog-
raphy should be ‘the philosophy of the techniques’ (Santos 1960, 1989, 1996a).
Santos’s understanding of technique is elaborated throughout this volume, espe-
cially in Chap. 11.
More than reinterpreting traditional concepts, Santos created his own vocabu-
lary, which includes the terms tropical flexibility, used territory, counter-rationality,
fixes and flows, psychosphere and technosphere, horizontalities and verticalities,
technical unicity, the convergence of moments, the enlargement of contexts, the
knowability of the planet, contemporary acceleration, opaque and luminous spaces,
slow people, dynamic inertia, rugosity, sociospatial formation, hegemonic and

hegemonized actors, territory as rule and ruled territories, and technical-scientific-
informational milieu, among others. Many of these key concepts are explored by
the different contributors to this volume.
In this section we present a guide of Santos’s works for English-speaking
scholars interested in his method, but must acknowledge that it is very challenging
for non-Portuguese readers to wade through his publications. The vast majority of
Santos’s works are still only available in Portuguese. This is a situation that this
book attempts to help rectify. There is, however, already a considerable portion of
his work that has been translated and interpreted into other languages, particularly
Spanish and French, and a few shorter texts that can be found in English. Engaging
with these translated works contributes to a deeper understanding of his most
important project, A Natureza do Espaço: Razão e Emoção (The Nature of Space:
Reason and Emotion) (Santos 1996a) first published in 1996 in Portuguese, but also
available in Spanish and French. At the time of writing there is still no translation of
The Nature of Space into English, but we hope that our book motivates proficient
Portuguese and English readers/writers who might be willing to take on such a
responsibility in the future. The Nature of Space—for which Santos received the
prestigious Brazilian Jabuti Award as the best book of the year in social sciences—
is a compilation of Santos’s most important concepts and ideas. It is therefore, a
very dense and complex read. Thus, before tackling such a difficult book, we
suggest that readers become acquainted with some of Santos’s more straightforward
and accessible works, including those presented in this volume.
Milton Santos, 1994. Photo by Jorge Maruta, from the collection of the magazine Jornal da USP
(University of São Paulo)
An accessible introduction to Milton Santos’s thought is through the docu-

mentary Encounter with Milton Santos: Or the Global World as Seen from This
Side (Encontro com Milton Santos: Ou o Mundo Global Visto do Lado de Cá)
(2006), produced by Brazilian filmmaker Silvio Tendler. The film is in Portuguese
but versions subtitled in English are also available. Tendler’s documentary, in a
style comparable to Michael Moore’s, is based on one of the most important and
most accessible of Santos’s books, Toward an Other Globalization: From Single
Thought to Universal Conscience (Por uma outra Globalização: do Pensamento
Único à Consciência Universal). This work was originally available only in
Portuguese but was recently translated into English by Lucas Melgaço and Tim
Clarke in a volume of this series also published by Springer (PAHSEP-12).
Milton Santos receiving an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Barcelona, 1996.
This photograph was taken from the personal photo collection of the author and his wife,
Marie-Hélène Santos, who also granted permission for publication. This and other photos can be
found at: https://www.miltonsantos.com.br/
For English-reading audiences there are also a few of Santos’s articles and a
book that were either directly published in English or translated while the author
was still alive. Most of this material, however, is from an early moment in Santos’s
career, mainly from the second phase described above. As already indicated, for
instance, Santos’s The Shared Space: The Two Circuits of the Urban Economy in
Underdeveloped Countries (translated by Chris Gerry) (Santos 1979) became
available in English in 1979 after being originally published in French in 1975 and
later in Portuguese in 1978. Many in geography consider The Shared Space a

classic. In a 1982 book review, T.G. McGee states:
Geography is not a subject noted for its sense of adventure. Geographers tend to carry out
research in well-established niches which earn the plaudits of their gurus, chairmen or
funders. Occasionally, however, a geographer breaks away from these acceptable research
grooves and ventures into areas at the cutting edge of the discipline. Milton Santos is such a
geographer […] Santos’s book is to be commended as a pioneer investigation. It is an
important milestone in the interpretation of the third world urbanization. (McGee 1982: 146)
As indicated by McGee, readers of the The Shared Space will find in this work
Santos’s efforts to create an original theoretical framework for understanding cities
of the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ world. It is in this book that Santos introduces the
concepts of upper circuit and lower circuit of economic activity. According to
Santos, what differentiates the two circuits are technology and forms of organization:
the upper circuit uses capital-intensive technology while the lower circuit is based on
labour-intensive activity (Santos 1975). This book—and the theory presented therein
—would be later partially cast aside by the author, who did not include the theory of
circuits in his major book A Natureza do Espaço. However, Santos himself and,
more recently, geographers such as María Laura Silveira and her team (Silveira
2005; Regitz Montenegro 2012), would subsequently revisit the concepts and use
them to understand aspects of the contemporary socio-historical conjuncture.
The few articles Santos published directly in English are from the period in which
he worked abroad. He wrote five articles for Antipode (Santos 1974, 1977a–c, 1980).
Two articles from this list are particularly relevant for understanding the novelty of
Santos’s thought: ‘Spatial dialectics: The two circuits of the urban economy in
underdeveloped countries’, based on his main ideas from The Shared Space; and the
article ‘The Devil’s totality: How geographic forms diffuse capital and change social
structures’, a dense essay in which Santos discusses the perversities of planning in
the underdeveloped world. In this latter article he also presents concepts that would
reappear in other texts, such as totality, and proposes his internal categories of
geography, such as form, function, structure and process. The following excerpt may
give readers a taste of Santos’s thoughtful and dense style:
The study of totality impels a choice of analytical categories which must reflect the real
motion of totality. We must take into account, in addition to the categories of time and scale
that function externally, the internal categories of structure, function and form. The notion
of process permeates all these categories. However, the process is itself nothing but a
fleeting vector whose life is ephemeral; it is a brief moment, the fraction of time necessary
for the structure to be realized; that is, to be geographized or better, spacialized, through a
function - that is, through a more or less lasting activity, and by its indispensable union to a
form. The form usually outlasts its specific function. A process ends when a fraction of the
structure has been objectified in a particular form with a particular function. Then, a new
process begins. (Santos 1980: 45)
English readers could also consult the English language entry about Santos in
The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Souza 2009). This helpful
piece is written by Maria Adélia de Souza who is a longstanding interlocutor of
Santos’s in Brazil and his former colleague at the University of São Paulo. The
article ‘Security and surveillance in times of globalization: An Appraisal of Milton

Santos’ theory’ (Melgaço 2013) may also be of use to Anglo readers. Finally, a
translation by Lucas Melgaço and Tim Clarke of the manifesto that Milton Santos
and his students published in 2000 (one of the last texts he published before passing
away) is also being made available by the journal Antipode.
In addition to The Nature of Space, there are a handful of books from the last
phase of Santos’s career that usefully explicate his thought but that have yet to be
translated into English. The 1980s was one of the most productive decades of his
career during which Santos published many books, three of which are worth
mentioning here. Pensando o Espaço do Homem (1982) and O Espaço do Cidadão
(1987) are two of Santos’s most digestible texts. Because they are quite accessible
they serve as useful introductions to Santos’s theories. In this decade Santos also
wrote Espaço e Método (1985; also available in Spanish and French) which,
together with another book from the 1990s, Técnica, Espaço, Tempo: Globalização
e Meio Técnico-Scientífico-Informacional, can be understood as a preparation for
his culminating book A Natureza do Espaço, published a decade later.
Milton Santos receiving the Vautrin Lud International Prize in Geography, Saint-Dié-des-Voges,
France, 1994. This photograph was taken from the personal photo collection of the author and his
wife, Marie-Hélène Santos, who also granted permission for publication. This and other photos can
be found at: https://www.miltonsantos.com.br/
In the last years of his life Santos published two more books, the aforementioned
Por uma Outra Globalização, and, in partnership with María Laura Silveira, O
Brasil: Território e Sociedade no Início do Século XXI. The latter is one of the least
theoretical of Santos’s books as his purpose was to apply his concepts and theories
to the analysis of concrete cases in Brazilian territory.
Finally, during Santos’s life (Souza 1996) and especially after his death many
edited volumes, special issues, doctoral dissertations (Grimm 2011; de Ferreira 2000;
Costa 2013), biographies and articles have been published about Santos. Most of these
are in Portuguese with some exceptions (e.g. Zusman 2002; Scripta 2002; Levy 2007).
1.4 Crossing Linguistic Divides
This book is a project in interpretation and translation. Committing to translate

ideas, concepts, theories and knowledges of Milton Santos and the scholars he
inspired is inherently political. Alluding to the violences of interpretation, Paulo
Bezerra in his introduction to his translation of Dostoevsky wrote, ‘Every trans-
lation is the possible translation’ (Bezerra 2007: 8). We recognize this tension, but
also believe that the ‘work of translation…seeks to turn incommensurability into
difference, a difference enabling mutual intelligibility among the different projects
of social emancipation’ (De Sousa Santos et al. 2007: xl). In other words, trans-
lation offers the opportunity to dialogue among different experiences, which is
crucial to both cognitive and social justice (De Sousa Santos et al. 2007). Our job as
interpreters of Santos’s ideas is to work toward this social justice while being
constantly reflexive of the violences our translations may commit.
Translation and interpretation are necessarily difficult and this book has exposed to
us the fraught pragmatics of doing this work. Our project is permeated by numerous
lines of political economic and linguistic oppression. The contributors are, for the
most part, from Brazil and do not speak or write in English as a function of their
profession. As a result, some contributors paid interpreters to translate the initial
versions of their chapters. Others wrote in English—itself a tall older—and the editors
had to spend considerable time interpreting and shaping the language. Projects that
reverse the colonial-like flows of unilateral translation (from Portuguese to English,
for instance, as opposed to the much more common English to Portuguese) thus
require time and money of those who often have these resources in short supply.
The work of translation and interpretation involves not simply finding the correct
word or sentence structure, but also negotiating central geographic concepts and
styles of writing. It quickly became apparent to us that what is taken as common
sense in one linguistic tradition of geography is not always the same in the other—
the ‘fundamental concepts of geography’ are, of course, not so fundamental. The
histories of Brazilian-Portuguese geography and the canonical curriculum in this
tradition are quite different than that of Anglo geography, even when there has been
conversation between the two. This has meant that Brazilian Portuguese words and
concepts do not always have an equivalent in English, and even where they
superficially appear to be the same—such as ‘space’ or ‘espaço’—there are different
assumptions and theoretical models undergirding them. But Brazilian writing and
Anglo writing are also very different. Put rather crudely, English sentence structures
and conventions tend to be more utilitarian, whereas Brazilian writing—and
Brazilian-Portuguese in general—is more poetic. The translations are thus not only
an interpretation of key concepts, but also involve very politicized decisions as to

what forms of language—such as words and sentence structures—will be received
as rigorous by an Anglo academic tradition.
Temporality also shapes translation: historical shifts in linguistic conventions
require political decisions be made about word choice. Santos was prolific from the
1950s until his death in the 2000s. Some of his earlier language thus appears dated to
both Brazilian-Portuguese and Anglo audiences. We struggled, for instance, over
whether to change Santos’s use of ‘homem’ (man) to ‘humanity’ or ‘people’. We are
politically committed to non-gendered language, but also believe in translating texts
as true as possible to their spatio-temporal context, not wanting to over-translate them,
as it were. Neither option feels entirely correct, yet we finally decided to interpret
‘homem’ as ‘people’ or ‘humanity’ to preserve the gender-neutrality implied in
Santos’s theorizations. This struggle revealed to us the inherently ‘violent’ nature of
translation that can never be perfectly resolved and requires considerable thought.
1.5 The Book
This book is a collection of translations and interpretations made by an array of

scholars who engage with Santos in divergent ways. The first chapters are focused
on the intricacies of the geographer’s thought; they translate key parts of his text
and explain the transformation of his ideas. Later chapters also help explain key
elements of Santos’s theories, but focus on applying them to particular contexts and
situations often in Brazil. The chapters thus serve as an introduction to Santos’s
Milton Santos at the opening of the conference in his honor, Um Mundo do Cidadão, um Cidadão
do Mundo, at the Univesity of São Paulo, 1996. Photo by Ana Pereira
thought and also to realities of globalization in Brazil, both of which are, of course,
inherently related. Below we offer a brief introduction to the chapters and layout of
the book.
Among the long list of terms, notions and concepts created by Santos, the
concept of used territory may be the most provocative. Through this concept Santos
invites geographers ‘to consider geographic space not as synonymous with the
territory, but as used territory; the used territory is both the result of the historical
process and the material and social basis of new human actions’ (Santos et al. 2000:
104, emphasis in original). Unfortunately Santos passed away before fully expli-
cating this idea. We are left with a few of his inspiring insights to be explored,
developed and criticized. When deploying the concept of used territory, Miltonian
scholars normally refer to the manifesto written by Santos and his students and from
which we quote above. However, the first time Santos used the term was in 1994 in
the text ‘The Return of the Territory’, the annotated translation of which is available
for the first time to an English-speaking audience in the next chapter (Chap. 2). In
this text, Santos revises and reinterprets the traditional concept of territory.7 He
argues that geographers should not study territory itself but rather what he calls the
uses of the territory. According to the author, this choice would avoid the ‘risk of
alienation’ and ‘the risk of renouncing the future’ (p. 26). The idea of a return—
indicated in the title—refers to the fact that in spite of the growing transational-
ization of spaces through networks, the used, inhabited territories (or the banal
spaces, in the words of François Perroux) create new synergies ‘that challenge the
world to a rematch’ (p. 26). Santos develops this idea through the dialectics of what
he calls verticalities and horizontalities; these concepts are central to his theoretical
reflections on the global and the local.
Sarita Albagli (Chap. 3) discusses networked space in what the Brazilian
geographer called the contemporary period: the technical-scientific-informational
milieu. Santos conceptualizes space as a hybrid and in this particular period
information technologies have become central to geographical landscapes. He
explains, ‘information nowadays plays a role analogous to the one played in the
past by energy’ (Santos 1996a: 132). Albagli offers a clear and succinct overview of
Santos’s approach to networked space. She pays particular attention to the rela-
tionships engendered through new horizontalities and verticalities. She also sheds
light on the contributions of the geographer’s thinking to the current conjuncture of
global unrest: while Santos was chiefly concerned with the globalizing economic
logics that institute oppressive forms of networks and telecommunications, Albagli
extends his thinking by pointing to the ways that new social movements and
contentious activity epitomized by mass street demonstrations are being organized
also in networked, but bottom-up, fashion.
7
Moraes (2013) dedicated an entire book to analyzing how Milton Santos used the concept of
territory in the different phases of his career. Unfortunately, as is the case with most of Santos’s
scholarship, the text is thus far only available in Portuguese.
Aurélien Reys (Chap. 4), writing from France, traces the evolution of Santos’s
thought during the geographer’s exile from Brazil. He describes how the French
academy influenced Santos’s theories, but also how French models were inadequate
to explain the Brazilian’s experiences of urbanization in his home country. It was in
France that Santos began explicitly theorizing from the point of view of the Third
World by conversing with, and often criticizing, dependency theory, world systems
theory, notions of underdevelopment and centre-periphery relations. He also began
to focus specifically on the experiences of cities in the South: how urbanization
dynamics in these cities are shaped by large-scale population growth and how the
city must be understood as whole system comprised of upper and lower economic
circuits. These ideas are most clearly elaborated in Santos’s book The Shared
Space.
Other contributors place Milton Santos in conversation with scholars better
known outside the Brazilian context. Eliza Pinto de Almeida (Chap. 5) explores
useful articulations between Santos and Michel Foucault to discuss the transfor-
mation of the technosphere and psychosphere of medical care from the 18th century
to the contemporary period. She explores how the space of the hospital has been
transformed through shifts in the systems of objects and systems of action and the
fixed and flowing elements that comprise it. Central to her argument is Santos’s
notion of space as an ‘indissoluble, solidary and contradictory set of systems of
objects and systems of actions that cannot be considered in isolation, but as the
unique frame in which history unfolds’ (Santos 1996a: 51). Following the historical
transitions laid out both by Santos and Foucault, Almeida argues that the psy-
chosphere of hospitals changed from fear to therapeutic care, engendered by shifts
in the technosphere—specifically technological advancements in, inter alia, sur-
gery, sanitation and pharmaceuticals.
Contributors to the volume also use Santos’s theories to explore contemporary
issues in Brazil, from the expansion of the agricultural frontier to environmental
crises and new modes of nature conservation. In their chapter Samuel Frederico and
Marina Castro de Almeida (Chap. 6) discuss Santos’s analytic the political econ-
omy of territory and use one of its central tenets—the dialectical relationship
between centripetal and centrifugal forces—to understand the Brazilian state’s
territorial organization of agribusiness in the 2000s. The authors argue that pro-
ductive re-structuring and reorganization of space have been central to the
large-scale development of modern agriculture. They explore, specifically, how
centripetal forces are consolidating the normative, financial and informational role
of São Paulo, while centrifugal forces spatially disperse many sub-spaces of
monocultural production across the country. They argue that these socio-spatial
dynamics have had a polarizing and unequal effect on the development of various
regions in Brazil. This is, in part, because the reorganization of territory is often tied
to circuits of capital that privilege global actors, thus re-drawing the territory of
Brazil in the interests of these hegemons and effecting an alienation of space.
Milton Santos being awarded the title of Professor Emeritus of the University of São Paulo, 1997.
Photo by Oswaldo José dos Santos, from the collection of the magazine Jornal da USP
Luís Angelo dos S. Aracri (Chap. 7) draws on Santos’s works The Nature of
Space and Planning Underdevelopment and Poverty to discuss two key phases of
Brazilian territorial planning. In the first period, spanning the 1930s to the 1980s,
the national government had an ostensible monopoly on industrial production. It
centralized planning and focused specifically on integrating the national territory.
From the 1990s onward the state’s focus shifted as a result of new global dynamics:
the national government used territorial planning to try to insert different production
sectors into an increasingly globalized market and, reacting to the global market’s
competitive imperative, focused on attracting investments from both public and
private sectors. Aracri draws specifically on Santos’s notions of fluidity imperative,
technical networks and war of places to flesh out his arguments. Aracri ends on a
hopeful note by presenting an ethical imperative to imagine a non-capitalist mode
of territorial planning.
Santos’s understanding of space as a hybrid is explored in Fabrício Gallo’s
chapter (Chap. 8) about Brazilian federalism. Gallo utilizes Santos’s notion of used
territory, which refers to the ways geographical space is shaped by both objects and
actions and by the co-constitution of materialities and immaterialities. Gallo pre-
sents the example of the Brazilian federation and explores how territory is differ-
entially organized through federalism—how territory is differentially used, in other
words—and the implications that this has for the unequal distribution of limited
resources. He argues that the use of territory through federalism re-entrenches
socio-spatial inequalities. In this chapter, Gallo explains several of Santos’s key
concepts including the event, ruled territory and territory as rule.
Continuing a common focus on agribusiness, Júlia Adão Bernardes (Chap. 9)
uses Milton Santos’s theorizations to explore modern agricultural development in
Brazil. She connects the movement of the agricultural frontier—characterized lar-
gely by monoproduction—to global capital markets in the current technical-sci-
entific-informational milieu. Here, science, technology and information have been
central to the expansion of capitalist frontiers across Brazilian territory. Bernardes
draws on Santos’s concepts of system of objects and system of actions to explore the
new territorial divisions of labour and reorganizations of agricultural territory in the
Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Pará. She is also concerned with how the
nation-state facilitates this development through the creation of infrastructure such
as the BR-163 federal highway. The modern frontier of agribusiness has had
devastating impacts on the environment and has caused high unemployment rates
among local populations alongside the expropriation of their land.
Roberta Carvalho Arruzzo (Chap. 10) is also interested in the expansion of the
agricultural frontier but from a different locus of enunciation. In her chapter,
Arruzzo discusses how agricultural production and environmental preservation
efforts encroach on indigenous peoples’ territory across Brazil. She draws on
Santos’s notion of luminous spaces—as those spaces of fluidity and velocity
imposed by global capitalism—and his notion of opaque spaces—the spaces of
slow people where counter/non-hegemonic rationalities exist. Indigenous peoples’
lands in Brazil are sites of intense negotiation in which these different spaces and
temporalities come into conflict. However, slow people, according to Santos, are
those who offer hope for a different future, as they engage with alternative ways of
being that can subvert the logics of global capitalism. They are potentially revo-
lutionary subjects. Indigenous peoples, to Arruzzo, offer this hope.
Santos has always been very critical of a ‘naïve environmentalism’. In a moment
when it seemed as though almost everyone in Brazil and around the world was
talking about the environmental crisis Santos was a dissenting, critical voice. He
has been worried that a utilitarian geography concerned with a narrow under-
standing of the environment could result in a fragmented geography in which
subdisciplines ‘establish themselves as autonomous, when in reality their secondary
role only qualifies them as operational branches of a more complex and unitary
geography’ (Santos et al. 2000: 106) He believes that ‘both the market and politics
sometimes inspire solutions’ (Santos et al. 2000: 106) of naïve environmentalism.
These solutions for environmental crises are realized through ‘geographies of
tourism, the environment, culture, geoinformatics, or of the suggestions of the
so-called regional planning…[that] address only one or a few activities at any given
time’ (Santos et al. 2000: 106) resulting from a fragmented notion of nature. Santos
does indeed look at issues of nature, but through the lens of the technique.
These ideas are explored in the final two chapters of the volume. Environmental
preservation and sustainable development in Brazil have taken the form of con-
servation units (CUs) in the current technical-scientific-informational period. Maria
Tereza Duarte Paes and Claudia Levy (Chap. 11) discuss CUs as new systems of
nature regulated by specialized technical knowledge and logics such as private
property, extraction and protection. These logics are vertically imposed, upend
traditional orders and disrupt horizontal relationships between contiguous locations.
Paes and Levy draw on Santos’s concept of technique, the ‘ensemble of instru-
mental and social means by which humanity realizes life, produces, and creates
space’ (Santos 1996a: 25), to focus on the hybrid and historically constituted
condition of conservation spatializations such as those of CUs.
Santos believes that we need a nuanced and geographical understanding of
Nature, not environment, to analyze space and territory. While the Brazilian
geographer does not often explicitly discuss environmental crisis, his theoretical
insights across disciplinary boundaries—philosophy, geography and science—are
useful for understanding climate change in the contemporary period. Francisco
Toro (Chap. 12) explores how the work of Santos contributes to a new ethics for
responsible engagements with Nature. He does so by pursuing four major dimen-
sions of Santos’s thought: first, ontological, or the necessary historicization of
Nature; second, epistemic, or the problematic assumptions of objectivity in the
scientific method; third, technical, or the inherently spatial nature of technical
objects and activity; and fourth, ethical, or how a spectacularized nature can
compound environmental crisis. Toro’s chapter helps readers understand the
cross-disciplinary nature of Santos’s thought through the concrete and pressing
issue of climate change.
These chapters offer a small sample of the vast possibilities available to apply
Santos’s concepts and method. The Miltonian school uses his ideas to explain a
broad range of subjects from urban violence, to finance, to music, to graffiti, to
transportation. However, most of this scholarship is still trapped in language and
cultural barriers that prevent English-speaking scholars from engaging with his
work. We do not celebrate Santos as a god, or Miltonian thought as a dogma; his
work is to be used, applied, improved and criticized. Before this happens, however,
it is necessary to first read and understand his work. This book offers a step toward a
serious engagement with Miltonian thought in English-language geography.
Borrowing from Santos’s vocabulary we could say that the ‘hegemonized’ in
academia, the counter-rationality of the outsiders, offer new gazes and new forms of
engaging the world. Santos was critical of many exploitative processes but he was,
at heart, an optimist. He believed in the período popular da história, in the pro-
tagonism of the poor, in globalization as possibility. But this revolutionary form of
globalization must make peripherality central to a new normative ethic for living in
solidarity and non-exploitative relationships with one another. Thinking of and with
peripherality is indeed the centrality (Santos 2000a) of global social justice.
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Chapter 2
The Return of the Territory
Milton Santos
Translated by Lucas Melgaço, Tim Clarke and Carolyn Prouse.
Abstract (by the translators) This chapter is an annotated interpretation and

translation of Milton Santos’s key text, ‘O Retorno do Território’. In this chapter,
Santos proposes for the first time the provocative concept of ‘used territory’.
According to the geographer, used territory should be understood as both the result
of historical processes, and the material and social basis of human actions. The idea
of a return, indicated in the title, refers to the fact that in spite of the growing
transnationalization of spaces through networks, the inhabited and used territories
(or the banal spaces) create new synergies that challenge the world to a rematch.
The text analyzes the relationships between the global and the local by invoking
concepts such as verticalities and horizontalities, and the three forms of what Santos
calls ‘happening’: homologous, complementary and hierarchical.
We live with a notion of territory that is inherited from an incomplete modernity1,2

and from its legacy of pure concepts–concepts that travelled through the centuries
largely untouched. It is the use of the territory, not the territory itself, that should be
the object of social analysis. The territory is an impure form, a hybrid, a notion that,
for this reason, requires constant historical revision. What is permanent about the
Lucas Melgaço, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

(VUB), Belgium; Email: [email protected].
Tim Clarke, Ph.D. candidate, Department of English, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Carolyn Prouse, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia,
Canada.
Milton Santos (Deceased)—Author for this chapter.
1
Translators’ note (TN): As a matter of emphasis, Santos capitalized a number of words in the
original text in Portuguese. We opted, instead, to italicize them, as this is a more common
convention in English.
2
TN: In his book A Metrópole Corporativa e Fragmentada: O Caso de São Paulo (São Paulo:
Nobel, 1990) Santos uses the metaphor ‘incomplete modernity’ to describe the metropole of São
Paulo as a juxtaposition of traces of modernity (particularly due to economic opulence) and traces
of backwardness inherited by the social and political structure. The notion can be understood thus
as an inequal and selective modernization.

26 M. Santos
territory is the fact that it is our constant living environment. It is therefore crucial to
understand the territory in order to avoid the risk of alienation, the risk of losing the
sense of individual and collective existence, the risk of renouncing the future.
In short, we move, through the centuries, from the ancient individual commu-
nion of places and the universe to the idea of today’s global communion: the
universal interdependence of places is the new reality of the territory. In this long
journey the nation-state was a milestone, a turning point, enthroning a
legal-political notion of territory. This notion is derived from the knowledge and
conquest of the world, from the modern state and the Enlightenment to the era of
the valorization of so-called natural resources.
Today, nature is historic … including the so-called ‘environment’. Its ‘local’
value is relative, or in any case, relativized.
In the past, it was the state, after all, that defined places—evident from Colbert to
Golbery,3 two paradigmatic names with respect to the effective subordination of the
territory to the state. The territory was the basis, the foundation of the nation-state,
and this state was at the same time shaped by the territory. Today, while we
experience a dialectic of the concrete world, we have evolved from the already
antiquated notion of a territorial state to the postmodern one of the transnation-
alization of the territory.
However, just as before not everything was, shall we say, ‘statized’ territory,
today not everything is strictly ‘transnationalized’. Even in places where the vectors
of globalization are more coherent and effective, the inhabited territory creates new
synergies and ends up challenging the world to a rematch. The active role of the
territory makes us think about the beginning of history, although nothing is as it
was before; hence, the metaphor of the rematch, the return.
Again, we must insist on the relevance, today, of the roles of science, technology
and information. If we want to deepen the process of knowledge about this aspect of
the total reality, it is not enough to talk about mundialization or globalization where
the territory is concerned. The territory is made up of forms, but the used territory4
3
TN: Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683) was a French engineer, geographer, economist and
politician who served as the Minister of Finances during the reign of King Louis XIV. Among his
concerns as a statesman and strategist was the construction of roads and canals to propel the
country’s economy, as well as Brazil’s competition with its neighbours and with England. Golbery
do Couto e Silva (1911–1987) was a general in the army and one of the most important theo-
reticians and strategists behind Brazil’s 1964–1985 military government. He was the creator of the
Brazilian National Security Doctrine and in 1966 he published the book Geopolítica do Brasil,
which strongly influenced the armed forces during the military dictatorship.
4
TN: The abstract concept of ‘território usado’ suggested by Santos could be translated into
English as either ‘used territory’ or ‘territory in use’. In the text ‘The active role of Geography: A
manifesto’ Santos et al. elaborate further on the definition of the concept: ‘An approach that
considers the idea of the used territory leads to the idea of banal space, everyone’s space, the
whole space. It is the space of all humanity, regardless of its differences; the space of all insti-
tutions, regardless of their strength; the space of all companies, regardless of their power’ (Santos
et al. 2000: 104). See Santos, M. et al. (2000). O Papel ativo da geografia: Um manifesto.
Território, 5(9), 103–109. A translation of this text into English was published by Antipode:
2 The Return of the Territory 27
is made up of objects and actions, and is a synonymn for human space, inhabited
space. Even the analysis of fluidity5—the latter which serves a competitiveness that
now governs economic relations—operates along the same lines. On the one hand,
we have a virtual fluidity that is offered by objects created to facilitate this flow,
which are increasingly technical objects; on the other, objects give us only a virtual
fluidity, because real fluidity derives from human actions that are becoming
increasingly informed, regulated, normatized.6
This reality allows the identification of new divisions7 of the territory today, cuts
that go beyond the old category of the region. This is a result of the new con-
struction of space and the new functioning of the territory through what I am calling
horizontalities and verticalities. The horizontalities are the domain of contiguity,
those neighbouring places that meet through territorial continuity. The verticalities
are formed by points distant from each other, which are connected by all social
forms and processes. From this scheme, we must reclaim François Perroux’s idea of
banal space, which he bequeathed to geographers and which he suggested to his
disciple, Jacques Boudeville, could be tested in Brazil. The idea of banal space,
more than ever, must be raised in opposition to the notion that is currently gaining
ground in the territorial disciplines: the network.
Networks constitute a new reality that, in some ways, justifies this vertical
formulation. But besides the networks, before the networks, despite the networks,
after the networks, with the networks, there is the banal space, the space of all, the
entire space. The networks constitute only a fragment of the space and the space of
a few.
Today, the territory may be formed by both contiguous and networked places.
However, the same places that form networks also form the banal space. They are
the same places, the same points, but which simultaneously contain different
functionalities, perhaps divergent or even opposite ones.
(Footnote 4 continued)
Santos, M. et al. (2017). The active role of geography: A manifesto. Antipode, 49(4). Retrieved
February 1, 2017, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12318/abstract.
5
TN: Santos’s concept of fluidity of the territory encompasses both transportation (of goods and
people) but also that of information (communication of data, money, ideas, orders, etc.). ‘One of
the characteristics of the world today is the exigence of fluidity to the circulation of ideas,
messages, products or money, in the interest of hegemonic actors. The contemporary fluidity is
based on technical networks, that are the foundations of competitivity. Hence: the voracious search
for even more fluidity, which leads to the search for even more effective techniques. Fluidity is at
the same time cause, condition and result’ (Santos, M. (1996). A Natureza do Espaço: Técnica e
Tempo, Razão e Emoção. São Paulo: Hucitec. p. 218).
6
TN: We have added the word ‘regulated’ here, not present in the original Portuguese, in order to
ensure the reader fully understands what Santos means by ‘normatized’ (‘normatizado’, in the
original text).
7
TN: In fact, Santos uses the word ‘recortes’ (cut or snip) which in this context can refer to both
the divisons of the territory and to the different scales of analysis: a global cut, a local cut.
28 M. Santos
This simultaneous happening,8 made possible thanks to the miracles of science,

creates new solidarities: the possibility of a solidary happening, despite all forms of
difference between people and between places.
In fact, this solidary happening presents itself in three forms in the current
territory: a homologous happening, a complementary happening and a hierarchical
happening.
The homologous happening is related to the areas of agricultural or urban
production that are modernized through specialized information. These areas lead to
a rationality of behaviours presided over by the same information that creates a
similitude of activities, producing functional contiguities that give the contours of
the area thus defined. The complementary happening is that of the relationship
between city and countryside and of the relationships between cities, which is also a
result of the modern needs of the production process and of geographically close
exchange. Finally, the hierarchical happening is one of the results of the tendency
toward the rationalization of activities; it occurs under a command, an organization
that tends to be concentrated, which forces us to consider the production of this
command, its direction. This rationalization of activities under a concentrated
command also contributes to the production of a sense, a meaning, imprinted on
people’s lives and in the life of the space.
In all cases, information has a role today that is similar to the one that belonged
to energy in the remote past. Previously, especially before human existence, what
brought together the different parts of a territory was the energy that originated from
natural processes themselves. Over the course of history it is information that gains
this function, to the point that it is today the true instrument of union between the
various parts of a territory.
For the homologous happening and the complementary happening, that is, in the
areas of homologous production in the city and in the countryside, the current
territory is marked by an everyday life lived by rules that are formulated or
reformulated locally. In this case, it is the use of information that tends to gener-
alize. The hierarchical happening, on the contrary, refers to an everyday life that is
imposed from outside, led by privileged information—an information that is secret,
that is power itself. In the homologous and complementary happenings, we have a
dominion of forces that are locally centripetal. The hierarchical happening, on the
contrary, is the domain of centrifugal forces. There is undoubtedly in the latter case
a centripetalism, but it is a centripetalism of the other.
In the first and second hypotheses, forms are primary, but the techniques are also
relevant here, as they incidentally produce the forms used. In the case of the
hierarchical happening, norms are primary, but it is politics rather than the tech-
niques that is relevant.
The dialectic in the territory is thus reinforced. We might even say the dialectic
of the territory since, by being used, the territory is human and can thus involve a
TN: Santos uses the abstract term ‘happening’ (‘acontecer’, in Portuguese) with the global
8
meaning of how actions, things, people and places interact.

dialectic. This dialectic affirms itself through a ‘local’ control of the ‘technical’
portion of production and a remote control of both the ‘technical’ and political
portions of production. The technical portion of production allows local or regional
cities to have some control over the lands that surround them. This command is
based on the technical configuration of the territory, on its technical density and
also, in some way, on its functional density, which can also be called informational
density. On the other hand, distant control, locally realized through the political
portion of production, is accomplished by global cities and their relays in the
various territories. The result is the acceleration of the process of alienation of
spaces and humanity,9 of which a component is the tremendous mobility currently
available to people: that maxim of Roman law, ubis pedis ibi patria (where my feet
are, there is my homeland), has lost or changed its meaning today. Additionally,
local and international law are changing in order to recognize the right of those who
were not born in a particular place to intervene in that place’s political life.
It is necessary to reflect on the conflict between, on one hand, the act of pro-
ducing and living (a function of the direct process of production) and, on the other,
the forms of regulation related to other instances of production. So, in our time, the
importance of labour is renewed, conditioned by the technical configuration of the
territory in rural and urban areas, and connected to the immediate process of pro-
duction. The results of this labour are an important fact in understanding the present
society.
Consequently, there is an escalating conflict between local space, a space lived
by all neighbours, and global space, inhabited by a rationalizing process and with
an ideological content of distant origin. This process and content arrive at each
place with objects and rules established to serve them; hence, the interest in
reclaiming the notion of banal space, that is, the territory of everyone, which is
often contained in the limits of the work of everyone. The arrival of these objects
and rules also accounts for the interest in counterposing the notion of banal space to
that of networks, the latter being the territory of forms and rules for the service of a
few. There is an opposition, therefore, between the entirety of the territory and some
of its parts, or points, which is to say, the networks. But what produces, what
commands, what disciplines, what normalizes, what imposes a rationality upon
networks is the world. This world is that of the universal market and of world
governments. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade, international organizations, global universities, the founda-
tions that foster research by giving money, are all part of an intended world gov-
ernment. They give grounds to a perverse globalization and to attacks made today,
in practice and ideology, against the territorial state.
When one says world, one is speaking mainly about the market, which today,
unlike before, permeates everything, including people’s consciousness: we speak of
9
TN: Santos often uses ‘homem’ (man) as the general term for humanity. We have decided to
interpret ‘homem’ as the gender-neutral ‘humans’ or ‘people’ because Santos meant all of
humanity, not strictly men. See Chap. 1 for a discussion of the politics of interpretation and
translation.
30 M. Santos
the market of things, including nature; the market of ideas, including science and
information; the political market. The political version of this perverse globalization
is precisely the democracy of the market. Neoliberalism is the other arm of this
perverse globalization, and both of these arms—the democracy of the market and
neoliberalism—are mobilized to impede the affirmation of those ways of living
whose solidarity is based on contiguity, in the solidary neighbourhood—in other
words, in the shared territory. If this coexistence is exposed to an external regu-
lation, it is combined with national and local forms of regulation. The conflict
between these norms should be considered a fundamental basis of geographic
analysis.
Before the weakening of the current territorial state, the scale of the technique
and the political scale overlapped. Today these two scales are different and distant
from each other. Therefore, the great contradictions of our time emerge when we
take the use of the territory into account.
In the democracy of the market, the territory is the support for the networks that
transport rules and norms that are utilitarian, partial, partialized, and selfish (from
the point of view of hegemonic actors); hence, the proliferation of verticalities. At
the same time, horizontalities, though weakened and with limited force, are required
to take account of the totality of actors.
The arena of opposition between the market—which singularizes—and civil
society—which generalizes—is the territory, in its various dimensions and scales.
For now, the place—no matter its dimension—is the locus of resistance of civil
society. However, nothing prevents us from devising ways of extending this
resistance to larger scales. In this respect, it is essential to stress the need for a
systematic knowledge of reality by analyzing its fundamental aspect, the territory
(the used territory, the use of the territory). Foremost, it is necessary to re-envision
reality from within, in other words, to question its own constitution at this historic
moment. The discourse and the metaphor, that is, the literaturization of knowledge,
can and should come later.
The (transnationalized) territory reaffirms itself by way of the place and not only
through the new basis of the space, in spite of the new fundamentalisms of the
fragmented territory—e.g. new nationalisms and localisms.
It is nevertheless important to remember that, thanks to the miracles enabled by
science, technology, and information, the very forces that create fragmentation may,
in other circumstances, serve goals precisely opposite to that fragmentation.
The current trend is for places to unite vertically. Everything, everywhere, is
being done in favour of this unification. International credit is made available to the
poorest countries in order to allow networks to establish themselves in the service
of big capital. But places can also unite horizontally, rebuilding a basic common
living that is capable of creating local regulations, regional norms…
In the vertical union, the modernization vectors are entropic. They bring disorder
to the regions where they settle because the order they create is for their own
exclusive and selfish benefit. If they increase horizontal cohesion, it is at the service
of the market, though this process tends to erode the horizontal cohesion that serves
civil society as a whole.
Yet the effectiveness of this vertical union is always at play and cannot survive
except at the expense of strict norms—despite the existance of neoliberalism. In the
Brazilian case, these rigid norms to which we have been submitted for ten years10
come at the sacrifice of the nation.
Meanwhile, horizontal unions can be enlarged by new forms of production and
consumption. An example of this enlargement is how farmers come together to
defend their interests, allowing them to move from a purely economic form of
consumption, necessary to their production, to a locally defined political con-
sumption, which also distinguishes the Brazilian regions from each other. We
should bear this in mind when thinking about the creation of new horizontalities.
These horizontalities will, from the foundation of the territorial society, find a way
to release us from the curse of the perverse globalization in which we are living.
They bring us closer to the possibility of creating an other globalization, one
capable of restoring humankind to its dignity.
10
TN: It is worth remembering that the text was originally published in 1994. Santos thus refers to
the neoliberal governments that came after the Brazilian military dictatorship that formally ended
in 1985.
Chapter 3
Technical-Scientific-Informational Milieu,
Networks and Territories
Sarita Albagli
Abstract This chapter sets out to revisit the conceptual and analytic framework
developed by the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos since the 1980s and more sys-
tematically from the mid-90s. At this time Santos proposed to reflect on the role of
information, science and technique in the contemporary geography of socio-technical
networks and their imbrications in territorial dynamics. The chapter begins by pre-
senting the concepts of space and territory adopted by Santos, considering the com-
plementary relations between the ‘geography of flows’ and the ‘geography of fixed
objects’. It characterizes what the geographer calls the technical-scientific-
informational milieu and its increasing relationality through a new geography of net-
works. The chapter also contextualizes the distinction between vertical dynamics of
information in networks, and horizontal dynamics of communication within the terri-
tory; the disputes between hegemonic rationalities and emerging ‘irrationalities’, or
‘counter-rationalities’. To conclude, the chapter proposes new elements for research
agendas on the contemporary scene inspired by Santos’s theoretical contributions,
considering the emergence of new issues and their implications for renewing the
author’s conceptual and theoretical repertory and frameworks. The chapter points to the
fact that digital networks, as relational and interactive environments, are inseparable
from power relations. On the one hand they express state and corporate control. On the
other, they propitiate collective, collaborative, and social action and production.
Sarita Albagli, Senior Researcher, Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology
(IBICT), Brazil; Email: [email protected]. Translation from Portuguese by Maria Cristina Matos
Nogueira.

34 S. Albagli
3.1 Introduction
This chapter sets out to revisit the conceptual and analytic framework developed by
Milton Santos since the 1980s and more systematically from the mid-90s, when he
labelled the configuration of geographical space a ‘technical-scientific-informational
milieu’.1 From this point onwards Santos reflected on the role of information in the
contemporary geography of socio-technical networks and their imbrications in ter-
ritorial dynamics.
Santos’s theoretical contributions are taken in order to come to grips with the
simultaneously cooperative and conflicting dimensions of these new spaces of
sociability. On the one hand, these environments are relational and interactive,
fostering collective and collaborative production within which a ‘universal intelli-
gence’ (Santos 1997: 158) is engendered. In other words, they create new possi-
bilities of knowledge about the planet and of communication between all places
through information. In the author’s own words, production is characterized
nowadays as fundamentally ‘work upon work’ (Santos 1997: 203). On the other
hand, these environments are inseparable from the issue of power; they are envi-
ronments within which centralized control and technical unity as well as spatial
heterogeneities are expressed.
In this chapter I revisit relationships that Santos (1997) theorized between the
‘geography of flow’ and the ‘geography of fixed objects’; between the ‘informa-
tional density’ of networks and the ‘communicational density’ of territories;
between networks and territories as spaces of opposition between, on the one side,
verticalities and selectivities, and, on the other, horizontalities based on the totality
of actors and actions; between the moulding of hegemonic rationalities and the
emergence of ‘irrationalities’, ‘counter-rationalities’ or yet, ‘other forms of
rationalities’. In sum, I seek to demonstrate the topicality and the pioneering
character of Santos’s thinking regarding geographic space. I also point toward new
theoretical elements and research agendas inspired by his contributions and
reflections. In so doing, I take into account the emergence of new issues, specifi-
cally those that arise from the innovations associated with the development and
dissemination of information and communication technologies; as well as the
potentials for renewing Santos’s repertoires and theoretical-conceptual frameworks
in this context.
This chapter begins by presenting the concepts of space and territory adopted by
Santos. Next, it characterizes what the author calls the technical-scientific-informational
milieu and its increasing relationality through a new geography of networks. Further, it
contextualizes the distinction between vertical dynamics of information and horizontal
1
Santos had been working on this topic since the mid-1980s, but it is in his book A Natureza do
Espaço: Técnica e Tempo; Razão e Emoção, the first edition of which is from 1996, that he
develops this approach more thoroughly; this is followed by the book Por uma Outra
Globalização: Do Pensamento Único à Consciência Universal, published in 2000.
3 Technical-Scientific-Informational Milieu … 35
dynamics of communication in the territory. To conclude, I propose an agenda of

possible reflections on the contemporary scene based on Santos’s theoretical
contributions.
3.2 Space, a Hybrid
Santos (1997) characterizes space as a frame for life, made up of the indissociable
union of systems of objects and systems of action. It is life, it is society in
movement that fills and animates space and that is capable of transforming it and
providing it with dynamism. Space is, then, a mixture, a hybrid, a
forever-provisional synthesis between, on the one hand, spatial shapes and terri-
torial configurations and, on the other, content and social relationships. These
shapes, configurations, contents and relationships all interact and affect one another.
Santos, then, does not think of territory in itself as a theoretical construct.
‘[Territory] only becomes a useful concept for social analysis when we consider it
as it is used, from the moment when we conceive it together with those actors who
use it’ (Santos 2011: 22).2 What matters, then, is territory that is used, acted upon.
The material basis of territory—comprised of its objects—is a condition, a limit
and an invitation to act. It is also the starting point of our theorizations: ‘Nowadays
we do not achieve anything if we do not start from the objects that surround us’
(Santos 1997: 257). For Santos, material objects have, on the one hand, an
autonomous corporeal existence that ensures continuity in time. However, on the
other, they do not have a life of their own: ‘they have neither a history nor a
geography…their meaning is always relative’ (Santos 1997: 82). It changes
throughout history: ‘An object considered on its own has value as a thing, but its
value as social data arises from its relational existence’ (Santos 1997: 124). Actions
attribute new meaning to existing objects. Objects may be ‘already acted upon’ and
qualified by previous actions or they may be created through new actions which, in
turn, make possible new forms of both object and action. Thus, systems of objects
and systems of actions condition and affect each other.
At each historical period new systems of objects and new forms of action
correspond to new technical systems. Technical systems refer to a given state of the
techniques, that is, ways to produce energy, goods and services, and also ways to
mediate relationships between people. However, historical transformations are not
subsumed only under a technical rationality. ‘There is always a measure of
imponderability in the result, due, on the one hand, to human nature, and on the
other, to the human character of the milieu’ (Santos 1997: 76). This imponderability
is what characterizes the event, a concept to which Santos attributes great impor-
tance in geographical thought. ‘An event is the result of a cluster of vectors,
2
All quotes from Santos were translated from Portuguese into English by Maria Cristina Matos
Nogueira.
36 S. Albagli
conducted by a process, giving a new function to the existing milieu’ (Santos 1997:
76). Its main feature is the unpredictability of results. Santos believes that the event
is not only a temporal process, but also a geographical one: it is ‘only complete
when it is integrated into the milieu’ (Santos 1997: 76). The event can also be
perceived as inter subjective praxis3 leading to change. Santos (1997: 116) high-
lights the fact that ‘events dilute things’—as well as our established knowledge—
demanding new knowledge. It requires new objects and new ways of thinking.
3.3 Technical-Scientific-Informational Milieu
Santos indicates the existence of three major historical stages in what he considers
to be the growing artificialization and instrumentalization of the geographic milieu.
These are: the natural milieu stage, the technical milieu stage and the
technical-scientific-informational milieu stage. The last corresponds to the current
period that starts after World War II and becomes more prominent in the 1970s.
In the technical-scientific-informational milieu, the system of objects and the
system of actions are thoroughly saturated with science and technology. This implies
a ‘scientifization and a technicization of the landscape’ (Santos 1997: 191). One of
this period’s most important traits is the emergence of a techno science in which
science and technique become inseparable elements as well as highly selective, that
is, they often serve private interests and have exclusionary uses. The increasingly
globalized market conditions the use of this techno science to a large extent.
As an ensemble of fixed objects and flows, space is, in this contemporary stage,
made up of: a technosphere—the world of objects that intensively uses science and
technology; and a psychosphere—the realm of ideas that is the locus for producing
meaning, the sphere of intersubjective action. Space is an ensemble of hybrid
objects whose corporeal existence is only made real through actions. ‘The tech-
nosphere and the psychosphere are the two pillars through which the
scientific-technical milieu introduces rationality, irrationality and counter-rationality
into the very content of the territory’ (Santos 1997: 204). To Santos, rationality
means a purely instrumental perspective of use of the territory. Irrationality and
counter-rationality are forms of resistance to this instrumental use and of directly or
indirectly proposing alternative ways to hegemonic logics of relationships with
territory.
Information technologies such as cybernetics, telecommunications and
micro-electronics are central to the current informationalized technosphere. They
possess a unifying character and they act in an integrated and connected way. They
also have an invasive character, as they expand and impose themselves globally.
These technologies extend themselves through the productive apparatus—as well as
3
Santos refers to ‘transindividual praxis’ as discussed by Gilbert Simondon (1958) in Du Mode d´
Existence des Objets Techniques. Paris: Aubier.
through territories—making use of and reproducing networks for their own ends.
Santos argues that ‘informationalization’ in the technical-scientific-informational
milieu expresses fundamental changes in social and economic life—here, life is
increasingly becoming ‘intellectualized’ as a product of intellectual labour. In other
words, the dominant form of production, particularly in cities, involves work upon
work, or the manipulation of meanings and of people.
Today, technical objects are also informational in character because they are
invested with an informational intentionality. In other words, ‘the main energy
fuelling their operation is also information’ (Santos 1997: 190). The scientifization
and technicization of space correspond then to its informationalization: both the
objects that configure the materiality of space (fixed objects) as well as the actions
that provide it with life and movement (flows) are rich in information. In fact, to
Santos, everything we produce nowadays is, in some way, information. However,
Santos (1997: 205) warns that ‘information only occurs with action…Objects—
even when they are constitutionally rich in information—can never be acted upon.
They remain in a state of rest or inactivity—waiting for an actor.’ Producing a
technical object does not imply its immediate use, ‘until the social energy includes
it in the movement of life’ (Santos 1997: 173).
To Santos (1997: 132), information nowadays plays a role analogous to the one
played in the past by energy: that of acting as a ‘real instrument for bringing
together the different parts of a territory.’ Thus the technical-scientific-informational
milieu ensures the operation of economic, cultural and political interlinked pro-
cesses, which universalizes the geographical milieu thus making it global, or, better,
moulds ‘spaces for globalization’ (Santos 1997: 191). Remember that, according to
Santos, ‘the geography of flows depends on…the geography of fixed objects’
(Santos 1997: 213). In this contemporary context, the intensity and importance of
(material and immaterial) flows and of interactions has increased, mediated by
technique.
The political dimension is also central to the new milieu. Following Santos’s
theory, contemporary globalization occurs through the ‘confluence between new
technical conditions and new political conditions’ (Santos 2011: 27). Increased
flows and circulations configure and prevail upon production processes, turning
speed into an imperative, a political model for civilization. Speed is, above all,
political rather than technical. Likewise, fluidity is a socio-technical entity of a
mixed, relative and selective character. It benefits people and places unequally.
Fluidity becomes an attribute that differentiates subspaces as those that are easily
updated and those that tend to become outdated. Thus, fluidity keeps space ‘united,
but differentiated’ (Santos 1997: 253). Objects and places are nowadays created to
facilitate flow. ‘We can also say that they ‘circulate’. It is as if they [themselves]
also were flow’ (Santos 1997: 218). The internet of things is the best expression of
this process: it creates the capacity to connect objects and to make them interactive
in a sensorial and intelligent way through the World Wide Web. To Santos, fluidity
is an attribute, the possibility or capacity of circulating, while flows are the cir-
culation processes themselves.
38 S. Albagli
Santos (2011) argues that the major pillars of contemporary globalized capi-
talism are the ‘tyranny of money’ and the ‘tyranny of information’. He refers to the
‘imperative’, the ‘omnipresence’, the ‘despotism’ and even the ‘violence’ of
information to characterize the appropriation of information techniques by states
and businesses, the centralization of information by a limited number of companies,
and the manipulation of information that is passed on to a considerable number of
human beings. To Santos (2011: 39), ‘information has two sides: one that seeks to
instruct and one that seeks to persuade’. Regarding the latter, Santos refers
specifically to the role of advertising in anticipating production and the role of
media in the ‘interested or otherwise self-interested, interpretation of facts’ (Santos
2011: 41). However, he also believes that information may carry the prospect of
revolution for our time: information potentially allows for the world to become
known everywhere. It makes possible ‘instant awareness of what happens to others’
(Santos 2011: 28) and, therefore, also makes possible a growing universal
awareness.
3.4 The Geography of Networks
Within the technical-scientific-informational milieu, space is increasingly moulded

by relationality. The reticular space of socio-technical networks pervades and even
overlays territories. As such, today there are distinct forms of relationship between
networks and territories, such as: territories of networks, networks of territory,
networked territories or territory as social network whose dynamism is connected to
flow.
Santos assigns to networks a series of attributes in the contemporary period:
• they are not merely a technical and material reality: they are also human, ‘liv-
ing’, social and political; they are made up of objects and actions whose
materiality remains as a mere abstraction until it is activated by ‘the people,
messages and values that frequent it’ (Santos 1997: 209);
• they constitute a phenomenon that becomes absolute, but not total: ‘not
everything is a network’ (Santos 1997: 213); the space of flows constitutes only
a subsystem made up of dots and lines;
• they are increasingly more deliberate and less spontaneous;
• they are simultaneously global and local; it is at the local scale that ‘fragments of
networks gain a unique and socially concrete dimension’ (Santos 1997: 215);
• they are not uniform: they are heterogeneous and differentiated, one and mul-
tiple; it is the world that awards them their primary unity, but also their plurality
as they take on diverse forms in space and time;
• they are active, not passive; they are stable and dynamic; their dynamism issues
from the movements of society;
• they integrate and disintegrate the order of the territory and of spatial divisions,
thus creating other orders and divisions;
• they encompass and reverberate different logical systems and types;

• their existence is inseparable from power; the role of actors in the control of
their operation and use is diverse;
• they are hybrids of a mixed and ambiguous nature.
As Santos summarizes:
Networks are virtual but at the same time real. As with all and any technical object the
independent material reality of networks is a promise…[T]he first characteristic of networks
is that they are virtual. They only become real - really effective, historically valid - when
employed in the process of action. (Santos 1997: 220)
3.5 Horizontalities and Verticalities
Santos establishes a difference between the dynamics of information and of com-

munication. He believes that informing and communicating are not equivalent and
do not necessarily occur simultaneously. This distinction is related to horizontalities
and verticalities in a territory. The dynamics of information are related to verti-
calities. Verticalities to Santos are relationships between locations that are spread
out in space. The ‘ensemble of locations creates a space of flows’ (Santos 2011:
105)—that is, a reticular, networked space. Informational density indicates ‘the
degree of exteriority of the place and the fulfilment of its tendency to engage in a
relationship with other places privileging sectors and actors’ (Santos 1997: 205).
Information, then, directly affects the vertical integration of diverse locations.
Santos associates the dynamics of communication with the horizontalities of
contiguous relationships within a territory. Here, both the finality—that is, a ter-
ritorial project or goal—imposed from the outside and from above, and the
counter-finality engendered locally, co-exist. It is the banal space4—the space for
living—that contains ensembles of hegemonic and non-hegemonic actors, the
presence of myriad rationalities and the coexistence of diversity, cooperation and
conflict. Horizontalities ‘are the theatre of a conforming, but not necessarily con-
formist, quotidian. They are simultaneously the place for blindness and for dis-
covery, for complacency and for rebellion’ (Santos 1997: 227). Santos (1997: 253)
quotes the philosopher Henri Laborit who reminds us that ‘communication means
etymologically to make in common’5; this leads to the creation or the fostering of
4
Santos found inspiration in François Perroux’s (1961) discussion of banal space, which was also
appropriated by Manuel Castells at a later stage. Perroux labelled banal space as that which was
not limited by flow or economic actors.
5
The quote by Henri Laborit is from L’Homme et la Ville. Paris, Flamarion (1987: 38).
40 S. Albagli
social bonds, of reciprocity and cooperation bringing about unity and diversity6
across the territory.
To Santos, large cities are ‘the great banal space’—a space of socio-spatial
diversity, of a wealth of perspectives, of mixed interpretations. Cities are also places
of great mobility and the possibility of encounters. Anyone can settle in large cities;
this broadens both the division of labour and the paths for interaction and inter-
subjective relationships occurring within them. This also allows for the construction
and redesigning of values. Cities are, in effect, ‘where the weak can subsist’ (Santos
1997: 258).
Santos’s theorizations identify, then, a desire for a new type of politics—
bottom-up politics—that exists outside institutional structures and expresses itself
as much through violence as ‘through the desire for understanding and overcoming’
(Santos 2011: 60). The present moment, ridden as it is with conflicts, constitutes
fertile soil for the creation of new and more numerous possible futures. Santos saw
potential in the excluded. To him, those not benefiting from material modernity—
that is, the poor, migrants, minorities—exist in less modern, ‘opaque’ areas versus
‘luminous’ zones or ‘spaces of exactitude’ (Santos 1997). As such, they are the
sources of irrationalities, or better, of counter-rationalities, of other rationalities or
parallel rationalities. Because they escape hegemonic rationalities, which leave little
room for spontaneity and variety, the excluded are the source of creativity and of
future possibilities. Santos believes that it is the poor in the city who can inspire
new debates and who can occupy open spaces and spaces of creativity.
‘Fundamental destitution’—in the words of Sartre (1960)—or scarcity—as a per-
manent feature of existence fed by the mismatch between desired but unfulfilled
consumption—generates ‘creative discomfort’: ‘the wealth of ‘have-nots’ is the
readiness of senses’ (Santos 2011: 130). This is because,
The less an individual belongs - by being poor, part of a minority, a migrant… - the more
easily the shock of novelty hits her and the discovery of new knowledge comes more easily
to her…The more unstable and full of surprises the space is the more surprised the indi-
vidual will be; and the more effective the operation of discovery. (Santos 1997: 263–264)
The poorest areas and social groups possess greater flexibility and capacity to adapt
to change as well as motivation for the construction of solidarities and the pursuit of
greater freedom: elements that ‘however much you give them away, the more you
have of them’ (Santos 2011: 130).
To Santos, then, ephemera and discovery are more important than long-lasting
experience and territoriality. Santos (1997: 261) believes that poor and migrants are
capable of finding ‘new uses and functions for objects and techniques as well as
new practical articulations and new norms in both social and affective life’. Like
other social segments the excluded appear to be passive when faced with technical
6
Milton Santos develops here a broad reflection on the relationship between universal con-
sciousness and individual existence within relationships of reciprocity, bringing forth otherness
and communication. He recovers the idea of transindividuality—proposed by Gilbert Simondon—
as relationships between human beings mediated by technique.
and informational networks and dynamics. However, they are very active within the
communication sphere, and their interaction contains more content. Importantly,
though, this insight of Santos’s has largely been contradicted by the way counter
hegemonic movements have made use of digital platforms as instruments of
mobilization in their struggles. Santos on the one hand could see and foresee the
uses of digital media in the surveillance and control of citizens and in labour
exploitation. On the other, he could not witness the expansion of the uses of these
media as forms of alternative circulation of information and social mobilization as
well as of collective and non-market forms of social production and collaboration.
Even though he criticizes the rationality inherent to dominant objects and
practices in the technical-scientific-informational milieu, Santos (2011) glimpses
the potential of information technologies to make possible new alternative paths to
change. He acknowledges that the technical informational apparatus, which he calls
‘soft techniques’, demands less fixed capital and greater intelligence; it is more
adaptable to different milieus and cultures and spread more easily through the social
body. It could possibly even lead to less economic concentration. Santos believes
that ‘thanks to the lightning progress of information the world becomes closer to
each one of us no matter where one is’; thus information establishes proximity with
others and generates ‘awareness of being world and of being in the world’ (Santos
2011: 172)—a universal awareness.
To achieve this integrated awareness, Santos argues that the democratization of
these soft techniques is necessary: they must be removed from their subordination to
great capital and placed at the service of humanity. Along these lines, he foretells: ‘It
is enough that two major mutations currently being engendered come into being—
the technological mutation and the philosophical mutation of the human species’
(Santos 2011: 174). The technological mutation is associated with the democrati-
zation of information techniques in the service of humankind. The philosophical
mutation may give a new and sustainable meaning to existence of each person and
also the planet.
3.6 New Frontiers
The work of Milton Santos was pioneering on different fronts and from different
perspectives. It not only introduced to geographical thought topics and issues little
explored in this field, but it was also taken up by other disciplinary arenas and
fields. In particular, the author demonstrated the centrality of the spatial dimension
for understanding contemporary transformations.
In this chapter, my purpose has been to present Santos’s contributions to
understanding the role of contemporary hegemonic technical systems—information
and associated technologies in particular. He had much to say about the connections
of current political and social transformations to spatial dynamics.
Santos primarily focused on bringing to light the perverse aspects of the rela-
tionship between the technical-scientific-informational milieu and the intensification
42 S. Albagli
of the globalization process. However, he also acknowledged the potentialities that

were opened up by alternate rationalities and placed importance in a universal
awareness guided by a new valuation of otherness. He foresaw the potential of a new
bottom-up type of politics that begins with the excluded and the marginalized,
outside established institutional boundaries.
Central to Santos’s ideas was that territorial dynamics involve the coexistence of
diversity, heterogeneity and inequality in the territory and between territories.
Moreover, he showed how cooperation and conflict coexist within territorial
dynamics: cooperation through the solidarities and synergies engendered in the
context of life in common within the territory; conflict through different meanings
and disputes in using and appropriating the territory.
Santos also sought to demonstrate how territorial dynamics and those of
socio-technical networks affect each other while preserving their specificity.
Networks are selective, they select and establish certain connections, while territory
is banal space—all the space. With new information and communication tech-
nologies that form the technical basis for globalization, territories are redefined,
acquiring informational and technical density. In turn, from the perspective of
networks, territories are hubs of global communication within which agents for
social change are concretely based.
Milton Santos could not witness the later evolution of these tendencies. They
would come to shape new socio-digital formations, spaces and dynamics; they are
now the new battlefields, the true laboratories and the advanced frontiers of social
and political experimentation and innovation. On the one hand there is the con-
temporary intensification of informationalization being used by powerful forces
through data collection in the era of big data and its new ways of capturing socially
created value; the new mechanisms for surveillance and control; and the
strengthening of systems for protecting intellectual property. On the other hand,
social movements are using digital networks for counter-hegemonic purposes
through counter-surveillance and inverse surveillance; alternative pathways for
circulating information outside large corporate media; and many other fronts of
antagonism and struggle (Albagli & Maciel 2010).
One of the core questions for democracy nowadays concerns the socialization of
knowledge, information and culture, on the one hand, and the appropriation and
privatization of these flows, on the other (Albagli & Maciel 2013). This tension is the
source of many disputes and antagonisms. Democratic concern with these processes
brings to light a new agenda on rights; it mobilizes new actors and new political and
social protagonisms. Milton Santos’s thinking provides a valuable treatise on the
possible courses of action within this contemporary context of change.
References
Albagli, S., & Maciel, M. L. (2013). Informação, conhecimento e democracia no capitalismo

cognitivo. In G. Cocco & S. Albagli (Eds.), Revolução 2.0 e a crise do capitalism global. Rio
de Janeiro: Garamond.
Albagli, S., & Maciel, M. L. (2010). Information, power, and politics: Technological and
institutional mediations. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Perroux, F. (1961). L’économie du XX Siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Santos, M. (1997 [1996]). A natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo. Razão e emoção. São Paulo:
Hucitec.
Santos, M. (2011 [2000]). Por uma outra Globalização: Do pensamento único à consciência
universal. Rio de Janeiro: Record.
Sartre, J.-P. (1960). Critique de la raison dialectique. Paris: Gallimard.
Chapter 4
How Can Santos’s Theory and Concepts
Help Us to Better Understand Third
World Dynamics and Problems?
Aurélien Reys
Abstract During his academic career Milton Santos published approximately 40

scientific works on the so-called Third World. This period of intellectual activity
corresponds to the time the geographer was forced to live in an exile that started in
France. He mainly wrote about the theme from the point of view of urban
agglomerations. To present the reality of these Third World cities, he frequently
used figures and empirical studies. He also observed that the dynamism and the
expansion of cities in underdeveloped countries depended more on their population
growth than on their economy. Milton Santos thought these major cities in the Third
World could not be studied as whole systems and his observations led to the
elaboration of the theory of the two circuits. The notion, first introduced in the last
chapter of Santos’s book Les Villes du Tiers-Monde, was further developed in one
of his most accomplished works on the theme: L’Espace Partagé: Les Deux
Circuits de l’Economie Urbaine des Pays Sous-Développés. The author identifies
the upper circuit as the direct result of a modernization process that drastically
changes modes of production and communication, as well as lifestyle and con-
sumption patterns. He understands the lower circuit as a consequence of the same
modernization processes, but in a more indirect manner: a circuit that includes
people and activities that do not benefit at all, or benefit only partially, from recent
technological advancements. However, Santos considers these two circuits closely
dependent and operating with one another.
4.1 Introduction
Among the several themes Milton Santos approached during his long and illustrious
career, some of the most influential and relevant are his works on the so-called
Third World. Between the 1960s and the end of the 1970s the Brazilian geographer
published approximately 40 scientific articles, books and chapters on the subject,
Aurélien Reys, Post-doctoral Researcher, Centre de Coopération International en Recherche

Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), France; Email: [email protected].

46 A. Reys
including two major works: Les Villes du Tiers Monde (Santos 1971a, b) and
L’Espace Partagé: Les Deux Circuits de l’Economie Urbaine des Pays Sous-
Développés (Santos 1975).
Interestingly, this period of intense intellectual activity corresponds to the
13 years during which the geographer was forced to live in exile by the Brazilian
military dictatorship. Imprisoned because of his proximity to the previous left-wing
government and some members of the local Communist party (Lévy 2007), Santos
spent 100 days in jail before leaving for France where he had already lived pre-
viously for a few years and had completed a doctorate at the University of
Strasbourg. France thus came as a natural choice of refuge for the geographer,
compounded by the country’s academic prestige: France was renowned at the time
for its standings in the social sciences and held in particularly high regard by South
American academia.1
This chapter aims to describe the work of Santos with regards to the Third
World. First, it shows how the author’s interest in the topic arose and evolved. Then
it will present his main contributions by discussing the two main books he pub-
lished on the subject.
4.2 Milton Santos and the Third World
It is not a coincidence that Santos wrote the chapter that launched his academic
career while he was living abroad. Still strongly connected to the African continent,
with which they had entertained close economic and cultural relations during a
century of colonization, French academics had developed an early and growing
interest in issues affecting areas with concentrated poverty.
Nonetheless, Santos did not start to work on the topic during his first stay in
France. His doctoral degree—based on a thesis about the downtown area of Salvador
—was in fact awarded in the domain of urban geography; it did not have a Third
World2 approach. It was only after his return to Brazil and a number of trips abroad,
especially to north and sub-Saharan Africa, that Santos began to consider for the first
time certain issues related to economic underdevelopment.
1
In the 1930s a group of French academics were in charge of the inauguration and development of
the University of São Paulo’s (USP) teaching activities. Professors involved included Fernand
Braudel (history) Pierre Monbeig (geography), Claude Lévi-Strauss (anthropology) and Roger
Bastide (sociology).
2
The expression Third World is used for the first time in 1952 by a French demographer, Alfred
Sauvy. Originally, the term was employed in reference to the French ‘Third Estate’, in order to
designate countries neither aligned with the capitalist nor the communist model. At the time when
France was still a monarchy, the Third Estate referred to the common people who were part of
neither the nobility nor the clergy.
4 How Can Santos’s Theory and Concepts Help Us … 47
He believed that most of the models used at that time were impossible to apply in
impoverished countries. Upon attempting to apply works previously realized by the
French geographer Jean Rochefort to the Brazilian state of Bahia, Santos concluded
that the hierarchy of urban networks corresponded to factors other than those
usually described (Santos 1959a, b). He also came to consider that the overlap
between environmental landscapes and human habitats observed in Europe, where
evolutions in societies were slow due to a historical stability, was unlikely in the
Third World (Santos 2004).
Santos used the term Third World for the first time in 1961 in the article
‘Quelques problèmes des grandes villes dans les pays sous-développés’, published
in the Revue de Géographie de Lyon (Santos 1961). In the article, Santos couples
the term with the concept of underdevelopment.3 Despite his disbelief that devel-
oping countries should follow the same trajectory as that of developed countries, he
frequently employed the two terms as synonyms throughout his works, like many
of his colleagues during the same period. At that time, the expression Third World
was indeed often overused and regularly interchanged with underdevelopment in
academic texts. The latter term, underdevelopment, implies a more deterministic
vision of progress and the necessary establishment of a market economy.
Although Santos began his work on the topic in Brazil, it was not until his
second stay during his exile in France, which lasted seven years, that the geographer
explored the Third World theme in more depth. First at the University of Toulouse,
then in Bordeaux and Paris, he dedicated most of his research and scientific activity
to the improvement of knowledge on the subject, which was still poorly explored
and documented at the time.
The debate on the subject of the Third World was, in his opinion, mostly a
humanistic discourse about civilization. Being native of the so-called Third World,
Santos soon became persuaded that his own vision and understanding of developing
countries could contribute to current debates (Santos 2004). He believed that the
subject found traction in a postcolonial period in which it was necessary for rich
countries to develop academic theories to justify new forms of economic and
cultural domination, and this apparent solidarity could accrue profit for the former
colonizers (Santos 2004).
4.3 Cities of the Third World
With the exception of a few publications, including the two volumes of Croissance
Démographique et Consommation Alimentaire dans les Pays Sous-Développés
(Santos 1967a, b)—a summary of the courses he gave at the department of liberal
3
‘The speed with which cities grow and urban populations increase is a generalized phenomenon
in underdeveloped countries. This fact is all the more important because it is precisely the Third
World cities that are the ones that materialize the will of progress and that are preparing the process
of development’ (Santos 1961: 197).
48 A. Reys
arts of Toulouse—Santos wrote about the Third World from the point of view of its
urban agglomerations. Starting with his first publication on the topic, A Cidade nos
Países Subdesenvolvidos, he moved beyond comparisons between Europe and
Brazil and engaged with case studies of several cities in North and West Africa
(Santos 1965a, b). In the following years, many of these studies continued to serve
as the basis for Santos’s papers and articles, some of which are gathered in the
volume Dix Essais sur des Villes Sous-Développées (Santos 1970).
In his early studies Santos observed that the dynamism and the expansion of
cities in underdeveloped countries depended more on their population growth than
on their economy. He also noted that their expansion was sustained both by natural
population growth and by migratory influxes issuing from rural areas.4 The origins
of such migration movements were first, according to Santos, a reflection of a social
change:
Those people invading the streets and overpopulating slums and shantytowns are rather
attracted by the city than expelled and chased away by a rural area unable to feed them. The
city has no jobs to offer. But there is so much difference between the city and its hinterland
that the peasant looks at it as an opportunity to get a better life and live in a place with
higher standards. Being a pariah in the countryside or a pariah in the city, between the two
options the peasant prefers the second one. As described by the Brazilian novelist Jorge
Amado in a book dedicated to the city of Salvador, he comes to “take part in the show”.
(Santos 1961: 201)
Santos frequently used figures and empirical studies to present the reality of
these Third World cities and, after a decade of works on the theme, gathered the
results of his analysis in a new book entitled Les Villes du Tiers Monde5 (Santos
1971a, b). This work aimed to present in depth the different characteristics of cities
found in the developed and non-developed worlds. Santos drew attention to the fact
that Third World cities shared several traits in common. Apart from their demo-
graphic growth, they were also characterized by features such as: a significant
disproportionate relationship between their total and economically active inhabi-
tants; profound social inequality of living standards; and a generally more youthful
population. He also pointed out numerous other elements that differentiated the
cities analyzed, such as their geographical locations, size and original function in
national economic production.
Ultimately, at a time in which the debate between liberals and Marxists was
raging, Santos did not miss the chance to position himself in favour of the latter,
offering an analysis consistent with unequal exchange and dependency theories.6
Santos regularly accused colonial industries of crippling urban growth in Third
World cities (Santos 1971a, b), and emphasized the city’s role in exchanges that
4
He also pointed out in an article on downtown Salvador that the city was not growing due to
dynamism, but because of its lack of dynamism (Santos 1958).
5
Book first published in French.
6
Dependency theory is a thesis created by Samir Amin and Arghiri Emmanuel, which argued that
underdevelopment is a consequence of historical processes resulting from an economic depen-
dency that deteriorated the terms of trade to the disadvantage of poorer countries.
disadvantaged suburban areas, an analysis similar to that of centre-periphery

relations between the First and the Third World:
What characterizes the largest cities of underdeveloped countries is their role as bridges
between the industrial world that buys their commodities, and the rural world that provides
raw materials, the latter of which, in return, receives manufactured goods produced or
imported by those cities. (Santos 1961: 198)
Santos finally pointed out the disconnection between these cities, organized in
favour of foreign interests, and their hinterlands. According to him, relations
between cities and their hinterlands created an imbalance in social living conditions
for the populations of these two areas. Such inequalities lead to the creation of
slums or favelas illegally built on cheap land where construction is often extremely
difficult and dangerous. Santos noted that most of these slums, often located at the
city’s margins but also found in city centres, were progressively becoming per-
manent housing for under-skilled workers and newcomers. He also stressed that,
contrary to the most developed countries, the urbanization in the Third World was
mainly structured by population growth and flows of migrants (Santos 1971a, b).
4.4 The Two Circuits and the Shared Space
Milton Santos thought these major cities in the Third World could not be studied as
‘whole systems’ (Santos 1974: 276) and in the late 1960s, building upon economist
Arthur Lewis’s perspective on dualism in the labour market, he became interested
in informal urban economic activities. These included diverse low-paying jobs such
as car guards and street vendors. Using a concept coined by French geographer and
friend Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier, Santos codified such activities as comprising a
primitive tertiary sector (Santos 1968), whose elasticity was an important driving
force behind the developing economy.
These observations led to the elaboration of Santos’s theory of the two circuits,
probably his most original contribution to the study of Third World. The notion,
first introduced in the last chapter of Santos’s book Les Villes du Tiers-Monde
(Santos 1971a, b), was further developed in one of his most accomplished works on
the theme: L’Espace Partagé: Les Deux Circuits de l’Economie Urbaine des Pays
Sous-Développés (Santos 1975).7 The latter represented an important turn in
Santos’s academic research, as the author started to devote more attention to
developing theoretical concepts rather than analyzing empirical data.
Santos noted that in underdeveloped countries space is constantly reorganized
through sociologic and economic forces that are responsible for creating significant
differences in income. Those forces tend to impose, within the same area, coexisting
activities of a same sector but taking place at different stages. These activities are
7
Until the recent publication of Toward an Other Globalization, this was the only book of Santos’s
translated into English (see Santos 1979).
50 A. Reys
related to the variety of individual patterns of consumption and therefore include

both modern and traditional services. Santos argued that such a situation leads to
the creation of two different economic circuits that, nevertheless, represent different
sides of the same phenomenon stemming from modern technology (Santos 1975).
What Santos identified as the upper circuit is the direct result of a modernization
process that drastically changes modes of production and communication, as well
as lifestyle and consumption patterns. This circuit consists of activities created by
technological progress and the population that benefited from such advancements.
Santos also pointed out that the technologies used are primarily modern, imported
and have an influence on the organization of space at a large scale (Santos 1975).
This circuit employs a significant number of foreigners and sets fixed prices for
goods and services. The goals of production are long term and aim to perpetuate
growth through the accumulation of capital. Santos considered that this circuit
consists of ‘impure’ industry and export activity, serving only outsiders’ interests
and installed in underdeveloped cities only because of the comparative advantages
offered by the latter’s respective locations (Santos 1975).
Santos also understood the lower circuit as a consequence of the same mod-
ernization processes, but in a more indirect manner. This circuit includes people and
activities that do not benefit at all, or benefit only partially, from recent techno-
logical advancements. Manual labour predominates and is conducted in a restricted
amount of space. In contrast to the ones belonging to the upper circuit, the activities
forming the lower circuit are inadequate to transform the organization of space at a
large scale (Santos 1975). The circuit is also regarded as employing local or poor
immigrants and including traditional production such as detailed handmade objects.
Bargaining is common and fluctuations in prices are substantial. In opposition to the
upper circuit, the lower circuit responds to short-term objectives and accumulates
little capital. Santos stated that this lower circuit nonetheless possesses a social and
economic role, as it constitutes a welcoming structure for people migrating from
rural to urban areas.
The two circuits are not isolated from one another. On the contrary, they are
closely dependent and operate with each other. Additionally, activities belonging to
one circuit can sometimes partially present some of the other one’s characteristics.
This phenomenon is especially noticeable within the upper circuit to the extent that
it inspired Santos to codify the concept marginal upper circuit. Such activities that
present features of the lower circuit are particularly common in the case of regional
cities that maintain, compared to other large metropolitan areas, tighter-knit inter-
actions with the inferior circuit and the population it involves. In effect, then, Milton
Santos observed that the relations between the two circuits vary according to the
importance of the city: while the influence of the lower circuit is confined to the
limits of major urban areas, it extends beyond urban boundaries in smaller towns.
The various sizes of the demand market can be seen as a primary reason for such
differences.
Toward the end of his career the Brazilian geographer came to the conclusion
that the way geographic space is organized in Third World cities, between rich and
poor areas, is a supplementary reason for the polarization of the economy (Santos
1975). Spatial organization reinforces the duality of the economy and its separation
into two different circuits, as efficiency of transport varies from one place to another
and does not play a fully integrating role. Furthermore, new means of communi-
cation tend to put the most vulnerable at the mercy of a consumption model that
benefits the more privileged groups.
Santos did not, however, criticize the urbanization process. On the contrary, he
considered an increase in the number of major cities and the implementation of
industries oriented toward endogenous needs to be desirable. He assigned the state
an important role in the urbanization strategy to eliminate social disparities and a
dual functioning of the economy. Nevertheless, he also stated that the lower circuit
would certainly continue to exert an important influence during this period of
transition, due to the relative slowness of social transformation processes. Santos
insisted, though, that this situation should not become permanent (Santos 1975).
Forty years later, despite the decrease of the population growth rate and the flux
of internal migration, it seems that, as Santos predicted, the lower circuit is far from
disappearing. As in numerous other developing countries, the informal sector has
continued to grow in Brazil and still bears a remarkable resemblance to that
described by the geographer in the 1960s and 1970s, thus making Santos’s work
pertinent for analyzing contemporary urbanization.
4.5 Conclusion
Considering the geopolitical context of the time, as well as the geographer’s origins,
it appears logical that Milton Santos dedicated the first part of his career as a
researcher to theorizing the two circuits in the Third World. Coming from a rela-
tively modest area in the Brazilian state of Bahia, Santos had a vision of the world
that was very different from most of his French colleagues. As he noted in the
introduction to his last book on the theme written in French, L’Espace Partagé:
I was privileged in this long and patient research, as I belong to the Third World, having
been able to travel to many Latin American and African countries, and having talked to
many people from the Third World, whether they be theorists or simple fellows with the
daunting task of facing reality. (Santos 1975: 3)
However, if Santos’s approach can be considered particularly relevant because it

fits within a framework of lived experience, this same frame appears to have also
restricted his view. For instance, most of the time his work uses examples of
European cities in comparison with those of the Third World, and rarely considers
North American examples. He also did not focus on the reality of Asian cities,
which have played a major role in the economic and social transformations of the
world; their influence within international markets has indeed come to challenge
former hierarchies that Milton Santos often referred to as being unsurpassable.
52 A. Reys
Santos’s work on the Third World remains, however, a major advancement for
geography and the understanding of urban issues in countries facing important
socio-economic challenges. Undeniably, Milton Santos stands as a major contrib-
utor to numerous constantly evolving issues, which remain far from being resolved.
References
Lévy, J. (2007). Milton Santos: Philosophe du mondial, citoyen du local. Lausanne: Presses
Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes.
Maurel, J. (1996). Homenaje al profesor Milton Santos. Anales de Geografía de la Universidad
Complutense, 16, 203–223.
Santos, M. (1959a). Le centre de la ville de salvador: Etude de geographie urbaine. [Ph.D.
dissertation]. University of Strasbourg I, Faculty of Geography and Management.
Santos, M. (1959b). Quelques problemes geographiques du centre de la ville de salvador.
L’Information Géographique, 23, 93–98.
Santos, M. (1960). Geografia e desenvolvimento econômico. In M. Neto & A. Luís (Eds.),
Desenvolvimento: Problemas e soluções (pp. 107–126). Salvador: Imprensa Oficial de Bahia.
Santos, M. (1961). Quelques problemes des grandes villes dans les pays sous-developpes. Revue
de Géographie de Lyon, 80, 197–218.
Santos, M. (1965a). Villes et region dans un pays sous-developpe: L’exemple du roncocavo de
Bahia. Anales de Géographie, 406, 678–694.
Santos, M. (1965b). A cidade nos países subdesenvolvidos. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.
Santos, M. (1966). Vues actuelles sur le probleme des bidonvilles. L’Information Géographique,
30(4), 35–42.
Santos, M. (1967a). Croissance demographique et consommation alimentaire dans tous les pays
sous-developpes, 1. Les données de base. Paris: CDU.
Santos, M. (1967b). Croissance demographique et consommation alimentaire sans tous les pays
sous-developpes, 2. Milieux géographiques. Paris: CDU.
Santos, M. (1968). Le role moteur du tertiaire primitif dans les villes du tiers monde. Revista do
Instituto Geografico e Histórico da Bahia, 37(2), 1–16.
Santos, M. (1969a). Aspects de la geographie et de l’economie urbaine des pays sous-developpes.
Paris: CDU.
Santos, M. (1969b). Alimentation urbain et planification regionale en pays sous-developpe.
Tiers-Monde, 37, 95–114.
Santos, M. (1970). Dix essais sur les villes des pays sous-developpes. Paris: Éditions Orphys.
Santos, M. (1971a). Les villes du tiers monde. Paris: M.-Th. Génin, Librairies Techniques.
Santos, M. (1971b). Le metier de geographe en pays sous-developpe: Un essai methodologique.
Paris: Éditions Orphys.
Santos, M., & Kayser, B. (1971). Espace et villes du tiers monde. Tiers-Monde, 12(45), 7–13.
Santos, M. (1972). Dos circuitos de la economia urbana de los paises subdesarrolados.
In J. C. Funes (Ed.), La ciudad y la region para el desarrollo (pp. 67–99). Caracas: Comision
de Administracion Publica de Venezuela.
Santos, M. (1973). Underdevelopment and poverty: A geographer’s view. Toronto: University of
Toronto.
Santos, M. (1974). Sous-développement et pole de croissance economique et sociale.
Tiers-Monde, 58, 271–286.
Santos, M. (1975). L’espace partagé: Les deux circuits de l’economie urbaine des pays sous-
developpes. Paris: M.-Th. Génin, Librairies Techniques.
Santos, M. (1977). Spatial dialectics: The two circuits of urban economy in underdeveloped
countries. Antipode, 9(3), 49–60.
Santos, M. (1979). The shared space: The two circuits of the urban economy in underdeveloped
countries. New-York: Methuen.
Santos, M. (2004). Testamento intelectual. São Paulo: UNESP.
Chapter 5
Psychosphere and Technosphere: Complex
Relations in the Hospital Realm
Eliza Pinto de Almeida
Abstract The improvement in the health profile of populations is strongly associated

with investments in technological innovations. Hospitals are fixed elements that
constantly incorporate these innovations. The objective of this chapter is to analyze
the metamorphoses that has taken place in different time periods leading to changes in
the psychosphere and technosphere of hospitals. As demonstrated by Michel
Foucault, until the 18th century hospitals were not seen as a place of cure and a
psychosphere of fear prevailed. It was only around the 1780s that hospitals became a
therapeutic instrument. In the technical-scientific period, thanks to new scientific
discoveries and new inventions that were incorporated into diagnosis and treatment,
the hospital technosphere formed and strengthened a favorable psychosphere. In the
current technical-scientific-informational period, there is a complex hospital tech-
nosphere that incorporates innovations from the medical/hospital equipment industry,
as well as new drugs and research centres. The hospital psychosphere reflects approval
of this constant technical-scientific incorporation and, as a consequence, hospitals
have become a fixed element that is valued by society as a whole.
5.1 Introduction
Hospitals are highly valued technical and scientific objects in contemporary soci-
eties. In the social imaginary they are often associated with the on-going incorpo-
ration of new technologies, state-of-the-art therapies and highly skilled
professionals. They are thought of as a privileged locus of cure. As a result, these
institutions help establish a psychosphere in which hospital care manifests as a core
value. According to Milton Santos, the psychosphere is ‘the result of beliefs,
whishes, and habits that inspire philosophical and practical behaviors, interpersonal
relationships, and the communion with the universe’ (Santos 2008: 30). Intrinsically
linked to the psychosphere is the technosphere, a realm that stems from a growing
Eliza Pinto de Almeida, Associate Professor, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil; Email: eliza.
[email protected].

56 E.P. de Almeida
artificialization of geographical space and adapts to the commandments of produc-

tion and exchange (Santos 2004). At of the end of the 19th century the psychosphere
and technosphere created in and through hospitals underwent deep changes, fruit of
the transformation of geographical space itself. This chapter aims to briefly recon-
struct some of the interactions that led to the transformation of hospitals and their
interconnection with spatial dynamics. In order to do that, it shall establish a peri-
odization that reveals the metamorphoses undergone by the psychosphere and
technosphere of hospitals. From the Middle Ages to the 18th century, hospitals were
not meant to cure, as Michel Foucault states in The Birth of the Clinic, and a
psychosphere of fear prevailed. It was only in the late 18th century, more specifically
in the 1780s, that hospitals appeared as therapeutic instruments. In the
technical-scientific period, due to new scientific discoveries and new inventions that
were incorporated into diagnosis and treatment, the hospital technosphere formed
and strengthened a favorable psychosphere. In the current technical-
scientific-informational period, there is a complex hospital technosphere that
incorporates innovations from the medical/hospital equipment industry, as well as
new drugs and research centres, among others. The hospital psychosphere reflects
satisfaction with this constant technical-scientific incorporation and, as a conse-
quence, hospitals have become a fixed element that is valued by society as a whole.
Santos (2008) argues that space is shaped by both fixed and flowing objects.
Fixed objects refer to physical entities such as post offices, bank branches, hospitals
and factories. Flowing dimensions are movements conditioned by actions. In the
case analyzed herein, hospitals are fixed elements usually located in urban areas.
They are, therefore, part of the logic of the organization of cities. Flowing elements
directly connected to hospital activities include patients, medical staff, nurses,
technicians, as well as management, cleaning and maintenance personnel, among
others. Fixed and flowing dimensions of space interact and transform each other,
creating an ‘indissoluble, solidary and contradictory set of systems of objects and
systems of actions that cannot be considered in insolation, but as the unique frame
in which history unfolds’ (Santos 1996: 51).
On the one hand, the hospital technosphere articulates different fixed and flowing
elements that directly or indirectly support hospital functioning. These range from
clinical labs, diagnostic centres, doctors’ offices and healthcare research centres to
specialized trade, since hospitals are important centres of consumption that generate
heterogeneous demands from the medical/hospital equipment industry, from the
pharmaceutical industry and from a myriad of small and medium manufacturers that
regularly supply hospitals with products used in routine procedures (like gloves,
reagents, disinfectants, etc.). In many countries, health management organizations
(HMOs) may also be added to the list due to their increasingly close relationships
with hospitals. On the other hand, the hospital psychosphere is driven by the trust
that the majority of the population places in this fixed element as an important
centre for rehabilitation and cure (and that incorporates the latest technologies
available in the market).
Santos’s frame of fixed and flowing objects, and of psychosphere and techno-
sphere, is thus useful for analyzing the medicalization of hospitals: in the 18th
5 Psychosphere and Technosphere: Complex Relations … 57
century, technical and scientific advances were absorbed by, and transformed, these
institutions. Since then, there has been a confluence of diverse interests involved in
hospital care that is conditioned by the transformation of geographical space via
both its fixed and flowing elements.
However, as described below, the hospital technosphere has not always been one
of trust. In the Middle Ages and throughout most of the Modern Age, from the 15th
to the 18th centuries, hospitals were a place of isolation where the poor and in-need
would wait for death. The first institutional metamorphosis took place after the
Industrial Revolution, in the second half of the 18th century, when hospitals
became medicalized and provided with a specialized medical staff, thus creating a
more complex fixed dimension. Although they became a place of cure and care for
the ill, a paradigm shift about hospitals had not yet taken place in the social
imaginary of the population and they continued to be seen as a fixed element
focused on the poor and in-need. It was only after the advent of technological
hospitals—in which scientific and technical advances were increasingly incorpo-
rated into medical practice and into the hospital environment itself, a byproduct of
the scientific and technical revolutions—that hospitals achieved the primacy
observed in contemporary societies. Fed by a technosphere that incorporated
state-of-the-art scientific and technological resources, this new psychosphere val-
orized hospitals, which began to provide care for people from all social strata. In the
current technical-scientific-informational era1 (Santos 1996), hospitals have become
the nerve centre of healthcare systems.
5.2 The Psychosphere and the Technosphere of Fear:

Hospitals in the Middle Ages
The concept and form of hospitals have changed dramatically throughout history. In
ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations, fixed dimensions of geographical space,
such as sanctuaries and temples, served to care for the ill and the wounded. Examples
include the temple of Imhotep, in Egypt, and the temples dedicated to Asclepius, in
Greece. It was within these fixed elements, societies believed, that sleep coupled with
remedies prepared by priests could reestablish the health of the ill (Campos 1944).
The rise of Christianity led to the first hospitals maintained by religious orders,
which provided shelter to travelers as well as to ill, poor and elderly people.
Hospitals, however, were not seen as a place to cure the ill. They served the purpose
of providing the ill and the poor with assistance while they also ensured that these
1
According to Santos (2008: 123), the technical-scientific-informational period is ‘marked by new
signs, such as: the multinationalization of firms and internationalization of production and prod-
ucts; generalization of credit, which reinforces the characteristics of economization of life; new
state roles in a globalized society and economy; a circulation frenzy that has become an essential
factor of accumulation; the great information revolution that instantly connects places, thanks to
advances in computing’.
58 E.P. de Almeida
people were excluded and separated from the rest of the society. Foucault noted that
medieval hospitals were not medical institutions, as patients were taken care of by
lay and religious people whose mission was to ‘save the soul of the poor in the
moment of death’ (Foucault 2003: 102).
The Church, as the most powerful and universal institution in medieval civi-
lization, built an increasing number of hospitals to provide general care for the sick
and weak. In the Middle Ages the Church, feudal lords and the nobility sustained
the feudal system. In Europe, from the 12th century on, hospitals began to spread as
a function of the growth of cities. Human agglomeration and the rise of trade routes
propagated different diseases such as measles, smallpox, tuberculosis and leprosy.
The number of hospitals grew so as to isolate the ill. Some hospitals were even
specialized: leprosariums, for example, isolated leprosy patients, while lazarets
were quarantine stations for people coming from regions struck by the bubonic
plague in the 14th century.
In 16th century Europe it was increasingly clear that the feudal world was
breaking apart and making way for capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Hospitals, at this
moment, broke away from religious orders, but kept their social assistance char-
acter. This began to change at the beginning of the 18th century when hospitals
became central to the regulation of urban life, segregating and isolating all of those
who presented a threat to society. Hospitals were places where the sick, the mad,
perverts and prostitutes, amongst others, were confined (Foucault 2003).
From the Middle Ages to the 18th century the psychosphere of hospitals was one
of apprehension and fear due to the high mortality rates resulting from the lack of
knowledge about disease transmission and lack of hygiene in hospital environ-
ments. As previously stated, hospitals were not seen as an environment of cure. In
Michel Foucault’s words, ‘the hospital was a place where one went to die’
(Foucault 2003: 102). This psychosphere, in which hospitals are understood as a
place to die, began to shift in the second half of the 18th century. For Foucault
(2003), a clear understanding that hospitals could and should be instruments of cure
arose around 1780; this new approach was signaled by a new practice based on
systematic observations by physicians. According to Rego (1993), the emergence of
therapeutic hospitals was a result of the institutions’ medicalization. In other words,
hospitals were reorganized due to the valorization of the therapeutic act, which
became a major purpose of their activities and began to shape a new psychosphere.
Medicalization reflected larger social transformations. On the heels of the
Scientific Revolution in the 15th century, and especially after the Industrial
Revolution in the 18th century, a new mindset—increasingly distant from religious
precepts—was forged. Such new social arrangement played an important role in the
institution of hospitals, which, after being medicalized, became a space of study,
investigation, treatment and medical training.
This was new: prior to the Enlightenment, physicians did not have systematic
knowledge of the cases they treated. The medical practice was essentially based on
intuition. Advances in science, which began in the Renaissance, started to impact
other fields of human knowledge such as medicine, and these fields were gradually
transformed. One of these transformations was due to the advent of surgery in the
18th century (Abreu 2007). This had significant impacts on medicine and, conse-
quently, hospitals. Starting in the 18th century, medical training became a part of
the routines found in hospitals and the hospital acquired the status of a place where
therapeutic actions were taken against illness and disease.
The early 18th century saw another paradigm shift: the deterioration of an
individual’s health became attributed to the internal structure and (dis)organization
of hospitals. Foucault (2003) tells us that research commissioned by the Academy
of Science and conducted by French physician Jacques Tenon and Englishman John
Howard in hospitals, prisons and lazarets in Europe between 1775 and 1780
revealed a connection between a hospital’s internal organization and the mortality
rate of its patients and thus incited transformations in hospital architecture. There
was, as a consequence, a growing concern with controlling flows in the hospital
environment. More medical attention was devoted to the physical surroundings of
ill people: air, water, temperature and diet had to be controlled. Medical knowledge
of the time believed in miasmas—that diseases could be transmitted by odors. As
such, putrid water and waste had to be eliminated. Architecture, then, became a
crucial element in creating new fixed dimensions of hospitals, ones that were
deemed vital for the curing process:
Hospital architecture becomes an instrument of cure in the same category as a dietary
regime, the practice of bleeding or other medical actions. The space of the hospital is
medicalized in its purpose and its effects. This is the first characteristic of the transformation
of the hospital at the end of the eighteenth century. (Foucault 2003: 109)
Concerns of the time also included the proximity of nurses treating wounded
people to those of women giving birth, and the cross contamination of materials
containing pathogens such as clothing, sheets and rags used to treat wounds. The
internal structure of hospitals changed according to the specialized activities they
housed. As a consequence, hospital flows were controlled insofar as people with
contagious diseases, women in labour and other patients were placed far from each
other. The hospital’s fixed dimension therefore changed as a function of this new
architecture, which aimed to end unhygienic environments that lacked ventilation
and sunlight that were propitious for contamination.
Concurrently there was a growing attention to detailing the clinical conditions of
each patient and the medical procedures used. Foucault (2003: 111) states: ‘I
understand by ‘clinic’ [la clinique] the organization of the hospital as a place of
formation and transmission of knowledge [savoir].’ This was the beginning of the
rationalization of hospital administration, with the making of permanent, detailed
and individualized records for each patient. Physicians became major figures in this
new hospital configuration. They now searched for explanations of what caused
disease, rather than simply intervening in the crises that disease provoked. The
hospital had shifted from being a place of charity, spiritual salvation and/or social
segregation to being a curing machine.
The combination of technical advances in constructing hospitals and the pres-
ence of physicians in these institutional structures shaped a new technosphere. This
shift also entailed a gradual change in the psychosphere. There was a decline in the
60 E.P. de Almeida
negative connotations of former hospital spaces, which were fearfully thought of as

sites of disease transmission and as places that could threaten the surrounding
population. In the social imaginary, hospitals became associated with the cure of
and care for the poor.
5.3 The Hospital’s Technosphere and Psychosphere

in the Scientific and Technical Period
In the last quarter of the 19th century the world witnessed the breathtaking
expansion of the capitalist system. The Second Industrial Revolution ushered in a
new scientific and technical era which was ‘felt to its fullest, changing habits and
daily customs, as well as the pace and intensity of the means of transportation,
communication and work’ (Sevcenko 2009: 11–12). The modernization of engi-
neering systems dramatically changed the geographical environment, allowing for
new flows of people, merchandise and ideas. Scientific advances were also manifest
in the chemical industry, as well as in the new branches of the metal and the steel
industries and allowed for the exploration of new forms of energy such as electricity
and oil derivatives. Here, ‘the technical objects and the technological space are
superior loci of actions, as they successfully override the natural forces’ (Santos
1996: 189). The set of changes in the geographical environment would have
far-reaching impacts on the medical and hospital system.
In this period the medical/hospital technosphere incorporated, in an unplanned
manner, advances resulting from new scientific discoveries especially in the
biomedical field. For instance, specific therapies were developed (such as radiation
therapy for cancer), as well as inventions that were slowly incorporated into
patients’ diagnosis and treatment. Physicians created a consumption demand for
therapeutic technologies, leading to a permanent production of hospital materials.
Additionally, state and philanthropic institutions, medical societies and research
centres required further knowledge about the treatment of specific diseases, urging
states to invest more capital and hospitals to increasingly specialize. However, there
was no systemic articulation between different fixed and flowing dimensions that
became part of this hospital technosphere because of the limitations of the tech-
nique2 itself. Today, to the contrary, geographical objects that comprise the hospital
technosphere articulate in systems amongst themselves, as we will see below.
Many technical and scientific advances were incorporated into medical practices
in Europe. In 1842 Crawford Long (1815–1878) discovered the anesthetic effect of
ether, which led to its widespread use in surgical procedures. French doctor René
2
For Milton Santos, techniques are a set of instrumental and social means by which people live
their lives, produce and, at the same time, create space: ‘In whatever fraction of space, each
variable reveals a technique or a set of particular techniques. One may also say that the functioning
of each one of those variables relies precisely on those techniques. Taking world history as a
reference, every technique may be located in time’ (Santos 2008: 61).
Laennec invented the stethoscope, a device that enabled doctors to listen to the
heart beat of patients. French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) spearheaded
studies on contagious diseases, which demonstrated that putrefaction and fermen-
tation processes were associated with the presence of microorganisms. His work
revolutionized medical concepts, laying the foundation for modern microbiology
and a germ theory of disease.
Influenced by Pasteur, English surgeon Joseph Lister (1827–1912) applied germ
theory to destroy microorganisms from wounds and surgical incisions using phenic
acid as an antiseptic and significantly decreasing mortality associated with post-
operative infection (Tubino & Alves 2009). Sterilization—leading to asepsis—was
gradually accepted by physicians and adopted as an important preventive measure.
Charles Chamberland, an associate of Pasteur, developed the autoclave, the first
steam sterilizer; achieving temperatures over 120 °C, it represented an important
step toward the disinfection of devices used in medical practice. By the beginning
of the 20th century the systematic use of the autoclave to sterilize medical instru-
ments and combat microbial infections in hospitals was widespread. The use of
surgical gloves in the operating room was another important measure for asepsis.
They were created in 1889 at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, USA, and had a
positive impact on infection rates (Tubino & Alves 2009). Antisepsis and asepsis
techniques, in general, enhanced the control over the hospital environment.
Diagnostics were also improved with the incorporation of new devices into
medical practice. Once again, Louis Pasteur played a central role by stimulating the
use of microscopes to perform laboratory diagnostic tests and investigate the action
of microorganisms. The discovery of the X-ray (1895) by German physicist
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen also attracted great interest, especially among physicians,
since, for the first time, the inside of human body could be seen.
A number of different technological advancements marked the hospital as a site
of treatment. In the late 1910s, in the USA and Europe, the number of cancer
patients was increasing due to the longer life span of the general population. As a
result, new hospitals specializing in cancer treatment were created that applied
radiation in therapeutic form (Teixeira 2010). In 1928 the discovery of penicillin by
English doctor Alexander Fleming further revolutionized medical treatment, mak-
ing it possible to control infectious disease. By 1940 penicillin was widely used as
an antibiotic. The adoption of these new therapies was enabled by technological
advancements in the manufacture of X-rays and large-scale industrial production of
penicillin, epitomizing the intrinsic relation between new technologies and medical
practices.
These advances were central to the creation of the technological hospital of the
late 19th century, which impacted its psychosphere. The hospital technosphere had
become significantly more complex than it had been in previous eras. It was now
associated with scientific rationalism and with new diagnostic and therapeutic
technologies, both strongly related to industrial development (Braga 2000). The
general public, in turn, began to identify the hospital as an important place of cure
and treatment: ‘For the first time in history, hospitals started being used… by the
62 E.P. de Almeida
entire population, becoming the setting where sanitary happenings in the life of a
human being took place, from birth to death’ (Neufeld 2013: 13).
Based on the technical and scientific advances associated with industrial
development, then, the new technosphere consolidated the psychosphere of the
hospital; the institution became increasingly valued in society as it became
understood as a locus of cure.
As a result of these shifts, the technological hospital had acquired a large number
of fixed and flowing elements. These went beyond the hospital’s walls, reaching
laboratories, the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry and the chemical industry.
Hospital-related fixed and flowing elements did not yet have a systemic function-
ing, but the first half of the 20th century consolidated the interdependence of several
types of industries and services. In 1904 Siemens-Reiniger industries produced the
first X-ray machine (Navarro 2009). Throughout the 20th century radiation therapy
was developed due to the articulation of several areas of medicine, technology,
physics and biology. The pharmaceutical industry, in turn, developed a series of
new drugs that were incorporated into therapeutic practice.
This synergy transformed the psychosphere and technosphere of medicine
generally and hospitals specifically. The dissemination of new knowledges and
technologies has continued until the present moment. It is worth noting, however,
that the specific geographical place is what endows medical technologies with ‘the
principle of historical reality, relativizing their use, integrating them into a set of
life, removing them from their empirical abstractions and attributing historical
effectiveness to them’ (Santos 1996: 48). In other words, the incorporation of
medical technologies into medicine has been conditioned by spatial arrangements.
5.4 The Complex Hospital Technosphere

and Psychosphere in the Technical-
Scientific-Informational Period
The technical-scientific-informational period, to Santos, represents the peak of the

internationalization of capitalism resulting from economic and financial global-
ization. Information is the key variable at present and its rise is directly connected to
progresses in computing, robotics, telecommunications, chemistry, biotechnology,
genetic engineering and many other fields that have participated in productive
systems to different extents from the 1970s on. Technique, science and information
are selectively diffused in geographical space by means of new systems of infor-
mational objects and actions that meet the needs of a globalized market.
In this period—from the second half of the 20th century until the present
moment—the provision of healthcare services has become increasingly dependent
on a complex medical/hospital framework. As Schraiber (1993) describes, the
development of science and technology gained momentum, which resulted in the
increasing specialization of medical disciplines; physicians had to learn the
ever-evolving diagnostic and therapeutic advances in their respective specialties.

Training institutions also used a complex set of instruments that required special-
ized knowledge (Pereira 2003).
It is possible to argue that hospitals are, today, the nerve centre of the
healthcare-related technosphere. They are central to the medical/industrial complex,
which articulates medical care, professional training networks, the pharmaceutical
industry, and the medical device and diagnostic instrument manufacturing indus-
tries. There are multiple interests—including many academic and market interests
—involved in the dynamics of the medical/industrial complex. Large transnational
companies, for example, deploy myriad strategies that boost innovation and com-
petitiveness in the medical sector. According to Gadelha and Augusto (2003), the
health sector is one of the sectors with the highest degree of interaction between
universities, research institutes and the business community. The hospital techno-
sphere during the technical-scientific-informational period encompasses diverse
objects and actions related to medical/hospital care that articulate amongst them-
selves into coherent systems in a way not realized in the former periods.
The pharmaceutical industry has emerged as a key player in consolidating the
technosphere during this current period. In the 1950s it began to provide new drugs
capable of solving ‘old’ health problems such as medication for diabetes and
hypertension, antidepressants and others. Physicians and patients believed the drugs
produced by this industry to be one of the ‘great accomplishments of humanity’
(Vianna 2002: 379). Landim et al. (2013) note that the global market in medical
equipment is highly concentrated. Although these companies have a worldwide
presence, 50% are North American, 30% European, and 10% Japanese. The authors
also state that, in the last decade, the global medical equipment market doubled in size,
netting approximately US$ 325 billion in 2011. In parallel, the capitalist sector is also
represented by the large equipment and diagnostic industries, which increase doctors’
reliance on new technological apparatuses. Hospital services are thus among the most
dynamic sectors that drive and absorb new market-driven technologies.
As part of their strategy, pharmaceutical companies became increasingly present
in the academic sphere. Luz (1979) demonstrates that, in the 1950s in Brazil, the
influence of pharmaceutical labs in hospital care manifested in the academic pro-
fessor who develops and publishes investigations sponsored by these great labo-
ratories (usually studies proving the efficacy of certain drugs): ‘this is the professor
who innovates in teaching practice, endowing it with the features of the new reality
of medical knowledge: specialized and intertwined with the pharmaceutical
industry’ (Luz 1979: 176).
Chemical and biotechnological industries, which create vaccines, diagnostic
reagents and hemoderivatives, are also central to the medical/industrial complex.
Basic physics and mechanical, electronic and material engineering advancements
have created new equipment and instruments, such as orthoses and prostheses, and
general consumption materials that play a significant role in innovation. The
importance of the microelectronics revolution has been crucial here because it has
sped up technological innovations in a multiplicative fashion.
64 E.P. de Almeida
Diagnostic imaging, in turn, has become more sophisticated with the appearance
of tomography and magnetic resonance scans. These scans have many applications
in different medical specialties such as cardiology, oncology, neurology and der-
matology. The production of these scans is centralized: three major manufacturers—
GE Healthcare, Philips, and Siemens—control 75% of the world market (Landim
et al. 2013). Such centralization of production increases the costs of medical/hospital
care, with significant impacts on public healthcare systems because a large portion of
society cannot afford it. At present, this centralization of production strengthens the
hegemonic action of large enterprises and intensifies competitiveness among them.
For Santos (2008: 35): ‘in the current days, competitiveness as a discourse occupies
the place that was once occupied by Progress—in the beginning of the century—and
by Development—in the post-war period. Prior to this, however, the debate was a
philosophical, teleological one’. Today, the competitiveness-based debate does not
need an ethical justification, ‘just like any other form of violence, for that matter’
(Santos 2008: 35). In healthcare, the centralization of production of medical/hospital
equipment and drugs, among other products, is dominated by a small number of
companies that fiercely compete for the global market.
The improvement in the health profile of the population is increasingly associ-
ated with investments in technological innovations. This has created a powerful
psychosphere that associates hospitals with cure, treatment and care. This psy-
chosphere has been constituted through the health-related technosphere and is
underpinned by the medical/industrial complex, which is shaped by different eco-
nomic and financial interests. Hospitals are consumers of industrial products,
equipment and instruments, and pharmaceutical products. They are central to the
development of and profit in those industries. Hospitals are also part of a technical
apparatus comprised of laboratories, healthcare insurance providers and mainte-
nance service providers. This constant growth of the technological frontier results in
an increase in healthcare expenditure (Landim et al. 2013).
The quality of healthcare depends on next generation equipment, diagnostic tests
and prescription drugs. The demand for these materials comes from physicians and
patients alike because the hospital’s psychosphere is now associated with cure and
care. Technological advancement here is understood as human knowledge being
applied to its full potential to solve individuals’ health problems (Vianna 2002).
Nevertheless, the constant incorporation of technology creates a permanent
tension in healthcare systems. The strict relations established by the hospital
complex tend to reduce healthcare to a mere economic sector that obeys market
rules and is relentlessly attempting to obtain growing profits. The risk of
market-oriented healthcare systems increases as the process of economic global-
ization advances: the logic in which nations must operate is one that serves the
interests of the markets, thus abandoning social classes that cannot afford the high
costs. Santos (2000: 58) pointed to the social costs of this phenomenon: ‘the
abandonment of the idea of solidarity lies behind this understanding of economy
and leads to the situation of helplessness in which we live today’. In today’s world,
solidarity is replaced by perversity. The logic of profitability that feeds the

medical/hospital technosphere and psychosphere demonstrates this perversity,
which is gaining momentum in the contemporary era.
References
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século XVIII. Revista da SBHC, 5(2), 149–172.
Braga, D. (2000). Acidente de trabalho com material biológico em trabalhadores da equipe de
enfermagem do centro de pesquisas hospital evandro chagas. National School of Public
Health: Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
Campos, E. S. (1944). Breve notícia histórica sobre os hospitais em geral. História e evolução dos
hospitais (pp. 7–46). Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Saúde.
Foucault, M. (2003 [1979]). Microfísica do poder. Rio de Janeiro: Graal.
Foucault, M. (2015). The incorporation of the hospital into modern technology. In J. W. Crampton
& S. Elden (Eds.), Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography. London: Ashgate.
Gadelha, C., & Augusto, G. (2003). O complexo industrial da saúde e a necessidade de um
enfoque dinâmico na economia da saúde. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 8(2), 321–535.
Landim, A., Gomes, R., Pimentel, V., Reis, C., & Pieroni, J. P. (2013). Equipamentos e
tecnologias para saúde: Oportunidades para uma inserção competitiva da indústria brasileira.
BNDES Setorial, 3, 173–226.
Luz, M. T. (1979). As instituições médicas no brasil: Instituições e estratégia de hegemonia. Rio
de Janeiro: Graal.
Navarro, M. V. T. (2009). Evolução tecnológica do radiodiagnóstico. Risco, radiodiagnóstico e
vigilância sanitaria (pp. 31–36). Salvador: EDUFBA.
Neufeld, P. M. (2013). Uma breve história dos hospitais. Revista Brasileira de Análises Clínicas,
45(1–4), 7–13.
Pereira, J. C. M (2003). Medicina, saúde e sociedade. Ribeirão Preto: Complexo Gráfico
Villimpress.
Rego, S. T. A. (1993). A medicalização do hospital no brasil: Notas de estudo. Revista Médica de
Minas Gerais, 3(1), 54–57.
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Santos, M. (2000). Por uma outra globalização: Do pensamento único à consciência universal.
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técnico-científico-informacional. São Paulo: Edusp.
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Sevcenko (Ed.), História privada no Brasil 3. República: Da belle époque à era do rádio
(pp. 7–49). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
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Vianna, C. M. M. (2002). Estruturas do sistema de saúde: Do complexo médico-industrial ao
médico-financeiro. Physis, 12(2), 375–390.
Chapter 6
The Political Economy of Territory
and Agribusiness in Brazil
Samuel Frederico and Marina Castro de Almeida
Abstract This chapter aims to demonstrate how the notion of political economy of
territory, proposed by Milton Santos, aids in the interpretation of spatial dynamics
of Brazilian agribusiness at the beginning of the 21st century. Among the many
territorial expressions of agricultural dynamics, this article analyzes the dialectical
relationship between the ‘centrifugal forces’, exemplified by the spatial dispersion
of modern agriculture, and the ‘centripetal forces’, represented by the centralization
of production control especially in the metropolis of São Paulo. Since the Brazilian
exchange crisis of 1999, state policy to stimulate export of agricultural products,
linked with the interests of the main representatives of agribusiness (large producers
and corporations), has resulted in the accelerating expansion of the agricultural
frontier, especially with soybean production in savanna areas. However, con-
comitant with the territorial dispersion of production, the centralization of capital
and the increasing influence of finance and information for the development of
modern agriculture have reinforced the command function of the main national
metropolis.
6.1 Introduction
Few ideas have had as much importance in the work of Milton Santos as that of the
political economy of territory (Santos 1977, 1979, 1994, 2001). His proposal to
consider the active role of geographical space in the formulation of the political
economy is present in his work from the beginning of the 1970s up to his last book
O Brasil: Território e Sociedade no Início do Século XXI, written with Maria Laura
Silveira in 2001. Our point of departure in this present chapter is that the Brazilian
state’s adoption of policies to stimulate the exportation of primary products (mainly
Samuel Frederico, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Universidade Estadual

Paulista—UNESP, Brazil; Email: [email protected].
Marina Almeida, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Federal University of
Triângulo Mineiro—UFTM, Brazil; Email: [email protected].

68 S. Frederico and M.C. de Almeida
soybeans), together with the spread of information technology (as telematics) from
the 2000s, led to a political economy founded on agribusiness—a process in which
geographical space has been central.
Since then the Brazilian territory has been organized and used1 as the object of
various strategies and political maneuverings by the main agents involved in
globalized agribusiness: the state, large producers, landowners, agricultural com-
panies and financial investors. The acceleration of the opening of new productive
regions, the implanting of fixed capital assets (such as highways, railways, ports,
cities and communications systems) and the constitution of new territorial divisions
of labour have spread new social relationships and spatial arrangements across the
Brazilian territory. These new relationships and arrangements are almost always
associated with the selective appropriation of surplus capital in renewed form.
We believe that Santos’s notion of the political economy of territory offers a way
to interpret the productive re-structuring and the Brazilian territorial dynamic linked
to agribusiness at the beginning of the 21st century. Among the various ways of
demonstrating how this new political economy of territory is structured, this chapter
seeks to analyze, albeit briefly, the articulation between centrifugal and centripetal
forces (Santos & Silveira 2001). To this end, we analyze the relationship between
the expansion of the modern agricultural frontier (centrifugal forces) and the cen-
tralization of the productive command (centripetal forces) specifically in the
metropolis of São Paulo.
6.2 Toward a Political Economy of Territory
Among the various meanings historically attributed to the term political economy,
according to Santos (1994) the notion refers mainly to the study of relations of
production. As the author emphasizes, scholars in this vein accentuate that the
conditions of fulfillment and distribution of economic surplus arise, in the last
analysis, from the complex relationships between capital and labour, owners and
non-owners. However, the author himself (Santos 1979, 1994) reminds us that it is
impossible to think of political economy without taking space into consideration.
Our purpose is to understand how the manifestation and the consequences of a
particular process of production—in this case, agribusiness—organize the respec-
tive territory. And, dialectically, how the natural and socially produced conditions
of the territory also shape production. Within this perspective, Santos (1994)
defines geographical space as the historical result of the interaction between dead
labour—accumulated in the forms of infrastructure and machinery—and living
labour.
1
For Santos (1996), the social object of analysis is not the territory itself, but the ‘used territory’.
This notion refers to the implantation and the differentiated use of engineering infrastructure or
systems that arise from the dynamic movement of the economy and of society. To learn more
about the concept, see Silveira (2014).
6 The Political Economy of Territory and Agribusiness in Brazil 69
Santos articulates the political economy of territory as a set of theoretical

propositions that includes space, network, region, used territory and socio-spatial
formation. The notion has as its objective the overcoming of ‘pure concepts’
inherited from modernity and characterized by dichotomy (society/nature,
technique/politics, object/action), by hybrid notions characterized by the indissol-
ubility between natural and social, materiality and action. The objective of social
analyses, then, is to explain space in terms of its use and not simply as an inert
material area. From space’s hybrid character we may discern a political economy of
territory, that is to say, understand how production is undertaken in light of its power
relationships (both of capital and labour) while recognizing the active role of space.
In attempting to operationalize the notion of the political economy of territory,
Santos and Silveira (2001) propose interrelated analytical categories that include:
the territorial divisions of labour; the dialectic between centrifugal (dispersive) and
centripetal (agglomerative) forces; productive specialization and the shaping of new
productive regions; the centralization of capital and spatial hierarchy; the corpo-
rative and competitive use of space; and ‘unnecessary circulation’.2 These are
categories that frequently condition and result from one another.
In summary fashion that necessarily runs the risk of theoretical imprecision we
can affirm, inspired by Santos and Silveira (2001): (1) that the concentration and
centralization of capital in a few hands and locations favors the expansion of the
territorial division of labour of companies and productive activities; (2) that the
incorporation of subspaces into the logic of dominant production leads to territorial
productive specializations which are ‘alien’, because they are imposed from outside,
and ‘alienated’, because ‘they are neither locally inspired nor concerned with local
destiny’ (p. 300); (3) that new productive regions are created that, generally sub-
ordinated to world standards of competition (quality, productivity and costs), spe-
cialize in particular products, especially for exportation, and are characterized by
their technical competence (means of production), while the political aspects of this
process (be they normative, financial and informational) are decided externally;
(4) that the establishment of a relation between the ‘centrifugal forces’—the
expansion of the modern productive area—and the ‘centripetal’ ones—the con-
centration of the decision-making poles—reinforces a ‘spatial hierarchy’; and
(5) that the more the places concerned specialize, the greater becomes the need to
transport their products over great distances—especially when intended for expor-
tation—which ends up generating ‘unnecessary circulation’, that is to say, the
construction of practically mono-functional systems of transport, because they are
dedicated to the exportation of a few products, which instead of generating local
benefits becomes being an excessive onus on society as a whole, especially in
2
With the idea of unnecessary circulation, Santos and Silveira (2001) are theorizing in parallel with
the Marxist idea of necessary and unnecessary production, i.e. ‘a production whose presence is
able to ensure the well-being of the population in comparison with other production intended
export’ (p. 297). From the moral point of view, necessary production and circulation would be
those that help people to survive and to develop, while unnecessary production and circulation
would be ‘excessive, leaving to society an unnecessary burden’ (p. 297).
countries with great social and regional inequalities and lacking in social infras-
tructure such as Brazil.
The expansion of modern agriculture in Brazil is one of the best examples of the
aforementioned overlapping territorial dynamic. Within agricultural areas there is a
veritable rearrangement of territory by the demands of globalized agribusiness
(Elias 2011). On the one hand, the relations of power between the main agents of
agribusiness (the agro-industry, producers, landowners and the state) play a central
role in territorial organization leading to the installation of infrastructure, the
construction of cities, migration of the population, the labour market, the land-
ownership structure and the characteristics of production. On the other hand, in
indistinguishable, dialectical fashion, the continental dimensions of Brazilian ter-
ritory, the existence of areas favorable to the expansion of modern agriculture, the
favorable physiographical conditions (soil, rainfall, water reserves and relief) and
the selective presence of infrastructure (highways, railroads, waterways, ware-
houses and energy) also determine agricultural quality, costs, localization and
production (Frederico 2010; Castillo & Frederico 2010).
6.3 Pact of the Political Economy of Territory Based

on Agribusiness
In the last decade of the 20th century the subordination of the Brazilian state to a
financial and neoliberal logic through the implementation of the Washington
Consensus led to the strengthening of exportation policy, which was intensified
after the exchange crisis of 1999 (Delgado 2012). This is what Santos (19993) refers
to as the ‘imperative of exportation’, that is, the creation of policies with the
deliberate purpose of increasing Brazilian exports, with a view to generating
external trade to pay foreign debt and to cover the current account deficit, thus
inverting the resulting reduction in Brazil’s international reserves.
It was for this purpose that the agribusiness sector was again selected by the
state, as had been done at other moments in Brazil’s economic formation,4 to be the
main actor responsible for saving the country’s external macroeconomic policy.
This led to significant alterations in the organization and use of territory in the areas
of modern agriculture, such as: the accelerating expansion of the agricultural
frontier, replacing native vegetation and small-scale family agriculture; the inten-
sification of production and of regional productive specialization; the growth in the
concentration of land-ownership; and the creation of a new territorial division of
labour of large corporations and of the activities of agribusiness, alongside the
3
Santos, Milton 1999: ‘Guerra dos Lugares’, in: Folha de S. Paulo. Caderno Mais!, 8 August.
4
Such as the incentive policies to export coffee in the 1960s, in order to generate foreign exchange
for the implementation of industrialization policies.
construction of practically mono-functional infrastructure for the purpose of facil-

itating the outflow of produce (Bernardes 2006; Frederico 2011; Elias 2011).
The materialization of these events within Brazilian territory is due to the fact
that the political economy of territory is now based on agribusiness. That is to say
that the incorporation and re-organization of space has been accomplished to satisfy
the interests and the accumulation strategies of the aforementioned agents of
globalized agribusiness.
Due to the limited scope of this chapter and of the innumerable possibilities of
demonstrating this pact among agribusiness that comprises the political economy of
territory, we have decided to focus our analysis on the dialectic between the cen-
trifugal and centripetal forces involved. One is here dealing with centrifugal forces
of dispersion—with the advance of the agricultural frontier that has gathered speed
since the 2000s. These centrifugal forces have been articulated with centripetal
forces—with the strengthening of the decision-making power of some locations
within the territory, with the centralization of capital, and with the valuation of
finance and information as productive activity. We elaborate on these forces in the
following section.
6.4 Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces: The Expansion

of the Agricultural Frontier and the Commanding
Role of the Metropolis of São Paulo
By the term ‘modern agricultural frontier’ we mean those areas of the Brazilian
territory occupied from the 1970s by capital and technology-intensive monocultures
that have replaced areas of original vegetation (principally of Cerrado)5, of subsis-
tence agriculture (practiced by peasants) and of extensive pastures (Frederico 2010).
Motivated by economic and geopolitical factors, the centrifugal expansive force
of the agricultural frontier occurred primarily in the direction of those Cerrado
areas, which correspond to a quarter of the total extent of Brazilian territory (i.e.
about two million km2). Although it has been continuous, the speed of expansion of
the agricultural frontier occurred in three distinct moments during the period from
1970 to 2010. There were two phases of rapid expansion during the periods 1970–
1985 and 2000–2010, mainly stimulated by the government’s policy that sought to
increase the exportation of primary products and encouraged by a generous offer of
subsidized rural credit. The frontier continued to expand, though at a slower pace,
between 1985 and 2000. In this intermediate phase, characterized by the exchange
and fiscal crisis of the Brazilian state (in the 1980s) and by the adoption of
neoliberal ideology and policies (in the 1990s), there was a significant reduction in
5
The Cerrado is a Brazilian biome of the savanna type located principally in the central region of
the country.
the offer of public credit for agricultural activity, with a decrease in the rate of
expansion of the frontier.
Especially from the 2000s the establishment of the ‘pact of the political economy
of agribusiness’ led to a reaccelerating expansion of the agricultural frontier.
According to data of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian
Institute of Geography and Statistics) (2014), the area occupied by temporary crops
on the agricultural frontier attained 24.2 million hectares in 2012, as compared with
11.6 million in 2000, and the area dedicated to soya production (the main Brazilian
export crop) more than doubled in the same period, from 6.4 to 13.8 million
hectares. As a result of this expansion, the region encompassed by the modern
agricultural frontier became the greatest Brazilian producer of cotton (96.5%),
sunflower (90.5%), sorghum (71.8%), soya (64.1%) and maize (48%) and the
second largest of sugar-cane (16.3%) and rice (10.7%) (PAM/IBGE 2014).6
With this expansion, there has also been a growing productive territorial spe-
cialization, that is to say, the ‘increase within one and the same region of the
diversification of the tasks related to one single process while the other techniques
and forms of work diminish’ (Silveira 2011: 79). In 1990, of the 50 largest
Brazilian municipalities that produced soya, 25 were not a part of the aforemen-
tioned agricultural frontier. In 2012 this number had been reduced to just three (two
in the state of Paraná and one in Minas Gerais). In that year, among the almost
1,800 Brazilian municipalities that produced soya, only 76 were responsible for
50% of the total volume, while the top 10 produced 16%.
The expansion and productive specialization in frontier areas is even more
evident when we consider the expansion of the temporary crops (cultures that need
to be replanted every year) of the ten greatest producers of soya7 (all situated on the
agricultural frontier). In the municipalities that host these producers, the planted
area increased by an average of 72% in the 1990s and by 200% in the 2000s. In all
of them, the total area planted with soya, maize and cotton accounted for more than
90% of the total cultivated area in 2012 (PAM/IBGE 2014).
Dialectically, the territorial expansion of modern agriculture has seen the
simultaneous centralization of its command, which has also intensified from the
2000s. This is due to the increasing presence in modern agricultural production of
major national and international corporations whose head-offices are usually located
in the metropolis of São Paulo. While the technical control of the productive
operations is relatively dispersed, with the notable presence of engineers, consul-
tants and agronomists in the agricultural regions, the normative, financial and
informational regulation tends to be concentrated in a select number of locations
such as the metropolis of São Paulo. It may be stated, even if only tentatively, that
6
The percentages refer to the total of Brazilian production. PAM/IBGE. 2014: Instituto Brasileiro
de Geografia e Estatística. ‘Produção Agrícola Municipal’. Série Histórica 1990–2012. Retrieved
August 18, 2016, from http://www.sidra.ibge.gov.br/bda/pesquisas/pam/default.asp.
7
In decreasing order: Sorriso (MT), Sapezal (MT), Nova Mutum (MT), Campo Novo dos Parecis
(MT), Formosa do Rio Preto (BA), Rio Verde (GO), Nova Ubiratã (MT), Querência (MT),
Diamantino (MT) and Jataí (GO).
the metropolis of São Paulo is ubiquitous not only on the agricultural frontier but
also in the majority of the Brazilian regions dedicated to modern agriculture, as well
as having an increasing influence in other South American countries.8
The growing centralization of agribusiness capital contributes to the reduction of
the number of decision-making centres. When national companies grow, they prefer
to transfer their head offices to the main metropolises, especially São Paulo. In the
cases of international companies or of national ones incorporated by international
capital, the capital city of São Paulo state ends up exercising a delegated form of
control—an intermediate stage between the corporative head offices in other
countries and the Brazilian productive regions. Maintaining the office in São Paulo
is of strategic importance to the company, because the location makes convenient
the finding of qualified staff, and makes easier the undertaking of face-to-face
business between the company’s directors, consultants, bank managers and direc-
tors of consultancy firms.
Of the 50 largest companies involved in the Brazilian agribusiness in 2011, 25
had their head-offices in São Paulo, as did the four largest international agricultural
trading companies (Cargill, ADM, Louis Dreyfus and Bunge), as well as the main
companies of sugar and ethanol (Raízen and Copersucar), wood and cellulose
(Suzano, Klabin, Fibria and Duratex), meat (JBS and Marfrig), and fertilizer and
agrochemical (Basf, Bunge Fertilizantes, Bayer, Syngenta and Mosaic).
The municipality of São Paulo is the largest Brazilian exporter of soya, sugar,
maize, ethanol and meat, as the offices of the companies responsible for the foreign
operations of purchase and sale are situated there. In 2013 the soya complex (beans
and derivatives) together with the sugar and energy sector (sugar and ethanol)
accounted for 50% of the total value of the exports of the municipality. While the
municipality of Sorriso (MT)—the largest Brazilian producer of soya with a crop of
about two million tons in 2012—exported 1.47 million tons (beans and derivatives)
for a total value of US$ 814 million, São Paulo, without having produced a single
soya bean of its own, exported 2.97 million tons with an approximate value of US$
1.6 billion. This was a little more than 5% of the quantity and the value of all the
national exports of the complex in 2013. A similar trend has occurred with all of the
other agricultural and livestock breeding commodities. For example, sugar-cane
products accounted for almost 30% of São Paulo’s exports, with 5.23 million tons
valued at US$ 2.44 billion in that same year (SECEX/MDIC 2014).9
The centralization of the vectors of command creates a new political economy of
territory with the strengthening of spatial hierarchies and a greater rigidity of
relationships between the polarizing and the polarized areas. Although the majority
of agribusiness companies have many small offices scattered over the main agri-
cultural regions, the major deals (involving, for instance, exportation, importation
8
Ubiquity means the power of the head-offices of large companies located in São Paulo to define
the organizational and productive aspects of agricultural regions.
9
SECEX/MDIC. 2014: Secretaria do Comércio Exterior. Ministério do Desenvolvimento,
Indústria e Comércio Exterior. Estatísticas de Comércio Exterior. 2010. Retrieved August 18,
2016, from http://www.mdic.gov.br.
and loans) and strategic decisions (such as land acquisitions, agreements with
companies and logistics) continue to be centralized in the offices in the city of São
Paulo (Frederico 2015).
The city of São Paulo is also beginning to attract foreign South American
companies as is the case of the Argentinian firms Adecoagro and El Tejar. The
former is one of the most apt examples to illustrate the territorial division of labour
among the productive regions and the metropolis of São Paulo. Employees spe-
cialized in agricultural operation locate in cities close to farms, such as in the region
west of Bahia. These employees include agricultural, administrative and financial
managers of the farms, the coordinators of machines and operations (planting/
harvesting), and the agronomists and agricultural technicians. In agribusiness head
offices in São Paulo—situated in the suburb of Moema, one of the most prosperous
regions of the city—are the general and agricultural directors, the control centre of
the company, the legal department, the area of strategic planning and the com-
mercial and financial team.
The centrality of commodity production and the intricate relations between
agricultural and financial capital have also reinforced the commanding role of the
city of São Paulo (Santos 1994). Since the end of the 19th century the main stock
exchanges of the world (e.g. New York, Chicago and London) have been involved
in regulating the international prices of agricultural commodities. This has hap-
pened in Brazil too—through the Santos Exchange for coffee. However, with the
adoption of neoliberal policies and the so-called ‘deregulation’ of the world
economy (Chesnais 2005), especially from the 1980s, the volume of commodity
business on the merchandise and futures exchanges has increased significantly
(Clapp 2009). In Brazil it has been no different: the creation of BM&FBovespa in
2008, by the fusion of the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) and the Bolsa de
Mercadorias e Futuros (Merchandise and Futures Exchange) (BM&F), consolidated
the transactions of various other Brazilian exchanges. At present BM&FBovespa is
active in the futures market of the main Brazilian agricultural commodities soya,
coffee, maize, ethanol and cattle. The majority of the business monopolies created
over the past decade were built through agreements among large national compa-
nies and with foreign capital (Brasil Foods, SLC Agrícola, Brasil Agro, Heringer,
Agrenco, Laep, JBS, Marfrig, Minerva, São Martinho, Açúcar Guarani, Cosan,
Tereos, Suzano, Fibria, Klabin, Duratex, Eucatex and Ecodiesel)—their shares are
now traded on the BM&FBovespa.
In financial terms, São Paulo was the Brazilian city that withdrew the largest
number of rural credit loans in 2012. Between 2000 and 2012, the volume of rural
credit increased from R$ 150 million to almost R$ 1.4 billion, approximately 10%
of the national level (BCB 2015).10 Despite the municipality’s ostensibly negligible
agricultural and livestock production, the large volume of loans can be explained by
the presence of the largest national banks and international suppliers of agricultural
10
BCB (Banco Central do Brasil), 2009: Anuário Estatístico do Crédito Rural, Série Histórica
2000/2012. Retrieved August 18, 2016, from http://www.bcb.gov.br/?RELRURAL.
credit, such as Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, Itaú, Rabobank, HSBC, Votorantim,

ABC Brasil, Citybank and Santander. The physical presence of these agencies in
the city matters because, very often, the largest loans require the personal partici-
pation of the loan-requesting and loan-granting CEOs. The main clauses of relevant
loan contracts are negotiated at the business meetings and lunches in which the
directors of both concerned institutions participate. It is at these face-to-face
meetings, in the presence of their respective legal teams, where the guarantees
demanded by some banks are defined, such as the provision of strategic information
and participation in future business of the agricultural company. Some large pro-
ducers—borrowers of considerable amounts of credit—also travel to São Paulo to
obtain the loans personally from the managers of the largest bank agencies.
On the one hand, the quest for greater productivity and profitability, in accord
with the demands of the globalized market, leads to productive specialization. This
results in the constitution of sub-spaces in Brazilian territory in which monocultures
for export predominate on large properties at the expense of other crops and forms
of production. On the other hand, the growing dependence on modern agricultural
activity—in terms of finance and information of a strategic, legal, marketing,
accounting and logistic character—makes the role played by the metropolis of São
Paulo even more significant in the regulation of production. Thus a political
economy of territory is established, characterized by a filigree of territorial divisions
of labour, that is, by the distribution and connectivity of the places and regions of
interest for corporate agribusiness activity.
6.5 Final Considerations
As we have tried to demonstrate in brief fashion in this text, the idea of the political
economy of territory as proposed by Milton Santos provides a significant
theoretical-methodological means of interpreting the productive transformations and
Brazilian territorial dynamics at the beginning of the 21st century. The Brazilian
state’s policy for stimulating the export of agricultural commodities, together with
the interest of the principal agents of globalized agribusiness, have led to the creation
of a political economy of territory based on agribusiness. We are here dealing with
the organization and use of territory for the main purpose of making possible the
increase of agricultural and livestock production by means of the expansion of the
modern agricultural frontier, and the intensification of production.
Among the various examples that demonstrate this pact of the political economy
of territory, we chose the articulated and dialectical movement of the centrifugal
and centripetal forces (respectively of dispersion and concentration). As Santos
(1994) proposes, with the gradual diffusion of the networks of communications and
transport, especially from the 1970s, a unitary logic was created within Brazilian
territory. This logic strengthened the combined movement of the territorial dispersal
of modern activities (agriculture, industry and services) and the concentration of the
political command, especially in the metropolis of São Paulo.
At the beginning of the 21st century state policies to stimulate the territorial
expansion of modern agriculture, coupled with the possibilities offered by infor-
mation technology, reinforced the logic of expansion and concentration. Parallel to
the acceleration of the dispersal of modern activities, there is an increase in the
concentration of the political command of the productive processes. Even if the
technical control of the productive operations is relatively scattered, its normative,
financial and informational regulation is becoming increasingly centralized in Sao
Paulo’s metropolis.
There is, thus, a growing territorial division of labour among areas specialized in
technical operations and areas dedicated to political command. This process creates
a growing subordination of the local order to corporative global interests and
dictates. As a consequence, in the logic of the state and of the large agribusiness
companies, the new pact of the economic policy of the territory represents solu-
tions, even though temporary, for macroeconomic problems (such as the exchange
crisis) and opportunities for investment. However, on the ground, the new forms of
use and organization of territory almost always promote conflict and greater
socio-spatial segregation once the infrastructure is built and used selectively, aiming
almost exclusively at the export of few primary products. This spatial differentiation
can be considered one of the derivations of the establishment of a political economy
of territory based on agribusiness at the beginning of the 21st century in Brazil.
References
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matogrossense. In J. A. Bernardes & O. L. Freire Filho (Eds.), Geografias da soja: BR-163
fronteiras em mutação. Rio de Janeiro: Edições Arquimedes.
Castillo, R., & Frederico, S. (2010). Dinâmica regional e globalização: Espaços competitivos
agrícolas no território brasileiro. Mercator, 09, 17–26.
Chesnais, F. (2005). O capital portador de juros: Acumulação, internacionalização, efeitos
econômicos e políticos. In F. Chesnais (Ed.), A finança mundializada. São Paulo: Boitempo.
Clapp, J. (2009). Food price volatility and vulnerability in the Global South: Considering the
global economic contexto. Third World Quarterly, 30(6), 1183–1196.
Delgado, G. C. (2012). Do capital financeiro na agricultura à economia do agronegócio:
Mudanças cíclicas em meio século, 1965–2012. Porto Alegre: UFRGS Editora.
Elias, D. (2011). Agronegócio e novas regionalizações no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Estudos
Urbanos e Regionais (ANPUR), 13, 153–170.
Frederico, S. (2010). O Novo tempo do cerrado: Expansão dos fronts agrícolas e controle do
sistema de armazenamento de grãos. São Paulo: AnnaBlume.
Frederico, S. (2011). The modern agricultural frontier and logistics: The importance of the soybean
and grain storage system in Brazil. Terrae, 8, 24–32.
Frederico, S. (2015). Economia política do território e as forças de dispersão e concentração no
agronegócio brasileiro. GEOgraphia, 17(35), 68–94.
Santos, M. (1977). Sociedade e espaço: A formação social como teoria e como método. Boletim
Paulista de Geografia, 54, 81–99.
Santos, M. (1979). Economia espacial: Críticas e alternativas. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1994). Por uma economia política da cidade. São Paulo: Hucitec/Educ.
Santos, M., & Silveira, M. L. (2001). O Brasil. Território e sociedade no início do século XXI. São
Paulo: Record.
Silveira, M. L. (2011). Território usado: Dinâmicas de especialização, dinâmicas de diversidade.
Ciência Geográfica, 15(1), 04–12.
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Geográfica del Sur, 5(7), 15–34.
Chapter 7
Territorial Planning in Brazil:
An Interpretation Based on the Ideas
of Milton Santos
Luís Angelo dos S. Aracri
Abstract This text discusses how Milton Santos’s work provides elements to
understand two major distinct phases of territorial planning policies in Brazil. The
first major phase, which lasted approximately half a century, until the late 1980s, is
analyzed from the deconstruction of the theoretical foundations provided by the
so-called ‘regional science’; the second, extending from the 1990s to the present
day, is interpreted based on the concepts Santos has developed for understanding
globalization. Despite the differences in the logic of these two phases, there are
continuities of traits.
7.1 Introduction
Despite today’s widespread regionalization of production, international trade, and

global competitive regimes, national-scale planning has not decreased in impor-
tance. On the contrary, state-planned interventions in national territory are as rel-
evant today as in previous periods. Of course there have been some transformations,
and it is necessary to understand how these changes have taken place. In this short
essay I aim to provide readers with an overview of territorial planning policies in
Brazil, from their inception to today. I interpret the past and present dynamics of
planning through key theorizations of Brazilian geographer Milton Santos.
It is impossible to exhaustively detail so vast a subject in the following pages,
thus in this text I focus on a few ways of interpreting the role played by territorial
planning in Brazil. The prolific Santos provides many analytic perspectives for
understanding this phenomenon. For necessity of brevity, the analysis I present here
is deliberately partial and humbly introductory.
Luís Angelo dos S. Aracri, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences, Federal University
of Juiz de Fora, Brazil; Email: [email protected].

80 L.A. dos S. Aracri
I discuss the development and the implementation of territorial planning policies in

Brazil in two sections. The first section focuses on a period which officially started in
the 1930s, when planning was used as an instrument in the projects of geopolitical and
market integration of the national territory; diversification and expansion of indus-
trialization; and the general dynamics of postwar capitalism. The events taking place
between the 1950s and 1980s constitute my main focus during this period. The second
section deals with the period that started in the 1990s and continues until now. It is
marked by a shift in the focus of territorial planning toward an autonomous, more
competitive insertion into the so-called ‘global market’. This insertion is done through
the preparation and qualification of subnational territories, that is to say, through
investments in new infrastructures and modernization of those already in existence,
but also through strategies and policies to attract companies and private investors. The
intention in this period is to attract public and private investments and eventually
connect national and international circuits of goods and information.
Two of Santos’s works are fundamental for understanding certain aspects of
planning policies in these two periods. Planning Underdevelopment and Poverty (in
Santos 2003) is particularly relevant to the first. This text offers scientific/theoretical
foundations for the territorial planning policies that were in effect from the 1930s to
the 80s. This work points to some of the effects of those policies on Brazilian
territory, economy and society as a whole. With reference to the latter contemporary
period, I draw from one of Santos’s classic works, A Natureza do Espaço (The
Nature of Space). In this book Santos (2002) elaborates theoretical concepts such as
war of places, spatial productivity, national spaces of international economy,
technical networks and fluidity. These concepts can help us to better understand the
current effects of planning on the territorial (re)ordering of the Brazilian economy.
Santos’s first critical studies about regional and urban planning in the then-called
‘Third World’ were released in the 1970s. Several of his notions and expressions are
certainly dated. Many are still relevant, however, and it is necessary to reinterpret
them, to redefine them, to acquire a new content for them. The debate must continue.
7.2 The ‘First Era’ of Territorial Planning in Brazil
In Brazil, territorial planning was established by state agencies as an institutional

instrument whose purpose was to adapt productive activities, production factors and
social relations to the economic models implemented in the country. These eco-
nomic models originated in the most advanced capitalist economies, as pointed out
by Santana (2011). According to Santana, for five decades, from 1930 to 1985, the
state put into practice projects and plans supported by integrationist and develop-
mental theories, created regional planning bodies and, in an openly geopolitical
position, proclaimed territorial occupation as a necessity to increase the use of
natural resources and defend its borders.
7 Territorial Planning in Brazil: An Interpretation … 81
Territorial planning1 in Brazil during this period enabled a fast and effective
engagement of big business with the national economy. It also (re)created social
and spatial inequalities in the country (Santos 2003), despite being couched in a
discourse of overcoming poverty and regional disparities. According to its advo-
cates, planning would be a ‘tool’ used to achieve development, which was seen, at
the time, as a synonym for economic growth and for the adoption of the same
consumption patterns as found in developed countries.
In order for Brazil and other peripheral countries to achieve economic growth it
was considered necessary to expand investments, mainly through major infras-
tructure projects. Nevertheless, the investments were very costly and these countries
were forced to take out loans or to encourage the incorporation of private inter-
national capital into their economies. These measures resulted in export-oriented
agricultural production, the exploitation of mineral resources, the increase of
dependence on foreign countries, and domestic and foreign indebtedness.
Araújo’s (2000) analysis describes these processes with respect to Brazil. Between
the 1950s and the 1980s, Brazil had as its main project the construction of a national
industrial park. The major purpose of this project was to become a great world power
as a new industrial country and to incorporate Brazil’s economy into the overall
dynamics of post-World War II capitalism. The national goals of economic growth and
world economy integration coincided with the interests of productive and financial
international capital. The latter, in turn, either established branches in the country or
funded the industrial park project. The economic history of Brazil in this period thus
began to overlap with the history of the national industrializing project, which was
marked by the fast formation and consolidation of the ‘domestic market’. As a result,
the country’s economy gradually shifted from local-based to national-based activities.
There were a number of processes engendered by this relationship between the
modernizing/industrializing project and territorial planning in Brazil during the
period (Araújo 2000: 18–20): (i) fomentation of the connections between the
metropolis of São Paulo state and other regions in the country (1960s–1970s);
(ii) productive integration based on the regionalization of large oligopolistic
industry, strengthened by commercial exchanges in different parts of the territory
(1970s); (iii) surplus production in the trade balance so as to obtain currencies to
pay the foreign debt (1960s and 1970s); and (iv) physical-territorial integration with
the establishment of extensive transportation and communication facilities.
Territorial planning intervened in each of these processes through different
strategies: fiscal and financial incentives for the transfer of productive capital into
less industrialized areas; further incentives for the use of land and extraction of
natural resources considered abundant; and the creation of ‘management plans’ for
the implementation of infrastructures, with a large emphasis on developing the road
network.
1
Territorial planning is considered in this text as a coordinated set of policies for the spatial
redistribution of investments, resources, public services, infrastructure and revenues. It is a tool of
ordering and management of the territorial distribution of economic and demographic growth, and
(in principle) social welfare and environmental preservation.
Territorial planning, as planned intervention by the state, from the post-World

War II period until the 1980s was articulated with so-called ‘regional science’. This
science, according to Santos (2003: 19), is a ‘spatial theory at the service of capital’.
The development of regional science began after World War II, as economists and
geographers focused on economic and spatial problems, respectively. One of the
central concerns of regional science was how to attract and concentrate resources
and capital in particular regions. In other words, it tried to understand why some
spaces tend to achieve higher economic development than others. Regional science
theorists, along with their supporters in government, did not believe that market
forces alone were capable of inducing economic development, and they thus sup-
ported state interference in the economy through territorial planning.
According to Santos, the pairing of regional analysis with territorial planning
was based on theories such as Walter Christaller’s ‘central places’, which explained
the existence of large concentrations of capital. Key actors in regional science and
planning later attempted to couple central place theory with François Perroux’s
‘growth and development poles’ theory (Lima 2003). Perroux’s theory was based
on the idea of a polarized economic space, that is, an abstract space formed by
purely economic relationships among individuals, families, companies and the
state, and focused on the connections between economic areas (e.g. between zones
which housed certain industries and zones inhabited by the industries’ respective
supplier and consumer markets). Spatial interaction here is simply a relationship of
interchange or interdependence (flows) between homogeneous spaces called poles.
Poles generate forces of attraction and repulsion and each pole has its own field of
action, thus forming polarized areas or spaces. Development poles would be those
leading to structural changes and encompassing the entire region’s population.
According to Egler (1995), the theory of growth and development poles was
very much employed by territorial planning in Brazil. The state specifically used
this theory in developing domestic markets and establishing conditions for linkages
with foreign markets. The state fostered the formation of poles at selected points in
the national territory, and the connection between them formed market and financial
circuits, thus promoting market integration. These privileged points were also the
best able to connect with other foreign financial and goods circuits.
Santos (2003) observed that Christaller’s emphasis on large spatial concentra-
tions helped territorial planners enact Perroux’s pole theory. It also gave new
strength to the ‘innovation diffusion theory’ promoted by Swedish geographer
Torsten Hägerstrand. Spatial diffusion of innovation refers to the propagation, in
space, of modern productive activities (such as large industry). This theory clas-
sifies spaces as output innovation centres (a city or a pole area) and input centres
(peripheral areas); the diffusion process results from the interactions between these
output and input centres, between developed and less developed regions. Following
this approach, the purpose of planning is to create conditions that favor these
interactions, thus promoting the diffusion of economic development from one
region to another.
Between the 1950s and 1980s Brazil evidenced not only the commitment and
loyalty of national planning bodies to these theories, but also exposed their
problems. The case of Brazil’s Northeast region is a case-in-point. The state con-
structed communication and transportation networks in order to integrate this major
region with the core area of the country (the Southeast), and created the planning
body SUDENE (Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast) to execute
large infrastructural projects. However, nothing could break the dependence of the
Northeast on the Brazilian Central-South (Goiás, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do
Sul). One of the gaps in diffusion innovation theory is understanding how power
asymmetries function; territorial planning attempted to create poles of development,
but unfortunately could not overcome regional elites’ monopoly on rural property.
As a result of this and other failed development initiatives, Santos concluded that
all territorial planning would have the same effect regardless of its theoretical
underpinnings: no matter how large the investments in ‘secondary centres’ or even
in ‘underdeveloped regions’, the returns would always be routed to big centres. He
argued that adjustments of economic activities, production factors and social rela-
tions of production in Brazil and in the ‘underdeveloped world’ more generally
would have very fast and brutal effects.
The forces of transformation thus did not proliferate across national space
homogeneously; on the contrary, the impact of those forces was very local and
selective, and eventually worsened the existing imbalances. Santos (2004) drew
attention to the importance of considering territorial specificities in countries
belonging to the once-called Third World in light of these development projects. In
these countries: (i) there are enormous social income differences expressed at the
regional scale, manifest in a strict hierarchy of activities, and at the local scale,
manifest by the coexistence of activities of similar nature but aimed at different
consumption patterns; (ii) space is subject to and affected by multiple
decision-making levels so that the smaller the place the more diverse the impacts
generated; and (iii) only some parts of the territory welcomed economic modern-
ization projects, and those that did, did so at different moments and in diverse ways.
To Santos, capitalist modernization in Brazil throughout the 20th century, facili-
tated by territorial planning, was profoundly shaped by a selective and unequal
spatial history—resulting in ‘planned poverty’ (Santos 2003: 29), in his own words.
7.3 The Current Dynamics of Territorial Planning

in Brazil
The oil crisis of the 1970s affected new forms of accumulation in Brazil in the
following decade (Araújo 2000). If, before the crisis, petroleum was the main raw
material to be outsourced, the new accumulation regime that emerged in the wake
of the crisis was premised on knowledge/information as primary resources. With
the progress of the so-called ‘technological-scientific revolution’ (Santos 2004),
new sectors of activity, which were embedded in ‘central countries’—countries

with higher levels of social and economic development—began commanding
global economic dynamics. Meanwhile, Brazil was plunged into a crisis of
domestic and foreign indebtedness; the transfer of savings abroad for
debt-repayment to international creditors had stopped national investments. The
industrializing model of previous decades appeared to have come to an end.
Between 1985 and 1995 territorial planning policies shifted in the state’s agenda,
partly as a result of these global economic dynamics. Planning became focused
more on sector-specific or strictly economic plans, rather than on the previous large,
cross-cutting regional policies. Even so, regional planning remained important: the
1988 Constitution stated that the Executive Power should establish ‘Pluriannual
Plans’ (PPAs) to define, by region, the directives, targets and objectives of federal
public administration for the entire national territory.
The 1990s saw an increasing shift to neoliberal policies in Brazil, beginning with
the victory of Fernando Collor de Mello in the presidential elections of 1989.
According to Santana (2011), the first PPA presented by the Collor government,
valid for four years (1991–1995), was less a planning policy than a budget plan. At
the same time, the country was confronted with faster and deeper socioeconomic,
political and institutional global changes. The increased mobility of foreign pro-
ductive and financial capital forced the restructuring of Brazilian sectors that had
not adapted to the new globalized forms of accumulation and deregulation of
markets. As a consequence, there was increased private sector participation either in
market intervention, through establishing prices and setting conditions (or barriers)
for entry, or in political agreements, that is, agreements with workers and local
powers with little-to-no state mediation.
In reaction to Collor’s plan, territorial planning was resurrected during the first
presidential term of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Cardoso’s Pluriannual Plan of
1996–1999 represented a paradigm shift. This time, the state played the role of a
proponent of plans and policies rather than of a centralization agent in charge of the
different planning steps. Additionally, the territory, formerly understood as an
archipelago of semi-autonomous regional markets not much connected to each
other—and which should be integrated in order to form a national market—began
to be seen as an element that could connect national and international circuits of
capital and information (Santos 2002). The plan still concerned territorial
inequality, in theory, but the main focus of planning was to craft local spaces
through a logic of territorial selectivity: cities and regions were to attract capital for
the implementation of territorially-connected investments at different scales. This
new approach to planning favoured the adoption of different instruments varying by
region or city.
In general, the emergence of planning at the municipal level was a primary
component of what Santos (2002) called the ‘war of places’, or the ways in which
places competed amongst one another for investment. Santos argued that companies
are not the only ones involved in global competition. Places are also in search of
investments, of resources, of labour force and of consumers. The new information
economy is central here: according to Santos, as information became one of the
main forms of wealth accumulation, the knowledge of places globally allowed for
more precise spatial selectivity than in the past. The actions devised in Cardoso’s
first PPA enabled federation units and states to invest, with maximum or minimum
support from the government (depending on the arrangement of local and regional
forces and the Federal Government), in certain productive sectors. War of places, or
interterritorial competition, paved the way for Cardoso’s second term PPA (2000–
2003), which emphasized connections with the international market.
According to Santos (2002), spaces can be distinguished by, among other things,
their differential capacity to generate profitable investment. The possibility of
generating larger or smaller profits in a given sector or field of activity is related to
how a given space is constructed, rather than a given space’s ‘natural characteris-
tics’. The capacity of a place to create profit depends, above all, on local conditions
of a technical nature—such as energy, transportation and telecommunications
infrastructure—and also of an organizational nature—such as local laws, systems
of fares and taxes, labour relations and traditions, and formal and informal insti-
tutions. In other words, urban and regional spaces/scales specialize in particular
forms of production due to human-made technical, economic and political projects,
which Santos referred to as spatial competitiveness and productivity. Specialization
of places—urban or regional—meets the global competitive market’s demands for
security and profit. However, the productivity of a city or region may not be
permanent, as other places compete to offer larger returns to those same production
sectors.
The federal PPAs of Brazil in the late 1990s and early 2000s constructed dif-
ferent spaces for investment throughout the country. The territorial ordering of
industry was accomplished in a number of ways, through: investments in mod-
ernizing and expanding roads, privatizing strategic sectors such as telecommuni-
cations (for decades under the monopoly of the state), and incentivizing the
relocation of industries to less industrialized areas. The federal government also
fostered aggressive competition between municipalities and states based on tax and
fee exemptions, on donations of land, and on compensation to private companies
for expenditure on infrastructure (Piquet 2007).
Industrial production was spread throughout the national territory. According to
Lencioni (2006), the metropolitan area of São Paulo began to share the leadership
of industrial production with the rural areas of the same state where new industrial
districts had been created. In the state of São Paulo ‘the industrial productive
capital’ moved inland, while the headquarters of large corporations, ‘higher order
services,’ and research centres remained concentrated in the capital city. The state
of Rio de Janeiro, despite tendencies toward de-industrialization and a rise in the
trade and services sectors, has experienced a cycle of investments in petroleum,
with oil companies opening their headquarters in the capital. The city of Rio has
thus become a technopolis for the petro sector, while oil platforms and processing
are concentrated in the Campos Basin.
There has also been a dispersion of industrial production to the Northeast region
of the country. For example, Fortaleza recently built the largest industrial park in
this region (Piquet 2007), taking the title from another Northeastern city, Recife.
The state of Ceará has also made concerted efforts to become the best, most
time-efficient option for sea transportation. The irrigated fruit industry in the
western part of Rio Grande do Norte, also of the Northeast region, has been an
important source of wealth accumulation. Industry in this area represents a recovery
from political and institutional barriers of historical oligarchies whose power was
based on the monopoly of land and of the ‘drought industry’. The development of
the irrigated fruit industry in this region was greatly facilitated by the Armando
Ribeiro Alves dam project, constructed in 1983 by the state government. The dam
valorized the land in the Vale do Açu area, facilitated the introduction of irrigated
crops, and attracted new rural owners who were more open to innovations in the
science and technology sector. A local-based productive scale—with local pro-
duction factors, infrastructures and political mediation—developed afterwards, but
the international market scale remained as a preferential option.
The examples presented above illustrate how territorial planning has, through the
Pluriannual Plans, contributed to redesigning the spatiality of the Brazilian econ-
omy. Industrial development has occurred under the aegis of a new project:
strengthening territories’ comparative advantages in order to attract and make
profitable investments from specific globalized sectors. In other words, territorial
planning has facilitated the autonomous and competitive insertion of different
Brazilian regions and cities into the global economy. According to Santos (2002:
244) these territories have gradually turned into ‘national spaces of international
economy’. It is the international scale, after all, that defines the quality patterns of
products, and transnational firms are the ones best able to make use of major
infrastructure projects.
Territorial planning’s emphasis on international trade also reflects broader
regional concerns about, for instance, other Mercosul countries and Brazil’s par-
ticipation in the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South
America (IIRSA). In the second PPA of Cardoso’s term, the Brazilian government
consolidated partnerships with other South American nations in order to make the
continent a preferential regional platform. As a result, so-called ‘major investment
projects’, which played a key role in the first phase of territorial planning, have
retained their importance, albeit in ways increasingly connected to a global
economy.
The Pluriannual Plans implemented in the two presidential terms of Luiz Inácio
‘Lula’ da Silva represent a sequel to the previous era’s major investment projects.
The 2008–2011 PPA drafted the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC in
Portuguese), which is a policy for major investments in infrastructure projects. Its
main focus remains competitive global insertion through territorial transformation.
The project was launched during the global financial crisis of 2008/2009. It pro-
posed the planning and execution of large public works projects for social, urban,
logistical and energy infrastructure. One of the objectives of PAC has been to
guarantee the continuity of goods and services consumption; a major premise of the
2008–2011 plan was the continued expansion of the mass market (with policies to
that end implemented by Cardoso). To do so, it was necessary to equip all regional
territories with modern engineering systems, thus enabling them to absorb increased
domestic and/or foreign flows of goods, people or information. The second phase of
PAC, initiated in 2011 by Dilma Rousseff’s government, emphasized ‘biofuels’.
One of the largest projects of PAC II, currently being executed, is the Ethanol
Logistic System. This project will unite areas that produce sugarcane ethanol in
municipalities in the states of Goiás, Minas Gerais and São Paulo. It will thus
enable pipe transportation of the ethanol produced in rural areas to distribution
centres and markets inside and outside the country.
These territorial planning actions confront the current global ‘imperative of
fluidity’ (Santos 2002). To Santos, a major characteristic of the contemporary world
is the demand for fluidity in the circulation of information, goods and finance for
the ultimate benefit of international productive and financial capital. Fluidity, in
turn, is based on what the author calls ‘technical networks’, which he presents as the
material foundations of competitiveness: highways, ports, airports, gas and oil
pipelines, canals, and networks for digital data transmission. These networks also
add value to the activities that use them. Territorial planning in Brazil, through the
country’s various PPAs, has focused on constructing such technical networks
across diverse territories and regions.
Santos (2002) also observed that producing fluidity is usually a cooperative
process between public and private sectors. The state, directly or by means of
concessions, has a duty to equip different territories with technical macro-systems;
private companies, together or separately, establish networks with spatial features
corresponding to their own market interests. The Ethanol Logistic System is an
example of the cooperative process: the project had direct funding from the
Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES in Portuguese)—using public resources—
and the project execution, although officially a duty of the state-owned Petrobras,
has been shared among the following private companies: Copersucar, Raízen,
Odebrecht Transport Participações, Uniduto Logística and Camargo Corrêa
Construções e Participações. Additionally, the direct users of the network are not
only traditional sugar/bioenergy producers, but also enterprises associated with the
fossil fuel sector, such Shell, as well as trading companies and agricultural busi-
nesses that have recently joined the biofuel market, such as the Bunge Group, Louis
Dreyfus Commodities and Archer Daniel Midlands.
7.4 A Non-Conclusion
In this essay I have discussed some of Santos’s theories relating to territorial

planning and presented two distinct phases of territorial planning in Brazil from its
integrationist and developmental origins to the contemporary period of global
competition, networks, production, trade and information circuits. The long,
ongoing history of territorial planning in Brazil is difficult to summarize. It is indeed
possible, however, to identify links between the territorial planning of yesterday
and of today. For instance, both phases focused on facilitating large-scale regional
economic projects. I highlight two other linkages below:
• In both moments, the federal government assumed the duty of building technical
macro-systems (that is, networks for circulation, transportation, energy and
communications) and of making direct investments in production (that is,
facilitating the presence of industrial companies in key strategic areas, such as
the steel sector). In the first period, the state acted as a monopoly, connecting the
national territory with the market and creating conditions for the diversification
of industrial production. In the present period, large investment projects remain
on the agenda of territorial planning policies, but their implementation is now
shared with the private sector; large infrastructure is most frequently used by
transnational firms—established in the country since the economic opening of
1990—rather than by the general Brazilian population. Some networks are, in
fact, used exclusively by private corporations. In other words, large state-funded
physical infrastructural projects were historically used to integrate regional
subnational economies so that they could form a national market; later, these
projects were in service of sub-national regional economies strongly tied to
national circuits and, increasingly, international circuits of capital.
• Territorial planning in both periods has used rhetoric of reducing regional
inequalities and poverty. However, both periods have also used planning poli-
cies that are based on spatial selectivity. In the past, income differences within
the population and between regions constituted limiting factors to the expansion
of capitalist modernization in the territories of peripheral economies. Today, in
spite of the focus on the ‘inclusion by consumption’ as a measure of poverty
mitigation, current territorial planning policy advocates for the inclusion of
places and regions into the global market through the logic of selectivity. To this
end, policy promotes different instruments of economic development for each
city or region (or even city-regions), creating the conditions for interterritorial
competition for public and private investments in order to attract firms, con-
sumers and labour forces. In this context it may be asked: is planning fulfilling
its original function of adding value, or is it exacerbating spatial differences
through capital investment and profit, causing some territories to reach more
economic prosperity than others?
Given these considerations, a question arises: is an alternative form and goal of
territorial planning possible? As Santos (2003) argues, one need not qualify plan-
ning as capitalist because it has never been anything but. However, before pro-
moting a new type of planning, which may be, variously, ‘critic’, ‘participative’ or
‘democratic’, we must deconstruct and understand, through careful analysis, the
types of planning being implemented now: planning that has been, from its
inception to today, articulated with capitalism. Santos helps us do just that.
References
Araújo, T. B. (2000). Ensaios sobre o desenvolvimento brasileiro: Heranças e urgências. Rio de

Janeiro: Revan.
Cima, E., & Amorim, L. (2007). Desenvolvimento regional e organização do espaço: Uma análise
do desenvolvimento local e regional através do processo de difusão de inovação. Revista FAE,
10(2), 73–87.
Egler, C. (1995). Questão regional e gestão do território no brasil. In I. E. Castro, P. C. Gomes, &
R. L. Corrêa (Eds.), Geografia: conceitos e temas (pp. 207–238). Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand
Brasil.
Lencioni, S. (2006). Reestruturação urbano-industrial no Estado de São-Paulo: A região da
metrópole desconcentrada. In M. Santos, M. A. A. de Souza & M. L. Silveira (Eds.),
Território: Globalização e fragmentação (pp. 198–210). São Paulo: Hucitec.
Lessa, A., Couto, L., & Farias, R. (2009). Política externa planejada: Os Planos Plurianuais e ação
internacional do Brasil, de Cardoso a Lula (1995–2008). Revista Brasileira de Política
Internacional, 52(1), 89–109.
Lima, J. F. (2003) A Concepção do espaço econômico polarizado. Interações: Revista
Internacional de Desenvolvimento Local, 4(7), 7–14.
Piquet, R. (2007). Indústria e ordenamento territorial no Brasil contemporâneo. Rio de Janeiro:
Garamond.
Santana, M. (2011). Planejamento territorial e subdesenvolvimento: Fatos e mitos. Revista
Geográfica de América Central, Número especial XIII EGAL, 1–24.
Santos, M. (2004 [1974]). O Espaço dividido. Os dois circuitos da economia urbana nos países
subdesenvolvidos. São Paulo: Edusp.
Santos, M. (2003 [1979]). Economia espacial: Críticas e alternativas. São Paulo: Edusp.
Santos, M. (2002 [1996]). A Natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo; Razão e Emoção. São Paulo:
Edusp.
Chapter 8
Rethinking Federalism through the Work
of Milton Santos
Fabrício Gallo
Abstract The geographical analysis of a national territory requires a research

method that considers the multi-faceted nature of reality, especially for those ter-
ritories where state organization occurs within a federal structure. This structure
uses a policy architecture to resolve the problem of the organization of power in the
face of specific regional diversities of each national territory. The concept adopted
in this chapter is of the used territory, as proposed by Milton Santos. The hege-
monic agent par excellence in the use of territory is the state. In countries of
federative state organization (in other words, where the state’s power is shared
between federated entities of isonomic form) the national public budgets are often
characterized by the transfer of tax funds from one federated entity to another. The
geographical analysis of these transfers is one way to understand how the state uses
the territory. To exercise power, the state uses the territory by imposing norms that
regulate and create tensions among entities because some transfers can favour only
one group of subnational entities. This brings into question the principle of federal
isonomy and can lead to a war of places, animated by disputes for limited public
resources. This chapter discusses how Milton Santos’s dialectic between normed
territory and territory as norm can be used to interpret the taxation disarrangement
in the federation.
8.1 Introduction
The geographical analysis of a national territory requires a research method that

considers the particularities inherent to each territory. This text seeks to analyze
territories in which the state is organized in a federal structure. In Political
Geography, Sanguin (1977) has argued that a federal state implies an alliance,
contract or pact among diverse regions and populations. The federal government
Fabrício Gallo, Assistant Professor, Department of Territorial Planning and Geoprocessing,

Universidade Estadual Paulista—UNESP, Brazil; Email: [email protected].

92 F. Gallo
regime is a phenomenon of constitutional law whereby the authority of the state is

not hierarchized, but shared between a central government and other subnational
levels. Each level, within the limits of its competence as defined by the constitu-
tional text, performs the plenitude of the state’s power. As such, federalism is a
political architecture that aims to solve the problem of the organization of power in
the face of specific regional diversities in each national territory. Its particular
challenge consists of finding solutions for governmental questions in a complex
relation of spatial differences and similarities.
In this essay I use the ideas of Milton Santos to analyze the geographical
expression of federalism by interpreting it as an event in the process of uses of the
territory (Santos 2002). In analyzing the Brazilian federation, I consider the rele-
vancy of the concept of used territory (Santos 1999, 2002; Santos et al. 2000;
Silveira 2009) to include all of the agents that constitute this federation in a totality
that is divided into two matrices constituted by political actions: on the one hand,
materialities, and on the other hand, immaterialities.
In this essay I interrogate how the concept used territory is important for the
analysis of the federation; it helps me consider the power of each agent to use a
given territory in accordance with his or her specific set of interests. I also propose
understanding federalism as a geographical event because to do so presents fed-
eralism as having roots in an earlier moment in history, even though it exists in the
current period. Lastly, I suggest that the unequal process of resource distribution in
a federation can result in a selective renewal of materialities in the territory,
resulting in a deepening of socio-spatial inequalities.
8.2 The Relevancy of the Used Territory in the Analysis

of the Federation
The category used territory has two interrelated dimensions. First, it refers to
territorial configuration (Santos 1988), from the smallest technical and natural
objects to the largest engineering works. Second, it includes all social actions, from
the repetitive actions that constitute daily life to actions that have the power to
change the course of history. To Santos, then, used territory is an analytic category
that places political actions and materialities side by side as co-constitutive. The
actions advance the forms—the materialities—and the latter, in turn, condition
social actions. In other words, space is animated by social forces and thus might be
considered a social conditioner (Santos 2005). Santos et al. (2000: 104) continue by
arguing that, ‘used territory is constituted as a whole complex that consists of a web
of complementary and conflicting relations’. Silveira (2009: 129) elaborates that:
‘Used territory captures past actions, already crystalized in objects and rules, and
present actions, which happen in front of our eyes’.
8 Rethinking Federalism through the Work of Milton Santos 93
To Santos (2005), territory is composed only of forms, but used territory

includes objects and actions: it is a synonym for human space or inhabited space.
That is why Santos et al. (2000) consider geographical space not as synonymous
with territory, but with used territory. The interpretation of a given geographical
space requires distinguishing between the agents involved in action (in other words,
those who have the power to use the territory), because used territory is constituted
through the interdependence and inseparability of materiality and its use.
Hegemonic agents impose their use strategies on space, while non-hegemonic
agents use the territory in other ways, with other intentionalities. The state is a
hegemonic agent that wields immense power to define a territory’s use. The state is
the agent that commands the most coercive means, one of which is the power to
create laws. Santos (2002) argues that the state, because of its prerogative to leg-
islate, is the primary force capable of causing events to occur over extensive areas.
Santos asks:
What forces are able to cause events to occur, in a moment, over extensive areas? The first
of them is the state, by its “legitimate use of force”, within the law or not. Law…is,
naturally, general. Thus, a public rule acts over the totality of the people, companies,
institutions and territory. This is the superiority of state actions over other macroorgani-
zations. (Santos 2002: 152)
The state is a force that produces events throughout a territory. Analyzing territorial
transformations thus always demands understanding the political sphere in which
decisions are made regarding the use of the national territory.
8.3 Federalism as Geographical Event
Using the concept of the event can help elucidate ‘social actions’, the latter which
are co-constituted with a territory’s materialities. Through events, historical and
natural time are incorporated into geographical space. Thus it is possible to
heuristically identify natural events (such as rain or earthquakes), which result from
nature’s dynamics, and historical events (such as classes, seminars, revolutions or
coups d’état), which result from social relations, that is, human actions that cause
people, with all of their contradictions, to interact. Both natural and social events,
however, are the result of both human and territorial action.
Events result from a set of vectors (such as new social rules and laws, new
political conditions or new technologies) that lead to new functions in the preex-
isting milieu: they reorganize some functions and disorganize many others.
However, an event only takes place when it integrates, that is, when it materializes
in geographic space.
According to Santos (2002), the duration of an event refers not only to a time
fragment or the time course of an action, but also to its spatial extension. The
duration and extension of an event depends on an organizational system that
authorizes its permanence. This is the case for the geographical space of federalism:
94 F. Gallo
its territory is the result of all state actions, which define, downward, the political
behaviour of the subnational scales. This direction of influence is demarcated in
covenants within the national constitution. The existence of these constitutional
rules and pacts, which are continually remade, is necessary for federalism to con-
tinue as a system of state organization that organizes events in its territory.
Drawing from Santos’s conceptualization of an event, it is possible to interpret a
federation as an event at the national level because its scale of realization is the
totality of the national territory (Gallo 2014). Viewing a federation as an event
requires interpreting each national territory as a distinct sociospatial formation
(Santos 1977).1 In each, the spatialization of an event is shaped by the preexisting
territorial realities. This interpretation is inspired by Santos (1977): to him, the
concept of sociospatial formation attempts to undo a longstanding notion of society
and space as dissociated. In seeking to understand economic formation processes
(which are the result of social relations) and the spatial formation of a national
territory, it is necessary to regard them as inseparable. As economic and social
formations come into being, they are concretized in space, but this concretization
only occurs through its adaptation to the rules of a nation-state. Therefore, so-
ciospatial formations are manifest through the national territory—the territory of
the nation-state—and can be defined as the territorial-state scale. Because economic
and social formations are necessarily adapted to, and transformed by, the specific
rules of each national territory, each sociospatial formation is distinct from those in
other national territories. Thus, each national federation is also made distinct.
Moreover, the sociospatial formation of a national territory shifts as federations are
remade in each historical moment, following the particular ‘block of power’
(Poulantzas 1973) that commands the territory, which then uses this territory
according to the block’s determined order. This order is negotiated: the relation
among the different entities within a block is constantly shifting, simultaneously
transforming the use of a territory.
Brazil, like all nation-states, has a specific sociospatial formation. Moraes (2002)
argues that after Brazil’s political emancipation on 7 September 1822, Brazilian
elites began to establish the new state in a vast, resource-rich territory that had not
yet been consolidated through a hegemonic economic form. In this territorial for-
mation, the country was not conceived as a people, but as a land, that is, not as a
community of individuals but as a spatial territory. The conception of federalism in
Brazil matured in accordance with the interests of elites to preserve their space of
1
Regarding the notion of socio-spatial formation, Santos (1977) explains that for a long time the
concepts of society and space were separated. Santos argues that economic formations (which are
the result of social relations) and spatial formations of a country must be understood as inseparable
from a theoretical point of view, and he created the category socio-spatial formation to capture this
interdependency. That is, the economic and social formation materializes in space. But because
socio-spatial formation is related to the mode of production, its realization is only possible through
adaptation to the laws of a nation-state. Thus the category socio-spatial formation can be defined as
the scale of the nation-state, ie the national territory. These attributes emphasize the importance of
the specificities of each territory.
domination, in the midst of tensions derived from a strong system of social

exclusion and the threat of disorder that arose from the weakening of the slave
regime. The political conditions for a federative organization of the Brazilian state
arose specifically after the Proclamation of the Republic (on 15 November 1889) by
the Promulgation of the Republic of the United States of Brazil’s Constitution (on
24 February 1891).
From a territorial point of view, federalism in Brazil was a political mechanism
designed to solve two problems: (i) regionalism, which during the monarchy (from
1822 to 1889) threatened to fragment the territory; and (ii) the lack of physical land
networks which could integrate the extensive territory making communication
between the parts of the Empire more effective. This set of features, which were in
existence before the establishment of federalism, is unique because it is specific to the
Brazilian territory. Thus it is useful to understand Brazilian federation as an event,
occurring in time, that reorganizes the territorial formation. As Santos explains (2002:
163): ‘Events are individual, but there are no isolated events. They are interrelated
and interdependent, and it is these conditions that participate in situations.’
The establishment of federalism in Brazil represents a new territorial formation.
According to Santos (2002), a ruled territory is a national territory ruled by laws
that make it formally distinct from other territories. This understanding of territory
is consistent with Gottmann (1975), who argues that territory is a political com-
partment surrounded by frontiers that is validated by a juridical body distinct from
the territories that surround it. However, places differ in their respective charac-
teristics, that is, by the set of singularities that make local realities diverse and
unequal. Santos (2002) described this as territory as rule, or territory as a norm:
here, territory is an active participant in the way that certain actions are manifest in a
place. In the Brazilian case, federalism as an event was a territory imposing itself as
a rule because the territory was a ‘barrier’ to the performance of centralized power
—it inspired federalism.
An event is formed by multiple forces in permanent conflict. The imposition of
an event, such as federalism, results from combinations of contradictory social
forces. These contradictory forces take shape as a dialectic between rule and ruled,
which is a manifestation of a territory’s transformations that require a rearrange-
ment of the social and political organization of the nation.
8.4 Selective Renovation of Materialities

and the Distribution of Tributary Resources
Among Federate Entities
As discussed above, the purpose of this text is to understand the federal structure as
the broadest analytic segment in the used territory of Brazil. In order to understand
the politics of the used territory it is necessary to attend to the constant negotiations
among different entities for intergovernmental transferences of tributary resources.
96 F. Gallo
In Brazilian federalism, transference mechanisms are of great importance because

they allow greater or lesser local and regional autonomy; some intergovernmental
transfer mechanisms allow portions of the territory to receive more resources than
others, thus providing a selective renovation of materialities. In other words, only
some parts of the territory are selected by corporate interests to be modernized, while
most of the territory remains in a precarious condition (Santos & Silveira 2001).
Once resources are transferred to more privileged regions, they become embodied in
specific places as materialities, increasing the technical density (Santos 2002) of
portions of the territory. A territorial interpretation of the Brazilian tax system
reveals that federalism is central to the selective spatialization of transferred
resources and the resources’ resultant materialities (because new infrastructure—
such as streets, roads, communication networks and electricity, urban sanitation,
schools and health centres—are implanted in the territory). This type of analysis
avoids economism. Economistic analyses lack a territorial perspective as they only
consider the equitable distribution of resources deduced from formulations and
mathematical indices. A territorial perspective offers the ability to reduce
sociospatial and infrastructural inequalities.
The Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 guaranteed isonomy among entities
and the autonomy and exclusive competence to make certain decisions that are
constitutionally established as proper for each entity (these include, for example,
establishing that: the Union is responsible and has the autonomy to organize the
armed forces, immigration policies and macroeconomic policy; the states are
responsible for metropolitan regional policies; and municipalities are responsible
for the organization of municipal routine, and the legislation and organization of
cities). However, these exclusive competencies are also extended to tributary
matters and thus each entity has the exclusive competence to tax certain fields. For
example: the federal Union collects income tax from each individual or company,
tax on industrial production, fuel tax, tax on import and export, financial transaction
tax etc.; the states are responsible for the collection of taxes on production and
circulation of merchandise and transport and communication services, vehicle
property tax etc.; and municipalities are responsible for collecting taxes on urban
territorial property, on services performed etc. Because it has control over the entire
national territory, the federal government is the entity that collects the most taxes.
There are intergovernmental mechanisms that attempt to equalize this resource
distribution, such as: (i) constitutional and legal transferences (with rules estab-
lished in the Federal Constitution and Federal Laws and Decrees) pursuant to
which all entities are assured their portions of resources from other entities; and
(ii) voluntary transfers, which include agreements and several actions that have
been formalized between the federal government and states and cities, as well as
between states and cities (Brazil-CGU 2005). For the 2016 Olympics Games, for
example, the Brazilian federal government signed a contract with the municipality
of Rio de Janeiro to release approximately US$ 148,000,000 for the construction of
the VLT—light rail vehicle—in the city. In this latter transference modality—the
voluntary transfers—all entities can demand resources. However, this does not
guarantee the formalization of the agreement or the release of money pursuant to an
agreement that was previously signed, because there is not money for everyone.
Agreements cannot always be fulfilled because of shifts in budget frameworks (for
example, a tax revenue reduction caused by a crisis); backstage political negotia-
tions thus often occur amidst budget deals.
This process exemplifies work by Affonso (1995), who argues that the Brazilian
federation stems from a complex set of alliances, usually not explicit, forged largely
by public funds based on fiscal policies that were adopted throughout the years.
A synthesis of the Brazilian budget process is described by Rezende and Cunha
(2002), who affirm that this process can be seen as a game with many participants
including the president, ministers, deputies, senators and hundreds of members of
the technical teams of the three powers (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary), plus
interest groups articulated with companies, associations, federations, confederations
and state and municipal governments. All try to include, maintain or expand their
share of benefits provided by budget funds. In the conception of Arrais (2008) the
resource transfers are important elements in the national political arena, as they are
the product of arrangements that frequently go beyond legality. Thus, it is important
to map and understand this distribution of resources as a component of power
relations.
These transfers establish new infrastructure or restore existing infrastructure,
selectively strengthening the technical density of various federate municipal entities
in the Brazilian territory. Santos’s (2002: 306) concept of used territory draws
attention to how the emergent material or infrastructural profile is ‘the base of the
use values and exchange values…One can say, considered in their technical reality
and in their use rules, infrastructures ‘rule’ behaviors and then ‘choose’ or ‘select’
the possible actors’. This is how territory appears as rule: it participates in the
selection of certain actions and actors that will appear at the local scale. Put another
way, many of the new materialities to be installed by transfers require pre-existing
infrastructure that is only found in some parts of the country. As a result, those
territories with pre-existing infrastructure have agency in selecting actions and
actors—this is the territory imposing itself as rule.
The diffusion of modernization is responsible for the aforementioned selective
renovation of materialities (Santos & Silveira 2001) in the national territory. Large
engineering works and modern technical objects and facilities for the achievement of
citizenship (such as hospitals, schools, day care centres, universities, water and
sewage treatment) tend to be distributed to places. However, distribution choices
also stem from the structure of the federation, in other words, the pacts and political
negotiations between various entities, which are not always clear to the rest of the
nation. This means that even if the federal government calls for transference pro-
posals, and even if the municipalities submit projects with all of the correct docu-
mentation, there is no certainty that an agreement will be made, because there is not
enough money for everything and because of the often obscure negotiations between
public and private agents that influence the granting of money (Gallo 2013).
98 F. Gallo
8.5 Final Considerations
In this text I have explained the political engineering of Brazilian federalism

through one of its territorial expressions: resource transference. The chapter has
focused on how the distribution of resources among entities occurs and is materi-
alized within the territory. Following Santos, a full understanding of all norms,
rules, laws, conditions and articulations, alongside a full understanding of how they
have been produced by concrete politics and how they have produced a concrete
federation, is one way for individuals in the municipalities to discuss and contribute
to the decisional processes for the future of their territories. A full understanding of
how real politics and real federations are produced is important considering that
many of the negotiations between the agents are obscure to most Brazilian citizens.
Due to this obscurity, there is a use of the territory and a process of renewal of
materiality that caters predominantly to hegemonic interests and not the entire
national society.
I argue that this federation can be interpreted both as a formal federation and as a
concrete federation. The former, the formal federation, is one that is established by
legal and juridical structures where all entities should have the same rights and
potentialities for development within the nation. A federation in fact is one that is
constituted by agreements and political alliances that have a territorial basis, where
movement turns into political order and where territory imposes itself as rule, that
is, a federation where parts of the territory are developed more than others because
of competing corporate interests and pre-existing infrastructure. The federate
principle of isonomy between entities is at risk and deep socio-spatial inequalities
become feasible: some portions of the national territory always appear to receive
more funds for the establishment of new infrastructure and increases in their
technical density because of the central role of local politicians in the negotiation of
agreements. However, the process occurring at this specific policy conjuncture in
Brazilian society—in which some portions of the territory indirectly impose
themselves over others—has in fact been occurring since the origin of the Brazilian
federation at the end of the 19th century.
Thus, following Santos, I suggest that the federation can be considered as a
geographical event that continues in its duration up to the present. As Santos
(2002) states, the event is always present, but its duration is a period in which the
event has been repeating with its original characteristics. The Brazilian federation,
which was established in 1891, has a duration that has extended up to the present
time: it continues to be characterized by elements that were present at its origin
(agreements, negotiations and pacts accomplished between political class and pri-
vate agents), but it is also being shaped by and adapting to the political conditions
of today.
References
Affonso, R. B. A. (1995). A federação no Brasil: Impasses e perspectivas. In R. B. A. Affonso &

P. L. B. Silva (Eds.), A federação em perspectiva: Ensaios selecionados. São Paulo: FUNDAP.
Arrais, T. P. A. (2008). Diversidade territorial e transferências constitucionais para os municípios:
Considerações sobre a economia regional goiana. Boletim Goiano de Geografia, 28(2), 203–216.
Brasil – Presidência da República, Casa Civil. (1891). Constituição da República dos Estados
Unidos do Brasil, de 24 de fevereiro de 1891, series. Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://
www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/Constituicao91.htm.
Brasil – Presidência da República, Casa Civil. (1988). Constituição da República Federativa do
Brasil. Texto constitucional de 1988, series. Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://www.
planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/Constituicao.htm.
Brasil – Controladoria-Geral da Federal Government (CGU). (2005). Gestão de recursos federais.
Manual para os agentes municipais. Brasília-DF, Secretaria de Controle Interno, series.
Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://www.cgu.gov.br/publicacoes/auditoria-e-fiscalizacao/
arquivos/cartilhagestaorecursosfederais.pdf.
Gallo, F. (2013). Território, política e infraestruturas: A influência do governo federal na política
urbana dos municípios brasileiros. Sociedade & Natureza, 25, 453–467. Retrieved August 30,
2016, from http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/sociedadenatureza/article/view/2298.
Gallo, F. (2014). Elementos da Formação Territorial Brasileira. A Federação Nacional como
Evento Geográfico. Boletim Campineiro de Geografia, Campinas, 4(2), 27–43. Retrieved
August 30, 2016, from http://agbcampinas.com.br/bcg/index.php/boletim-campineiro/article/
view/167/2014v4n1_FGallo.
Gottmann, J. (1975). The evolution of the concept of territory. Social Science Information sur les
Sciences Sociales, 1(3/4), 29–47
Moraes, A. C. R. (2002). Território e história no Brasil. São Paulo: Hucitec/Annablume.
Poulantzas, N. (1973). Political power and social classes. London: New Left Books.
Rezende, F., & Cunha, A. (Eds.). (2002). Contribuintes e cidadãos. Compreendendo o orçamento
federal. Programa de estudos fiscais. Rio de Janeiro: FGV/IBRE: FGV/EBAPE.
Sanguin, A.-L. (1977). La géographie politique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Santos, M. (1977). Society and space: Social formation as theory and method. Antipode, 1(9), 3–
13.
Santos, M. (1988). Metamorfoses do espaço habitado: Fundamentos teórico e metodológico da
geografia. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1999). O Território e o saber local: Algumas categorias de análise. Cadernos IPPUR,
13(2), 15–25.
Santos, M. (2002 [1996]). A Natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo; Razão e emoção. São Paulo:
Edusp.
Santos, M. (2005). O Retorno do território. In M. Santos (Ed.), Da totalidade ao lugar. São Paulo:
Edusp.
Santos, M., & Silveira, M. L. (2001). O Brasil. Território e sociedade no início do século XXI. São
Paulo: Record.
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Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://www.revistaterritorio.com.br/pdf/09_7_santos.pdf.
Silveira, M. L. (2009). Ao território usado a palavra: Pensando princípios de solidariedade
socioespacial. In A. L. A. Viana, N. Ibanez & P. E. M. Elias (Eds.), Saúde, desenvolvimento e
território. São Paulo: Aderaldo & Rotschild.
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Chapter 9
Milton Santos’s Contribution
to Understanding the Transformations
Underway at Modern Agricultural
Frontiers
Júlia Adão Bernardes
Abstract The work of Milton Santos offers a wide range of concepts that may be
used to analyze modern agricultural development in Brazil. This chapter discusses
how these concepts, particularly that of space as a system of objects and system of
actions, can be useful for analyzing transformations of modern agricultural frontiers
in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Pará. Such transformations are intrin-
sically linked to the intensification of activities along the BR-163 federal highway,
which connects the southern and northern regions of the country. The text analyzes
the sociospatial impacts of this nation-state infrastructure and of the reorganization
of agricultural territory along these new frontiers.
9.1 Introduction
Modern agribusiness in Brazil, connected to the ebbs and flows of globalization, is

creating new geographies of production along the BR-163 federal highway1
through Mato Grosso and Pará. As Milton Santos explains:
Júlia Adão Bernardes, Professor, Department of Geography, Federal University of Rio de

Janeiro, Brazil; Email: [email protected].
1
The construction of the BR-163 was initiated in 1973 during the Brazilian military dictatorship—
Medici’s mandate—in the context of the First National Development Plan (1st PND, 1972–1974).
In its first phase the highway connected the cities of Cuiabá in the state of Mato Grosso and
Santarém in Pará. BR-163 construction took place during the same period as the construction of
the Trans-Amazon Highway. These new works were also accompanied by a military integrational
plan for the construction of roads with the twofold goal of: (i) geopolitical control of the Amazon;
and (ii) stimulation of economic and agricultural development.

102 J.A. Bernardes
[These] are the new fronts that are born technified, scientified, informationalized…If the
pioneering movement of São Paulo…was led by the great cultivators capable of building
railroads, attracting immigrants, and taking advantage of modern machinery, today the
pioneering fronts are opened primarily by big business with the cooperation of the
authorities. (Santos & Silveira 2001: 119)
The fundamental connection between technology, science and information,

expressed through scientification and technologization of the landscape, is pro-
ducing modern agricultural frontiers.
Milton Santos’s work offers a broad array of concepts that can guide research on
this spatialization of agricultural processes. His work also allows us to interpret the
effects of these new technologies and rationalities for people who live in regions
undergoing rapid market expansion. This chapter explores the relevance of Santos’s
concepts for analyzing the expansion of the modern agricultural frontier2 in the
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, in the midwest region of the country, and Pará, in
the northern region. This frontier is constructed through a system of objects and a
system of actions, a technosphere and a psychosphere, and space and society. These
concepts comprise what Santos calls the technical-scientific-informational milieu.
Santos’s analytical approach requires recognizing the complexity and creation of
new territorialities in the current phase of globalized capitalism. This phase is
marked by: new technical and territorial divisions of labour, market dynamics and
state actions; clashes between dominant interests and pre-existing production
methods; and the juxtaposition of different times and spaces of social struggles.
Santos’s approach allows us to understand how the reproduction of social relations
occurs through the adaptation of space; by drawing links between action, time and
space, the agricultural frontier can be mapped and understood as, first, a project
pursued by those who have the most economic and political power, and, second, as
a spatiality where people struggle for their livelihoods within the prevailing hier-
archical, excluding order. At a moment of accelerated flows in the capitalist world,
Milton Santos’s theories provide important concepts for understanding processes of
capitalist accumulation. The analyses in this text demonstrate how Santos’s theo-
retical framework and conceptual tools can be applied in the present day.
This chapter begins by describing the new characteristics of the recent agri-
cultural frontier in Mato Grosso. Next, it discusses how Santos’s concepts, par-
ticularly that of space, can be useful for analyzing transformations of modern
agricultural frontiers. It then uses these concepts to interpret the particular agri-
cultural frontier in Mato Grosso. The text concludes with a discussion of the
sociospatial impacts of the new frontiers in both the state of Mato Grosso and in its
neighbour, the state of Pará.
2
In the Brazilian geographic literature the term agricultural frontier (fronteira agrícola) refers to
areas of expansion of the production of new agricultural or livestocks products. Originally it
referred to areas where native habitats were converted into agriculture. However, the term today
also refers to areas where one type of production is replaced by a new one.
9 Milton Santos’s Contribution to Understanding … 103
9.2 New Expansion of the Modern Agricultural

Frontier in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso
The first decade of the 21st century saw the emergence of new capital accumulation
strategies in Brazilian agriculture under the country’s new economic and financial
policies (Delgado 2012). Statistics on the growth of its main commodities are
illustrative of the policies’ effects. From 2000 to 2012 the country’s soybean pro-
duction rose by 101%, while maize production increased by 120%, cotton rose by
148%, and the number of broiler chickens grew approximately 57%. The area of
land given over to soybean farming increased by 83%, while 19% more land was
planted with maize and 75% more with cotton.
Mato Grosso is often referred to as the ‘world’s bread basket’. The state has large
tracts of relatively cheap acreage and suitable conditions for growing grains and
producing meat, with large areas of sparsely populated flat land. The BR-163 federal
highway running through Mato Grosso has accelerated the expansion of the agri-
cultural frontier. Certain agribusiness sectors, like soy, maize and meat, have
experienced substantial growth due, in part, to an intense consolidation of capital
through mergers and joint ventures and recent transportation infrastructural devel-
opment. The statistics demonstrate this rapid expansion: in 2012 this state was
Brazil’s number one soy producer, accounting for 31.17% of Brazilian output. From
2000 to 2012 Mato Grosso’s production of soy, maize and cotton rose by 149%,
994% and 180%, respectively, while the total number of broiler chickens rose by
approximately 226%. These figures are the combined result of boosted productivity
and physical expansion, with the area of land occupied by soybean, maize and cotton
plantations rising by approximately 140%, 387% and 180%, respectively, in the
same period.3 Agriculture has thus become a competitive advantage of Mato Grosso.
The federal state took a series of actions in 2000 designed to attract new agents to
the region and thus accumulate more capital. These actions included creating new
logistical systems for transporting produce northward4 and introducing new devel-
opment hubs that have expanded the region’s so-called ‘export corridors’. The federal
government has also cultivated agribusiness development through credit policies and
tax breaks. These actions have resulted in shifts in land use and land structure. The
countryside has become extremely vulnerable to large capital ventures as its land has
become a new resource for big business. Capital, land and labour are key elements in
this expansionary movement because they are the ‘organizing principle of society’
(Polanyi 2000: 97). They unite to shape Brazilian agricultural production: money in
the form of grandiose investments, land for large-scale projects and labour as the most
valuable resource for extraction are all found in Mato Grosso.
The contemporary field of agribusiness is organized around the interests of new
hegemonic actors and global forces, with science, technology and information
3
Data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e
Estatística, IBGE).
4
Such as the creation of the hydroway Tapajós-Amazonas and the port of Miritituba (Pará).
104 J.A. Bernardes
underpinning the creation of new, efficient processes. This has resulted in a science-,
technology- and information-intensive landscape, constituting what Santos calls the
technical-scientific-informational milieu (Santos 1996). Power operates through this
landscape as large-scale action. Action here is the use of time, which is fundamental
to production processes. For instance, setting the crop calendar introduces greater
temporal efficiencies (Bernardes 2007). Hegemonic actors are central in re-shaping
time through introducing such actions.
New actions are thus shifting temporalities in this agricultural region of Brazil:
technology is a precondition for efficiency, triggering processes that have created
territorialities with new content, functions and structures.5 For instance, technolo-
gies used in modern agriculture can improve average yields through the use of
varieties that are genetically suited to the cerrado biome,6 through fertilizers and
pesticides, and through modern tools and machinery that assist in scaling up pro-
duction (Bernardes 2011). The aim of my approach, drawing on Santos, is to
consider action as having meaning within the ambit of capitalist rationality, linking
it to time and space. In the next section I explore some of the Brazilian geographer’s
relevant concepts in greater depth.
9.3 Milton Santos on the Agricultural Frontier
To better understand the recent movement of the agricultural frontier in Mato

Grosso, I deploy the categories of space and time as defined by Santos (1996). He
argues that in the current technical-scientific-informational milieu, space is ‘formed
of an inseparable set of systems of objects and systems of actions’ (Santos 1996:
51). A key aspect of a Santos-inspired analysis is to draw associations between
action, time and space.
Actions must be synchronized, and their orders must comply with predefined
times and interrelate with mechanisms that reproduce hegemonic power (Ribeiro
2002). Technology is central to this process. Santos (1996: 45) encourages us to
perceive that: ‘[T]echnologies are involved in producing a perception of space, and
also a perception of time, [producing] both their physical existence that marks the
senses through speed, and their imaginary aspects’.
5
Santos conceptualizes form, function, structure and process as four central ‘internal categories’
for understanding totality: ‘There is neither structure nor function without form. Every form has a
function, which serves both to cooperate with, and contradict, the structure. It is a question here of
a form with a content, a form-content, an actuality, in opposition to the empty form, which is either
an expectation or a delusion. The essential point is that the categories structure, function, form and
process are inseparable both as analytical categories and as historical categories. They are the ones
which define the concrete totality, the totality in its permanent process of totalization’ (Santos
1980: 45).
6
Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna biome present in the midwest region of the country.
Technologies re-order space and time. Modern technologies seek to master space
and time, and ultimately it is the actions of capital that determine how technologies
are used, creating new types of space and hence new relationships with time.
Santos considers space as a set of fixed elements and flows. Elements that are
fixed in some places modify that place, as well as cultivate new or renewed flows
that affect environmental and social conditions (Santos 1996). Santos distinguishes
between different spaces as they are constituted through technology. He calls
luminous spaces ‘those that accumulate most technological and informational
density, and are therefore better able to attract activities with greater capital,
technology, and organizational content. Conversely, the sub-spaces where these
features are absent are opaque spaces’ (Santos & Silveira 2001: 264). There are
many opaque spaces across Brazil that have little or no infrastructure, and are
constituted by poor people and migrants (Santos & Silveira 2001).
Santos (1994: 83) understands time as created through humans: ‘Time is given
by humanity.7 The concrete time of humanity is practical temporalization, the
movement of the World inside each one, and thus a personal interpretation of Time
by each group, each social class, each individual’.
But time, ‘given by humanity’, is also intimately related to technology: time in
general is accelerated as a function of modern technology. But other, less modern
forms of technology also exist that operate in slower temporalities. In Santos’s
conceptualization, the rich live in luminous spaces with plenty of present time and
think only of stock prices, whereas the poor, in opaque spaces, are obliged to eke
out a living in slow time. Santos describes slow people as those who do not master
modern knowledge and thus can make a different territory that may bring about
change.
Brazil is predominantly a country of the poor, the common person, slow people,
migrants and opaque spaces, albeit with luminous spaces that punctuate its horizon.
The slow people or the common people, however, are rapidly discovering the
globalized world, with new life strategies and in solidarity with one another. Yet,
through global market expansion, new technologies are speeding up time and
creating different forms of space within this periphery. Slow and fast times, forming
opaque and luminous spaces, are consequently being juxtaposed.
The action of production is organized horizontally in space. Natural conditions
of a given space structure this action. For instance, in the case of soybeans, tem-
perature, rainfall distribution, daylight and topography all structure agricultural
output. However, socio-spatial factors also shape actions of production. For
instance, the old forces and traditional values of past history have to be overcome
for modern production and expansion of agriculture to happen. Santos (1996: 113)
calls these forces rugosity: ‘whatever is left over from the process of suppression,
accumulation, superimposition.’
7
Santos uses the term ‘homem’ (‘man’ in Portuguese) as a synonym for humanity. Because he
implied the term humanity—not limited to men—I have chosen to translate ‘man’ into
gender-neutral form.
106 J.A. Bernardes
Importantly, spaces are linked to the global economic system. As Santos argues:
[I]n this phase of history, the world is marked by new signs, such as: the multinational-
ization of firms and the internationalization of production and products; the generalization
of the phenomenon of credit, which reinforces the features of the economization of social
life; the new roles of the state in a globalized society and economy; the frenzy of a
circulation that has become essential for accumulation; the great information revolution that
links places instantaneously thanks to the progress of information technology. (Santos
1994: 123)
Because the global economic system is competitive and globalized, it cultivates

highly technology-intensive corporate spaces. As such, space is fragmented so that
capital can penetrate different parts of the territory—those best suited for its
reproduction.
9.4 New Space-Times of Mato Grosso
Recent transformations in modern agriculture along the BR-163 highway in Mato

Grosso, leveraged by new logistics options, have created profound changes in the
roles and potentialities of the different spaces that constitute the region. Science,
technology and information have been essential to scaling up production.
According to IBGE data, from 2005 to 2012 the production of soybeans and maize
grew 55% and 334%, respectively, in the BR-163 integrated area of Mato Grosso—
the combined effect of a larger physical area and improved average yields due to the
technological developments associated with precision agriculture.
The new poultry, pig and cattle farming enterprises in the region are some of the
country’s biggest grain and meat producers. Technology is central to how these
producers run their businesses: highly efficient farming practices, for example, have
contributed to the scale at which broiler chickens are being produced and slaugh-
tered. In the year 2012, Sadia slaughtered approximately 300,000 chickens daily,
Perdigão approximately 375,000, and Anhambi 65,000. These companies also farm
high genetic quality pigs under strict sanitation standards. The number of heads of
cattle also increased approximately 30% from 2005 to 2012.
Land use in Mato Grosso is thus under the influence of new global market
dynamics, and luminous spaces are being formed in this region through selective
technology-based systems. The spatial design of production is changing to include
extensive areas devoted to the production of grains and meat with high added value.
The new globalized and informational dimensions of capital have prompted new
interactions between companies and places, establishing novel hierarchies between
different forms of capital and territories. Fixed elements8 are being multiplied,
8
According to Santos, geographic space can be considered an ensemble of fixed elements and
flows: ‘Fixed elements, fixed in each place, allow actions that change places themselves, through
new or renewed flows that recreate environmental and social conditions and redefine each place.
Flows are a direct or indirect result of actions and cross or install themselves in the fixed elements,
diversified and renewed, and the flows are increasingly intense. Selected places are
valued and specialized and circulation is accelerated. Santos explains this new
spatiality:
[W]ith the development of production forces, regional inequality ceases to be the result of
natural aptitudes and simultaneously becomes more profound and more speculative: there is
a growing need for increasing volumes of capital; social resources also tend to be con-
centrated in certain places where the productivity of capital is on the rise. Everything is
connected. (Santos 2003: 22)
The regional division of labour is thus also shifting in response to the growing reach
of the market, always in an interconnected fashion.
The creation of globalized agriculture and livestock farming networks, in con-
junction with the fluidity enabled by new transportation and communication sys-
tems, has allowed circuits of production and circles of cooperation to reach
increasingly distant areas. According to Santos (1994: 128), ‘circuits of production
are defined by the circulation of products, i.e. of material. Circles of cooperation
associate other flows that are not necessarily material to these material flows: of
capital, information, messages, orders’. Santos and Silveira (2001: 144) hold that
capital ultimately brings together ‘what the direct production process separated into
different companies and places, through the appearance of real circuits of cooper-
ation’. They stress that spatial circuits of production and circles of cooperation
differentiate the use of space, generating more intensive, extensive and selective
flows. These circuits constitute coherent systems that articulate agricultural produce
with industrial products and related services. They have, as a result, spurred the
reorganization of the countryside and the city and established new city/countryside
relationships.
As a consequence new agribusiness activities are transforming both rural and
urban space. New agricultural facilities are being introduced in the countryside,
such as large piggeries and poultry houses. These transformations in the agrarian
space are associated with industrial developments of the urban, including crushers,
animal food manufacturers, warehouses, slaughterhouses, refrigeration units and
other industrial facilities. In these urban spaces, sophisticated communication and
information systems are also being introduced, reducing the time and redefining the
spatial organization of production circuits. These systems have enabled space to be
organized in networks that straddle municipal borders and allow more fluid flows of
capital (Santos 1996).
To understand the dynamics of new spatializations in areas influenced by the
BR-163 in Mato Grosso, it is crucial to understand movement through these cir-
cuits. In this region, for instance, new spatial circuits of production of grains and
meats are constituted through the flows of these goods along with capital and
information. Spatial differences along this highway route have a hierarchical
(Footnote 8 continued)
changing their signification and value, at the same time that flows also modify themselves’ (Santos
1996: 50).
108 J.A. Bernardes
structure. Differences result from a combination of diverse variables—different

levels of technology, production relations, profit margins, class struggles—ac-
companied by varying levels of capital investment and infrastructure. Generally
speaking, the region located along this axis has different levels of productivity and
accumulation of capital, with each hierarchical level corresponding to a specific
function in the social and territorial division of labour (Bernardes 2011).
9.5 New Contradictions in Mato Grosso and Pará:

Competing Values and the Exploitation of Labour
and Natural Resources
In this extremely dynamic capital frontier, there is a speeding up of movements and a

process of socialization driven by globalization’s production and circulation sys-
tems. The result has been brusque changes in material life, massive environmental
consequences and a denial of the positive contributions of local cultures (or of ‘slow
people’, to use Santos’s vocabulary). In this section I explore these contradictions as
they manifest in both Mato Grosso and in the neighbouring state of Pará.
There is a northward movement of the modern agricultural frontier in Brazil,
driven by the intensification of activities along the BR-163 and encouraged by the
creation of new routes for transporting produce. This has resulted in the accelerated
introduction of new fixed elements and actions in a different spatial segment of the
highway in the state of Pará. Expansion involves the rapid relocation of agribusi-
ness activities such as cattle farming. According to IBGE data, there were
4,960,794 heads of cattle in the BR-163 region in the state of Pará in 2005. In 2012
this figure had risen to 6,447,751, representing a 29.97% increase. By pushing
livestock rearing northwards to Pará, the state of Mato Grosso has been able to turn
land over for soybean farming.
Agribusiness has significant environmental consequences. Logging, deforesta-
tion and the planting of pasture are necessary precursors to cattle farming. As for
soybean cultivation, even though the conditions for this crop are not ideal in Pará, the
practice has gradually been introduced, occupying land from the forest biome, to
take advantage of the new logistics options. As a consequence, there has been
extensive deterioration of the physical and biotic environment. Prodes/INPE9 data
indicate that deforestation in the BR-163 area of influence in Pará rose by 17.54%
between 2005 and 2012. This destruction has had a significant impact on cultural and
ethnic groups who rely on this land: there has been a loss of identity for some native
groups who have long lived in harmony with the prevailing ecosystems in the region.
9
Brazil’s official deforestation estimates are made by the Amazonian Deforestation Monitoring
Project (Projeto de Monitoramento do Desflorestamento na Amazônia Legal, Prodes) run by
Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE).
New and old come into conflict through market expansion along these frontiers
of the globalized economy. Martins (1997) describes the frontier as a new economic
rationality based on the formal and institutional constitution of new political
mediations. With economic expansion, new production spaces are formed that offer
new potential and have multiple driving and conditioning factors. The new frontier,
linked to the expansion of markets, induces modernization and new conceptions of
life (Martins 1997). There is also a simultaneous diminishment of traditional spaces
as values of rationally-oriented production are being introduced. For instance,
utility is valued above almost all else; people, knowledge, institutions, places and
nature are transformed into means and technological utilities on a rationally
designed plane. The ultimate goal is reproducing the capital accumulation process.
There are also myriad effects of agribusiness on local labour practices. As the
economic frontier moves, access to the land is curbed as a result of its increased
value. In other words, land valuation hampers access to land. This results in a
greater concentration of land ownership and the exclusion of small- and
medium-sized landholders. Until recently, the economy in the area of influence of
the BR-163 in Pará was based on mixed family farming, but now disputes over land
are abundant.
When smallholders are deprived of their means of subsistence and autonomy, a
shifting pool of unskilled labour is formed—people who normally have no fixed
employment and therefore have to travel to find work and accept substandard
working conditions. According to the Comissão da Pastoral da Terra, slave labour is
particularly prevalent in logging and sawmill10 sectors in these regions. This situ-
ation is testament to the lack of an egalitarian ideology at the frontier. Market
expansion creates a class of individuals stripped of their means of (re)production.
As a consequence of the movement of this agricultural frontier, indigenous
groups, who have been barriers blocking the advance of the technology frontier, are
finding themselves trapped in indigenous reserves that act somewhat like ‘preser-
vation islands’. Despite their name, these islands are not immune to the spatial
transformations in neighbouring areas occasioned by the destruction of the
ecosystem. This destruction includes the extinction of animal species, which erodes
these groups’ quality of life because of the resulting shortage of food.
Like Ribeiro (2009), I believe we are facing a new potential interpretation of the
frontier. The frontier can be understood as a spatialization of the collision between
the velocity required by global drivers and the remnants of past social struggles.
Here, the organization of the territory implies the unharmonious coexistence
of different rationalities. The imposition of new rationalities and a technological
order transforms the class experience. It is a situation that demands a new territorial
order—more land and new resources.
10
Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) reported 37 conflicts over lands around the BR-163 in 2013,
affecting 2,755 households. In the same year, the CPT received ten reports of slave labour
involving 98 workers engaged in logging, sawmills, livestock farming and soybean farming.
110 J.A. Bernardes
Crucially, these collisions may offer hope. As previously discussed, Santos

considers the potentialities of slow people—the inhabitants of opaque spaces. His
writings suggest different potential uses for today’s technologies and the con-
struction of a different type of globalization through particularities, occasioned by
these slow people. In Santos’s view:
Today’s world also authorizes a different perception of history through the contemplation of
the empirical universality constituted with the emergence of new globalized technologies
and the possibilities opened up for their use. The dialectic between this empirical univer-
sality and particularities will encourage the overcoming of the inverted praxis, thus far ruled
by the dominant ideology, and the possibility of overcoming the reign of need, opening
room for utopia and hope. (Santos 2000: 168)
9.6 Concluding Remarks
This chapter has explored Milton Santos’s reflections to interpret the current
expansion of the modern agricultural frontier along the BR-163. Santos’s theories
help me analyze the expansion of modern agriculture at this phase of technological
development and lead to an interpretation of territory in which growing productivity
is associated with social costs. Santos importantly urges us to value a territory
beyond its potential for accumulating capital, to fight for the inclusion of every
person.
It is fundamental to encounter the territory of resistance. To do so, one must
interpret discourses other than the hegemonic, and different from the single logic
that is imposed from without by global capital. These are discourses that propose
different forms of living, different kinds of cooperation, different interpretations of
the resources within space. We must endeavor to understand the mechanisms of the
new solidarity that challenges the perversity inherent to the rapid speed of com-
petitiveness, not least because, as Santos (2000) assures us, if the poor people who
constitute the majority cannot consume the globalized West in its economic,
financial and cultural form, they will end up relativizing or even rejecting
globalization.
Santos (1996) indicates that it is necessary to penetrate the mystery of forms,
ignored by many geographers. He argues that we must move beyond the false
objectivity of the world of the senses. We must not interpret things as merely things,
space as merely space, but instead seek their essence.
In order to interpret the territory of the modern agricultural frontier along the
BR-163, to penetrate the mystery of its forms, it is necessary to perceive that
technological, scientific and informational developments can potentially constitute a
future whose actions diverge from the plans of the hegemonic players. It means
developing alternate models from unique features, overcoming mere commercial
relations to attain a higher state of cooperation. To develop these models, different
segments of society must recognize that there are other ways, that there are other
historical options. They must realize that Brazil can forge a different human history,
that peripheral countries have an important role to play in producing more stable
forms, and that they can and should construct their present and their future in such a
way as to contribute to what Santos calls ‘another globalization’: a globalization
that has different uses, where technological and philosophical changes of the human
being are complementary; a globalization capable of lending new meaning to each
person’s existence and also to that of the planet (Santos 2000).
Milton Santos’s theories, systemic vision, categories of analysis, concepts and
notions, some of which have been used here, encourage an inward movement of
reflection, both theoretically/methodologically and politically, about the current
stage of technical-scientific-informational development. He has developed the ‘right
lenses for interpreting the contemporary world’ (Silveira 1996: 10), bequeathing to
us an invaluable project.
References
Bernardes, J. A. (2007). Dimensões da ação e novas territorialidades no cerrado brasileiro: Pistas

para uma análise teórica. Revista NERA, 10(10), 1–10.
Bernardes, J. A. (2011). O novo tempo do capital globalizante e as novas relações campo-cidade.
In M. A. Saquet, J. C. Suzuki & G. J. Marafon (Eds.), Territorialidades e diversidade nos
campos e nas cidades latino-americanas e francesas (pp. 195–207). São Paulo: Outras
Expressões.
Delgado, G. C. (2012). Do capital financeiro na agricultura à economia do agronegócio. Porto
Alegre: UFRGS Editora.
Martins, J. S. (1997). Fronteira: A degradação do outro nos confins do humano. São Paulo:
Contexto.
Polany, K. (2000). A grande transformação: As origens da nossa época. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier.
Ribeiro, A. C. T. (2002). Paradigmas e tendências nos estudos urbano-regionais contemporâneos.
Anais do IV Colóquio sobre transformações territoriais. Montevidéu.
Ribeiro, A. C. T. (2009). Prefácio. In J. A. Bernardes & R. C. Arruzo (Eds.), Novas fronteiras da
técnica no Vale do Araguaia. Rio de Janeiro: Arquimedes Edições.
Sánches, J.-E. (1995). Harmonious development or exclusion from productive circuits? Simpósio
internacional: Desenvolvimento sustentável e a geografia política. Rio de Janeiro:
IGU/UGI/LAGET.
Santos, M. (1994). Técnica, espaço e tempo: Globalização e meio técnico-científico-informacional.
São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1996). A Natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo; Razão e emoção. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (2000). Por uma outra globalização. Rio de Janeiro: Record.
Santos, M. (2003). Economia espacial: Críticas e alternativas. São Paulo: Edusp.
Santos, M., & Silveira, M. L. (2001). O Brasil: Território e sociedade no início do século XXI. Rio
de Janeiro: Record.
Silveira, M. L. (1996). Milton Santos: uma obra, uma teoria. AGB Informa, 62, 10–11.
Chapter 10
Geography and Indigenous Peoples:
Milton Santos and the Richness
of the Present Time
Roberta Carvalho Arruzzo
Abstract Brazil is a country of significant sociocultural diversity where multiple,

sometimes opposing and often conflicting, world views coexist. Most indigenous
peoples now inhabit villages in the almost 700 Indigenous Lands already legally
constituted or in the process of being recognized and legalized. One of the main
issues for these peoples today is their struggle for official recognition of their
traditional territories. Most of the Indigenous Lands that have already been
demarcated are in the north of the country, especially the Amazon. However, there
are indigenous groups living on far smaller lands in every other region of the
country where serious territorial conflicts occur. Importantly, the survival of
indigenous people in high-value areas is still jeopardized even after their lands are
legalized in the form of Indigenous Lands. When their lands are limited to small
areas surrounded by deforested land and single-crop farming, their ability to pursue
traditional economic activities is curtailed. This chapter explores the work of Milton
Santos—especially his concepts of geographical space, used territory, slow people
and opaque spaces—with respect to current conflicts over Indigenous Lands. The
profound relationship the author establishes between the different actors and
technical systems enables an in-depth understanding of the plurality of ways space
is constructed in Brazil today. His ideas also allow us to perceive and recognize the
wealth of potential ways of living in the present time. In the contemporary moment
it is the slow people who can create promising alternatives to the perverseness of
globalization and the single discourse prevailing in the world.
Roberta Carvalho Arruzzo, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Rural Federal

University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Email: [email protected].

114 R.C. Arruzzo
10.1 Introduction
Brazil is a multiethnic and multicultural country.1 The apparent primacy of

Brazilian Portuguese conceals a diversity of over 1502 languages spoken on a daily
basis. Much of this rich linguistic reality can be attributed to the presence of at least
2413 different indigenous4 peoples with diverse cultures, histories and ways of
living and being. According to the most recent census conducted by the Instituto
Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), there were 896,917 indigenous indi-
viduals in Brazil in 2010; approximately 36% live in towns or cities and 64% live in
rural areas.5 Over half of existing indigenous groups live in the almost 700
Indigenous Lands that currently exist in Brazil.6 Little by little, Brazilian geogra-
phers are beginning (albeit tentatively) to understand that this extraordinary ethnic
plurality is worthy of investigation: this plurality offers a profusion of ways to think
of and operate in geographical space and points to the ways of being that are at
stake in contemporary territorial conflicts.
I believe that a theoretical and conceptual approach sensitive to geography will
enrich the debate and analysis of Brazil’s indigenous issues, specifically with
respect to indigenous peoples’ rights to territory and to the regularization of their
lands. It will, importantly, tease out the fundamentally territorial implications of
current conflicts. Milton Santos’s thoughts on geographical space, especially his
1
Although the Brazilian ethnic spectrum is quite diverse, in this text I address the originary ethnic
groups, also called indigenous peoples, because they have a very specific history that is rarely
addressed by Brazilian geography. The term ethnic group (Barth 1998) is used as an alternative to
genetic and phenotypic views of socio-cultural differences.
2
According to Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), data from 2014. See: http://pib.socioambiental.org/
pt/c/no-brasil-atual/linguas/introducao. This figure could be even higher. According to the latest
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) census, there were 274 languages spoken and
305 indigenous peoples in Brazil in 2010. However, as IBGE itself recognizes, ‘when it comes to
the total number of languages and ethnic groups, there is still a need for more in-depth linguistic
and anthropological studies, since some declared languages could be variants of the same lan-
guage, while some ethnic groups could also constitute subgroups or segments of the same ethnic
group.’ See the document ‘O Brasil Indígena’ in Portuguese at: http://www.funai.gov.br/index.
php/indios-no-brasil/o-brasil-indigena-ibge. For further information, see: http://indigenas.ibge.gov.
br/graficos-e-tabelas-2.
3
Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), data from 2014. See: http://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/c/0/1/2/
populacao-indigena-no-brasil.
4
I am considering as indigenous here all those that recognize themselves or are recognized by other
indigenous as such. Indigenous communities are based on kinship of neighbourhood relationships and
have historical-cultural links with pre-Colombian indigenous societies. For more please see: https://
pib.socioambiental.org/pt/c/no-brasil-atual/quem-sao/quem-e-indio and https://pib.socioambiental.org/
files/file/PIB_institucional/No_Brasil_todo_mundo_%C3%A9_%C3%ADndio.pdf.
5
See: http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/o-brasil-indigena-ibge.
6
According to the 2010 IBGE census, 57.5% of the indigenous population today lives in officially
recognized Indigenous Lands. See ‘O Brasil Indígena,’ based on the 2010 census, at: http://www.
funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/o-brasil-indigena-ibge.
10 Geography and Indigenous Peoples … 115
thought-provoking concepts of opaque space and slow people, offer a potentially

productive way of thinking through indigenous struggles in Brazil today. Although
Santos did not conduct research with indigenous peoples directly, his thoughts can
help elucidate the conflicts that these peoples face. In developing the approach, I
first contextualize the spatial circumstances of Brazil’s indigenous peoples. I then
discuss Santos’s concepts that help us better understand the spatiality of indigenous
peoples in Brazil. In particular, I focus on the relationship he establishes between
different actors and technological systems; Santos’s approach enables us to probe
the multiple ways in which space is constructed in Brazil today, and to understand
and value the abundance of different ways of living at the present moment.
Ultimately, slow people, as described by Santos, can serve as wellsprings for the
creation of equitable alternatives to the perverseness of globalization and its
hegemonic ‘single world’ discourse.
10.2 Territory and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
Great swathes of land in what is now Brazil are often identified in public policies as
great empty spaces. These so-called empty spaces (defined as such in economic or
population terms) have been the targets of government discourse and action.
However, these spaces were not, historically, empty. Portuguese colonizers7 and
others that embarked on expeditions for minerals, resources and labour found these
spaces divided up amongst many indigenous ethnic groups who had pre-existing
social arrangements amongst themselves. The relationships and conflicts that arose
from conquest were myriad. Oftentimes, indigenous people were dichotomously
dubbed either ‘gentle indians’ or ‘fierce indians’ in a bid to classify their rela-
tionships within colonial categorization frameworks.
These historical relationships continue to impact Brazil’s indigenous ethnic
groups. As Chauí (2000) describes, a ramification of violent colonization and the
construction of Brazil is the prevailing belief that the peoples who lived here
previously are of the past. This past is understood in three different ways:
chronologically, in which indigenous peoples are seen as the remnants or remains
of an inevitable process of extinction, which happened through genocide and
integration into the national society; ideologically, in which these peoples did not
keep pace with the progress of civilization and were thus left behind; and sym-
bolically, in which they survive only as a memory of the good savage and the
harmonious relationship between people and their environment that once existed in
these lands.
7
Although here I am making reference to Portuguese colonization, similar actions have since been
replicated in myriad initiatives, including public and private colonization projects of the 20th
century.
116 R.C. Arruzzo
Try as they might, colonial processes have not erased indigenous peoples.
Population data indicate that the number of indigenous people is on the rise8 in
recent decades. According to IBGE,9 the self-declared indigenous population was
294,131 in 1991, rising to 734,127 in 2000, and 817,963 in 2010.10 The geo-
graphical spread of indigenous groups across every region of Brazil means that
contact with non-indigenous peoples occurs under very diverse circumstances. The
table on the next page displays basic information on the spatial distribution of
indigenous groups, measured by the area designated as Indigenous Land.11 Most
officially demarcated indigenous areas are in the north of the country,12 occupying
almost 30% of the landmass in the region. However, there are indigenous groups in
every other region of the country, where they occupy far less extensive lands.
The data in Table 10.1 demonstrates that almost 80% of the country’s
Indigenous Lands are located in the north, while only 16% of Brazil’s total farm-
land is in this region. If we compare this data with Table 10.2, it is apparent that
less than half of Brazil’s indigenous population lives in the north—approximately
38%. This means that the majority (62%) of indigenous peoples live in much
smaller and more densely inhabited Indigenous Lands in other parts of the country,
where the majority of farming activities are also conducted. This conflict over
proximate space has triggered serious territorial disputes.
Indigenous Lands are a legally constituted category based on the national con-
stitution of 1988. They are collective areas for the exclusive use of indigenous
peoples. In theory, the designation of Indigenous Land was designed to break down
a longstanding legal tradition of treating indigenous groups as an element of the
past. Historically, Brazil’s legal framework considered indigenous peoples as
groups that survived and needed protection—indeed, should be protected—but who
were destined to mix with ‘civilized’ society and thus lose their legal right to the
lands they occupied. This loss of rights was progressively accomplished through,
for example, the demarcation of very small indigenous reserves,13 to which groups
from different regions were transferred often by force, thus making their territories
available for other activities. The purpose of these reserves was to create areas
8
Although the population of many indigenous ethnic groups is rising, some have a very low
population and run the risk of dying out. According to Instituto Socioambiental, seven groups
currently have a population of between five and 40 individuals. See: http://pib.socioambiental.org/
pt/c/0/1/2/populacao-indigena-no-brasil.
9
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), which since 1991 has included indigenous
peoples in the national demographic census.
10
In the demographic census of 2010 (IBGE 2012).
11
In this case, IBGE only counted officially demarcated Indigenous Lands.
12
This includes most of the Brazilian Amazon.
13
For example, indigenous reserves were created during the operation of the first state-owned and
non-religious agency of support to indigenous peoples, the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios e
Localização dos Trabalhadores Nacionais (SPILTN, which became SPI in 1918). The agency was
created in 1910 and had as one of its goals the ‘civilization’ of indigenous peoples. Amidst strong
criticisms about mismanagement and corruption, the agency was closed in 1967 and gave way to
the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) which continues to operate in Brazil.
Table 10.1 Areas of land designated as farmland and Indigenous Land, per region, 2006. Source
IBGE, Farming Census, 2006
Brazil and regions Area (hectares)
Area of land Farmland (agriculture Indigenous Land
and livestock) (officially demarcated)
Total %a Total %a
Brazil 851,487,659 329,941,393 38.74 125,545,870 14.74
North 385,332,720 54,787,297 14.21 100,419,452 26.06
Northeast 155,425,696 75,594,346 48.53 2,914,584 1.87
South 57,640,956 41,526,148 72.04 343,283 0.59
Southeast 92,451,127 54,236,169 58.66 128,537 0.13
Central west 160,637,148 103,797,329 64.61 21,740,014 13.53
a
Percentage of the area of the region
Table 10.2 Self-declared Regions Number of indigenous individuals

indigenous population (self-declared)
according to the 2010 IBGE
census. Source IBGE census, North 342,836
2010 Northeast 232,739
South 78,773
Southeast 99,137
Central west 143,432
where indigenous peoples from different ethnic groups could live together while
they progressively integrated into the national society as workers. The constitution
of 1988 represented a distinct shift in the state’s approach: indigenous peoples, their
right to land, and their right to maintain their own way of life and culture ceased to
be understood as transitory.
For the first time, entire articles in the Brazilian constitution were devoted to
indigenous societies; indigenous rights are specifically addressed in articles 231 and
232. These articles ensure indigenous peoples the right to maintain their ‘social
organization, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions,’ (Brasil 1988) as well as
the right to occupy the lands they have ‘traditionally’ occupied. This latter issue is
important because it recognizes the necessity of peoples’ cultural reproduction
through access to specific ancestral lands, rather than just their economic survival
through access to any unused land. The articles thus make provisions for ‘lands
regarded as sacred, distant graveyards, and space for roaming’ (Brasil 1996: 12).
Indigenous peoples’ ownership and use of the land is assured, in theory, in
perpetuity. Third parties can exploit the natural resources found on these lands only
with the authorization of both the National Congress and the community in ques-
tion. Approval to remove indigenous peoples from the lands must be secured from
118 R.C. Arruzzo
the National Congress, and is only allowed in extraordinary circumstances such as

during natural disasters or epidemics. These measures, alongside the possibility of
indigenous groups gaining increasing legal autonomy, have ultimately made more
secure the maintenance of indigenous cultures, ways of life and rights to traditional
territory.
However, the legalization of Indigenous Lands in Brazil is still far from com-
plete. Only 63% of the 67914 Indigenous Lands have been fully legalized15, and
19% are still ‘under study’. To be ‘under study’ means that they are still at the first
stage of the process, when reports are written to justify the identification and
delimitation of certain lands.16 The process of identifying, delimiting, demarcating
and legalizing Indigenous Lands is slow, and reduced further by attempts to amend
the legislation17 to further waylay the legalization process. Different reactions to the
demarcation and legalization of Indigenous Lands have been voiced locally,
regionally and nationally, in which stereotyped arguments prevail, such as that there
is ‘plenty of land for so few indians’.18
Likewise, the difficulties faced by indigenous groups do not disappear just
because their legal ownership to the land has been established. This is particularly
the case on lands whose value has appreciated significantly. Many of these lands are
trespassed by farmers. The trespassing creates constant conflict with indigenous
peoples, and even places them in great peril.19 The demarcation of a specific land
‘liberates’ adjacent areas for business interests, putting at great risk traditional
activities on Indigenous Land. For instance, Indigenous Lands are often limited to
small areas that effectively become marooned in the midst of deforestation and
monocultural agriculture. Consequently, traditional activities like hunting and
farming are jeopardized; the large areas of adjacent land stripped of their forests not
only restricts the area available for hunting, but also modifies the drainage system.
14
See FUNAI: http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/terras-indigenas.
15
There are lands that are not fully legalized in every Brazilian region, with great disparities
existing between states. Mato Grosso is one of the most severe cases with more than 28% of the
Indigenous Lands still to be regularized.
16
In these cases, the lands have not been delimited and there are no legal assurances. This is the
case for many Guarani and Kaiowá lands, where serious armed conflict has resulted in the death of
leaders due, in part, to the slow pace of this process. I return to this case later in the text. See: http://
www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/guarani e http://www.guarani.roguata.com/text.
17
The proposed constitutional amendment PEC 215 would transfer the legalization of protected
areas (Indigenous Lands, maroon communities and conservation areas) from the Executive to the
Legislature. If this does not halt the legalization process, it will at least make it far slower. For
more on this matter, see: http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/direitos-humanos/noticia/2014-12/
vote-pec-215-put-after-protests.
18
For more, see: http://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/blog/blog-do-isa/muita-terra-para-pouco-
fazendeiro.
19
See, for instance, the case of the Yanomami http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/
yanomami.
10.3 Slow People and Opaque Spaces: Proposing

a Geographical Perspective on Indigenous
Land Issues
As I have shown above, there are many territorial challenges faced by indigenous
peoples. Because these challenges are about territory, it is vital to understand them
from a geographical perspective. I believe that some of the theoretical concepts
developed by Milton Santos are invaluable for understanding these issues. Without
his approach, we risk continuing to obscure the current conflicts over Indigenous
Lands, thus maintaining and entrenching the prejudices that many indigenous
groups face in Brazil today. While most Brazilian geographical studies addressing
Indigenous Lands draw primarily on the concept of territory (for example, see
Guerra 2011; Motta 2013; Mondardo 2014), I propose that we enhance their
concept of geographical space through the work of Santos. In particular, his notions
of opaque space and slow people assist in elucidating the factors that underlie
territorial disputes. What typical studies of territory ignore, and what Santos allows
us to see, is how these conflicts are rooted in, amongst other things, diverse and
oft-times opposing worldviews and ways of operating in space.
The concept of space is central to Santos’s work. He defines it as the ‘indis-
sociable set of systems of natural or manufactured objects and systems of actions,
deliberate or not. In each time, new objects and new actions join the others,
modifying the whole both formally and substantially’ (Santos 1996: 49). Thus,
space is materiality and action, synchronicity and asynchrony.20 Although every-
thing in space is in the present moment, different forms have quite varied temporal
origins. As such, the ‘simultaneity of different times on a piece of the Earth’s crust
is what constitutes the specific domain of geography’ (Santos 1999: 127). The
objective of geography, then, is to study the simultaneity of myriad temporalities
that often go unnoticed or are even intentionally undervalued, because ‘space is
what unites us all, with its multiple possibilities, which are different possibilities for
the use of space (territory) related to different possibilities for the use of time’
(Santos 1999: 127). The hegemonic and fluid uses of space tend to erase a large
range of other uses that are not only possible, but already exist.
This coexistence of multiple times and spaces is often confusing and conflictual,
but there is one time and action that is hegemonic, globalizing and seeks to create
ever more fluid spaces,21 that is to say, spaces where actors, merchandises and
information circulate with great ease. To obtain this fluidity, hegemonic actors
20
‘Since space never contains technologies of the same age or of synchronous variables, one could
say that it is an asynchronous space that at once reveals and organizes synchrony. The elements of
space, when considered as part of a concrete whole, a place, are seen as synchronous’ (Santos
1996: 66).
21
Santos also draws attention to the fact that ‘fluidity is a condition, but hegemonic action is based
on competition’ (1996: 34), which, considering how it is manifested, ‘does not need any ethical
justification, indeed, like any other form of violence’ (1996: 35).
120 R.C. Arruzzo
increasingly imbue this space with science, technology and information,22 but these
elements are not distributed uniformly across the planet. Thus, some areas are more
intensely influenced by science, technology and information. These are, according
to Santos, luminous spaces. Other zones in which these elements are almost
completely absent are called opaque spaces.23
Cities are places of simultaneity. They consist of both luminous spaces and
opaque spaces, the latter which are focal points for resistance. While urban areas
may be modernized, they contain many spaces of opposition ‘where time is slow,
adapted to infrastructure from the past, where opaque spaces take shape as zones of
resistance. It is in these spaces, constituted of non-current forms, that the
non-hegemonic economy and the hegemonized social classes find what they need
for survival’ (Santos 1996: 79). Opaque spaces, inhabited by slow people, are the
‘spaces for approximation and not (like luminous zones) spaces for precision; they
are inorganic, open spaces and not rationalized and rationalizing spaces, they are
spaces for slowness and not for vertigo’ (Santos 1996: 83).
Hegemonic discourses and actions value fluidity, and a slow person ‘faces up to
the strongest manifestations of [this] dominant ideology, such as those related to
speed and effectiveness, and enables the many other [slow people] to be valued (and
learned from)’ (Ribeiro 2012: 60). Valuing other temporalities and ways of being
resists attempts to ‘flatten’ space, to reduce its complexity through actions, under-
standings and discourses that ‘wipe memories, knowledge, projects, and meanings
of action, and nullify the achievements of the slow person’ (Ribeiro 2012: 66).
Hegemonizing processes seek to create ‘one world’ (Santos 1996: 35) and ‘a single
world discourse’ (Santos 2000). Space can offer a means to resist: ‘space appears as a
substrate that welcomes the new, but resists change, holding onto the vigor of
material and cultural heritage, the strength of what is created from within and resists,
the tranquil strength that waits, watchful, for the time and chance to rise up’ (Santos
1996: 37). The single discourse of the world only exists as a fable, a trap. Those
caught up in its triumphal speed are unable to perceive the illusions of this discourse
because they are too enrolled in it. Yet ‘the slow person, for whom such images are
mirages, cannot for long keep step with this perverse imaginary, and ends up dis-
covering the fabulations’ (Santos 1999: 261). This is why the ‘strength is with the
‘slow’’ (Santos 1999: 260) and why the city-dwelling poor, who live in opaque
zones, are the ones who ‘stare hardest into the future’ (Santos 1999: 261).
These processes do not only take place in cities. For Santos, the modernizing
countryside is more vulnerable to transformation due to the demands of a hege-
monic, externally imposed rationale, precisely because the countryside’s materiality
22
Constituting what the author calls the techno-scientific and informational milieu (Santos 1996,
1999, 2000).
23
There also exist an ‘infinity of intermediate situations’ (Santos 1996: 52).
and forms from the past are less dense.24 It is in rural areas that the dominant
rationality spreads more easily and takes root more forcefully.25 Although Santos
believes that spaces for creativity and resistance are more often found in cities,26 I
argue that the Brazilian countryside is also an important locus for resistance to a
perverse, hegemonizing rationale.
Santos guides us toward understanding ‘slow people’ as those who are capable of
countering the agricultural modernization processes that all too often hem them in:
This [hegemonic] rationality presupposes counter-rationalities. These counter-rationalities
are located, from a geographical point of view, in the least ‘modern’ areas, and from a
social point of view, in minorities. Minorities are defined by their incapacity to submit
completely to the hegemonic rationalities. Ethnic, sexual (gender), and other minorities
have more trouble accepting and meeting the demands of the rationality, just as their poor
are also better defended because they are more hostile to the traps of consumerism. (Santos
1996: 108)
Indigenous people have an important role in maintaining the ‘bastions of

counter-rationalities’ in the Brazilian countryside.27 When they are assured of the
right to use their lands, which legally belong to the Union and cannot be sold, they can
constitute a powerful ‘obstacle’—in some cases, an obstacle covering vast areas—that
remains stubbornly opaque.28 The main face of contemporary globalizing processes
in the Brazilian countryside is export-oriented monoculture, which is constantly
having its cropland turned over to Indigenous Lands, and cannot legally make use of
these newly demarcated areas. I therefore propose understanding Indigenous Lands as
opaque zones in the Brazilian countryside, zones that cannot be ‘flattened out’, that
materially demonstrate the existence of alternative, resistant rationalities, where the
material and cultural forms that are not valued by the prevailing rationality continue to
24
‘The city is no longer the locus par excellence of new capital. The locus where hegemonic capital
spreads easily is the countryside, where horizontal relationships that are established are based
materially on science, technology, and information. Cities are where this rapid, easy spread of new
capital is refuted’ (Santos 1996: 95).
25
‘The perverse rationality takes root more forcefully in the countryside, especially this subtle
rationality that comes in the heart of labour and in the form of a discourse whose intent we do not
always understand’ (Santos 1996: 96).
26
‘Cities have more pockets of counter-rationality and counter-purpose than the countryside’
(Santos 1996: 108).
27
There are many other groups and so-called ‘traditional populations’ in the Brazilian countryside
who also act as important ‘bastions of counter-rationalities’, such as the quilombolas, riparian,
caiçaras and many others. In addition to these traditional populations there are also several other
peasant groups, some of whom are linked to social movements that struggle for agrarian reform,
such as the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST).
28
The existence of such opaque spaces is a burden to some hegemonic actors, particularly
landowners. The attempts to modify the constitution and the legislation pertaining to Indigenous
Lands are not unfounded, once again bringing to mind the proposed constitutional amendment
(PEC 215) mentioned in an earlier footnote. Moreover, there are many rural landowners in the
Brazilian legislature (see, for instance, Castilho 2012; Moreira 2012).
122 R.C. Arruzzo
exist. As Ribeiro (2012: 68) notes, ‘opaque space instates the enigma of the invisibility
of the highly visible’.
These encounters between the dominant rationality and the counter-rationalities
in the Brazilian countryside are very diverse. Indigenous peoples are a primary
example of the many ‘slow people’ and their resistances that operate within ‘opaque
spaces.’ The cases of the Guarani and Kaiowá represent one of the most serious
situations in Brazil today. These groups are in contact with non-indigenous pop-
ulations that have invaded their territory for more than a century, and have suffered
a particularly intensive process of territorial expropriation since the 1970s. This
expropriation is related to monocultural activities of modern agriculture such as the
production of soybeans, corn and sugarcane. Many family groups have fought this
process, carrying out various actions to re-acquire their territories. Major actions
include entradas, which are efforts to reoccupy (and/or remain in) the territories
from which they were or are being expelled.
The (re)entry of the Guarani and Kaiowá groups in these areas can be interpreted
in antagonistic ways, demonstrating different ways of understanding space. On the
one hand, farmers often interpret these actions as a violent disregard for private
property. To the Guarani and Kaiowá, however, they represent the resistance of
their ways of being. Resistance is expressed in the very name used by these groups
to refer to the territory: tekoha. The notion of tekoha encompasses both a way of life
and a place, and can be understood as the place where you can live your worldview.
According to the Guarani and Kaiowá, they belong to a tekoha and not the other
way around. Because these indigenous groups belong to a particular territory
through tekoha, many family groups that were transferred to official reservations
decades ago eventually return and reoccupy small portions of their territories, even
when these lands have since been transformed for agricultural production.
These entrada actions, which have been taking place for nearly four decades,
pressure the state to demarcate and regularize new Indigenous Lands, especially
since the constitution of 1988. Actions such as entradas are an opposition to the
discourse that it is only migrants from other Brazilian states, and the economic
activities carried out by them, who have ‘occupied’ these spaces. They thus throw
into question the seemingly naturalized existence of agricultural production in the
region. Of course, there have been violent reactions to these indigenous groups
attempting to inhabit their traditional territories.29 These peoples’ resistance to
expulsion shows, however, the different possibilities for living in Brazilian rural
areas, and disrupts the fable of an inexorable hegemonic destination for this land,
namely monocultural production. Their resistance demonstrates the strength of the
‘slow people.’
29
There are several cases of armed attacks and repossessions involving areas of resettlement,
including those that are already in an advanced process of regularization. For an example, see:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34166666.
10.4 Conclusion: Transforming Geographic Thought
Ribeiro (2012) draws our attention to the coloniality (Quijano 2005) present in
academic thinking, preventing us from taking bold conceptual and methodological
steps and inhibiting us from seeing the wealth of the present time. This ‘blindness,’
which Santos (2002) calls ‘contraction of the present,’ treats anything regarded as ‘a
non-credible alternative to what exists’ (2002: 246) as non-existent. Coloniality in
our thinking shapes our understanding of certain peoples and situations as residual,
ignorant, inferior, local and/or unproductive. Thus, drawing out the idea of slow
people and opaque space is a way of valuing and engaging with subjects, actions
and spaces, as Santos suggests, where creativity and the power for change prevail.
Often treated as insignificant, of the past, or destined to die out, indigenous
peoples and Indigenous Lands still resist. Indigenous peoples are slow people who
inhabit opaque zones in the Brazilian countryside as well as in cities. Their lives
and ways of being comprise the synchronicity of space; they offer strength, resis-
tance, and inventiveness in being able to perceive the fables of the ‘single world
discourse.’ By so doing, they make their strength as political subjects increasingly
visible. Indeed, the present time is rich, and this richness is made evident through a
sophisticated understanding of space, its opacities, its hubs of resistance and cre-
ativity. To think this way inspires a much-needed, fundamental dialogue with the
many slow people who live in the countryside. Santos moves us toward this goal.
References
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Brasil. Texto constitucional de 1988, series. Retrieved August 20, 2016, from http://www.
planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/Constituicao.htm.
Brasil. (1996). Sociedades indígenas e a ação do governo. Brasília: Presidência da República.
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catalogo/fhc/sociedades-indigenas-e-a-acao-do-governo-1996.pdf.
Castilho, A. L. (2012). Partido da terra: Como os políticos conquistaram o território brasileiro.
São Paulo: Contexto.
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Índios no Brasil. São Paulo: Global.
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retomadas. Revista Geográfica de América Central, 2(47E), 1–16.
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grosso do sul: Disputas territoriais nas retomadas pelo tekoha-tekoharã. Revista Nera, 21,
114–134.
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Quijano, A. (2005). Colonialidade do poder, eurocentrismo e américa latina. In E. Lander (Ed.), A

colonialidade do saber: Eurocentrismo e ciências sociais. Perspectivas latinoamericanas.
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Chapter 11
Milton Santos’s Thought and the Logic
of Environmental Conservation
in the Contemporary Period
Maria Tereza Duarte Paes and Claudia Levy
Abstract The notion of technique enables us to consider the geographic space as

an inextricable system of objects and actions, of instrumental and social means.
Reality is historically constituted through this interplay of nature and society. We
draw on Milton Santos’s notion of technical phenomenon to comprehend the logic
of environmental conservation areas in the contemporary period. These new reserve
territories designated as conservation units to safeguard heritage are objects of
specialized technical knowledge, whereby science becomes subservient to a global
market logic, structuring a new system of nature. Biodiversity reserves thus become
reserves of value, with subsequent place-based effects. Our empirical research in
Brazil links the local to the global scale, while reflecting on how such a verticalized
intervention limits important socio-spatial practices and livelihood activities.
Establishment of conservation areas involves a negotiation over a given territory’s
uses whereby hegemonic actors and managerial demands destabilize the normative
base of existence of pre-existing social groups, which most often lack information
and support to access any rights they may have.
Maria Tereza Duarte Paes, Professor, Institute of Geosciences (IG), Department of Geography
(DGEO), University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil; Email: [email protected].
Claudia Levy, Ph.D. Candidate, International Center for Development and Decent Work
(ICDD), University of Kassel, Germany; Email: [email protected].

126 M.T.D. Paes and C. Levy
11.1 Introduction
‘Meaning makers’ (Santos 1996: 103) in modern society produce ideologies and
symbolic universes of ‘development’. They do so intentionally. Within the realm of
conservation, sustainable development1 has emerged as a key ideological process
that, in part, provides for the institutionalization of biodiversity reserves. These new
reserve territories, normed by specialized technical knowledge, structure a new
system of nature (Santos 1992). Accordingly, they serve as ‘reserve[s] of value for
attainment of future capital’ (Becker 2005: 74) to the detriment and destruction of
historical territorialities and peoples in these regions.
Santos’s notion of technical phenomenon contributes to the analysis of the logic
of conservation areas in the contemporary period. He theorizes that, ‘nature and
space redefine themselves through technical evolution. The periodization of this
evolution can serve as basis to acknowledge the periodization of territorial history,
culminating in the current phase, in which the problem of ‘environment’ is
imposed’ (Santos 1995: 697). Santos’s concept of technique goes beyond that of
technology and is defined as the main form of relationship between humanity and
milieu. Techniques are the ‘ensemble of instrumental and social means by which
humanity realizes life, produces, and creates space’ (Santos 1996: 25). This notion
is central to both the constitution of reality and our analysis of said reality.
Techniques are thus ‘integrated into the environment as a unitary reality’ (Santos
1996: 35). Santos urges scholars to understand ‘technical phenomenon from a
philosophical perspective, i.e., as a whole’ (Santos 1996: 20), as a totality. Through
technique it is possible to break with the dichotomy between the human and the
non-human, the natural and the cultural, the objective and the subjective, the global
and the local. The notion of technique moves us away from duality, which is the
foundation of modern science. Technique, as systems rather than dichotomies of
objects, has different empirical realities in each epoch’s history. It is here, in his-
torical empirical realities, that the notion of technique meets the geographic milieu.
According to Santos (1996), to consider the geographic space as an inextricable
system of objects and actions through the notion of technique, means to assume the
inextricability of nature and society, which has varied characteristics throughout
history.
1
The term ‘sustainable development’ is influenced by the notion of ecodevelopment. It is the basis
of the way of life of traditional populations—above all, those in isolated regions—who seek
relative balance, or sustainability, between their socio-cultural reproduction and use of natural
resources. The rise of conscience about the ‘the limits to growth’ (Meadows et al. 1972) incited the
debate on the planet’s socio-environmental unbalance. The term sustainable development became
official following the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development:
Our Common Future. From here on, this term has become almost magical, obligatory to any
discourse in the areas of ecology, science or politics that aim to be up to date in international
debates.
11 Milton Santos’s Thought and the Logic … 127
Santos (1996) proposes three major periods for understanding the history of the
geographic milieu: the pre-technical, technical and technical-scientific-informational.
First, the pre-technical period is characterized by technical systems’ absence of
autonomous existence. Here social groups lived in direct relation with natural ele-
ments and with local logics. To a great extent before the Agrarian Revolution, to
survive meant to outlive the environment’s hardships. Here, as a rule, uses of natural
resources were place-based. Community-based territorial rules safeguarded social
and natural reproduction. Examples of these rules include: ‘land set-aside, land
rotation, shifting agriculture, which are at the same time social rules and territorial
rules, prone to conciliate nature’s use and ‘conservation’: to be used again’ (Santos
1995: 700).
In the technical period—Santos’s second period—an instrumental logic domi-
nates the logics of nature. Here space is mechanized through technical systems, a
function of an international division of labour rather than local logistics. This
process, already present in some industrial cities in the 19th century, creates
environmental problems such as pollution and ill health. At this point in history,
Santos (1996: 189) argues that ‘anti-mechanisation reactions, carried out by the
various Luddisms, anticipat[ed] the current battle of the environmentalists’.
The third period is the technical-scientific-informational milieu. This period sees
a convergence of science and technique, where science becomes subservient to a
global market logic. It is in this period of scientific and informational objects that
the environmental crisis is consolidated, as seen below. Santos describes nature in
this period as global and artificialized; it has become an essential resource of
competition among territories: ‘Thus nature is transformed into a real system of
objects and no longer of things, and, ironically, it is the ecologic movement itself
that completes the process of denaturalizing nature, by awarding it a value’ (Santos
1996: 53). Here Santos refers to objects as embedded technique, carriers of
intentionality. Thus, in objectifying nature by giving it a monetary value (such as
through ecosystem services), conservation becomes the basis of economic activities
within the ‘new economy of nature’, or ‘green economy’ (Fatheuer 2014: 16).
This objectification begins to take shape in the 19th century when the principle
of humankind’s common heritage legally bound peripheral countries’ free access to
natural wealth. From the second half of the 20th century the limits to growth (see
note 1) that these countries should adopt were sanctioned (Labrot 1996). The
reconstruction of cities destroyed by war was coupled with a belief in technological
progress, an increase in industrialized goods’ consumption, the presence of
peripheral Fordism, and an expansion of the rationalist model for territorial plan-
ning. Critics of this capitalist paradigm started questioning unequal development
and the society of abundance, and created the perception that many environmental
problems, such as acid rain, greenhouse effect and environmental disasters, were
becoming global in scope.
In this framework the protection of endangered biomes worldwide gains strength
as a central environmental management strategy. Protection involves the territorial
designation of conservation units (CUs). However, the creation of CUs limits
important socio-spatial practices and livelihood activities such as extraction,
agriculture, hunting and gathering—survival pillars for traditional culture—while

encouraging new ones such as tourism. Territories to be designated as CUs are
selected either for a preservationist project of complete protection, or for a con-
servationist one that foresees some degree of use. Hegemonic actors implement
mechanisms that may include or exclude local populations, ignoring the local tra-
ditional order. Operating as an instrument within the global technical-scientific
logic, the new rationale of ownership of natural resources brings conservation and
social uses of particular lands into debate and is ultimately what is at stake. This
logic, operating under a globalized market, is ‘ever more precise and, also, more
blind, since obedient to a foreign project’ (Santos 1996: 66), tied to the benefit of
private enterprises, states and hegemonic classes (Santos 1992).
In this context, Santos’s notion of used territory (Santos et al. 2000) is foun-
dational for a comprehensive understanding of the logic behind the creation of CUs
as reserves of value, a process that has subsequent place-based effects. Used ter-
ritory refers to how specific territories are historically constituted through a system
of norms, objects and actions operating at various scales of power. It draws
attention to the active space of production and social reproduction, and thus to the
material and symbolic base of human action. It also points to mechanisms that
underpin the horizontalities and the verticalities of a territory. Horizontalities refer
to the local order and its set of contiguous objects organized by the territory. These
objects and orders are regulated through geographically proximate relationships.
Verticalities refer to the global order that organizes a sparse and geographically
diverse set of objects into a system, unifying various localities into a vertical
interdependency (Santos 1998). Vertically established conservation units institute a
system of norms and (re)production, guided by elite actors.
11.2 Conservation Units: Vertically Imposed Scientific

and Informational Objects
As introduced above, the establishment of CUs institutionalizes new norms and rules
of territory use and ownership. In doing so, it imposes verticalities pertaining to the
globalized market nexus, and undermines local customary social practices and the
socio-spatial foundations of the territory’s horizontalities. On the one hand, the local
is always in dialectic relation with the global, accepting, rejecting or accommodating
verticalities. On the other, the hierarchical interdependencies of verticalities neces-
sarily introduces the new, the novel, which is foreign to, and thus in tension with, the
local. The new can and often does erode the ‘capacity to manage the local way of
life’ (Santos 1996: 226). CUs—the category used worldwide to designate areas for
integral protection—are the formal materialization of what Diegues (1993) terms the
‘modern myth’ of an ‘untouchable nature’. This myth prioritizes the conservation of
a particular concept of nature that, though managed and formerly inhabited by
humans, is believed to be untouched by humanity.
At the heart of CUs such as National Parks is thus a political project of

modernity. It is an attempt to rationalize and reduce the complexity of our rela-
tionship with the world. Based on technical-scientific arguments establishing areas
of reserve, it devalues fundamental relationships between people and their envi-
ronment in the face of a capitalist rational logic. We argue against the heroic
discourse of ‘safeguarding biodiversity for future generations’ couched in a mod-
ernizing logic. We must understand real socio-spatial scales—global and local—
and temporal moments—past, present and future—that underpin the production of
territory. The institutionalization of CUs is a legitimization process for reserves of
value, produced by a global system and implanted in diverse localities at the
contemporary moment. Our approach, following from Santos, recognizes other
processes and relationships that are legitimate. After all, as we argued above, the
notions of ecodevelopment and sustainability are derived from knowledge of tra-
ditional populations’ customary ways of life. The institutionalization of ‘natural
heritage’, which now ironically excludes these populations, does not concern bio-
diversity exclusively. It is a system of technical, political and economic values,
imbued with scientific legitimacy, that destroys previously-existing relationships
between peoples and their environments. The idea of nature, here, reproduces the
urban and capitalist life model.
Nature is thus a socio-political and cultural construction. It is one pole of the
constructed relationship between itself and society. Nature and society, in this
sense, are opposed and complementary. They are opposed, as biodiversity is
transformed into an object of appropriation and consumption through the process of
‘technification’. These objects are then instrumentalized, as we will further discuss,
through the institutionalization process of CUs, occurring in both concrete and
symbolic forms. In this sense nature and society are complementary to the extent
that social structures relativize nature’s local value (Santos 1998), reinventing and
conferring upon it values of use, exchange or reserve, ‘transforming natural ele-
ments into social resources’ (Santos 1996: 54).
The Brazilian CUs’ institutionalization process is marked by uneven power. On
the one hand, urban and industrial society has long devastated important biomes.
Now, a de-territorialized global order seeks to balance its growth limits through the
preservation of natural reserve stocks. On the other hand, traditional populations’
everyday lives are disrupted and peoples are barred from their territory.
Santos (1992) warned against a premature conceptual move from a geographic
milieu to an environmental milieu. He issued this warning against the ideological
burden and the manipulative power of the media and general discourses on the
eminence of an environmental crisis. ‘When the environment, as Nature-spectacle,
substitutes the historic Nature—place of all people’s labour—and when the cy-
bernetic or synthetic Nature substitutes the analytical Nature of the past, the con-
cealment process of history’s meaning reaches its peak. It is also, in this way, that a
painful misunderstanding takes place among technical systems, Nature, society,
culture and moral’ (Santos 1992: 102). Thus, the geographic milieu, through its
analytical category of socio-spatial scales and the notion of used territory, lends
itself to an understanding of reality as historically constituted. That is, it helps us to

understand how technique mediates the interplay between modes of production and
symbolic reproduction.
11.3 New Use and Management Norms
The designation of conservation units involves establishing a set of norms regulating

access to and use of these areas, which results in disputes and processes across
political, juridical, cultural and economic issues. To secure biodiversity reserves
necessitates globally-constituted technical tools that ‘bring disorder to sub-spaces
where they are installed, [whereby any] order that they create is for their own sake’
(Santos 1996: 228). Thus, many CUs are established as territorial prostheses2 (Santos
1996) that subvert local territoriality networks, the latter which are themselves
constituted by particular notions of time, space and nature in the horizontal milieu.
For instance, in Brazil, the establishment of the first national parks and the
directives for biodiversity conservation have been guided by the natural sciences’
concept of wilderness. Forest reserves to protect specific endangered species were
declared as far back as the late 1800s. It was, however, with the Itatiaia National Park,
created in 1937 between the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais that a landmark
was set with regards to the institutionalization of CUs in Brazil. It was inspired by the
North American Yellowstone National Park, where the preservation approach
emphasizes the scenic facade of the environment (Pimbert and Pretty 1997). The
approach is thus preservationist and biocentred.
The institutionalization of each CU requires a management plan based on
ecosystem studies, ideally including socioeconomic studies and a participatory
planning process, for its reserve and buffer zone areas. As we explain further in the
next section, this plan constitutes the instrument of mediation (Santos 1995)—
establishing norms for intervention, access and control—defining the CU’s man-
agement directives, categories and permissible practices. However, in the majority
of the cases such documents are only partially produced (often excluding the
participatory planning process, or tackling it superficially) and the CUs lack
resources for the documents’ proper implementation.
Thus, prioritizing the biodiversity component, CU management strategies may
attempt to undermine or superficially placate local cultures. Toward the former,
CU categories of integral protection presuppose an uninhabited area. As a result,
local indigenous peoples’ practices are ignored, excluded or even criminalized by
law enforcement through, for example, prohibiting the collection of herbs, wild fruits
2
This notion refers to a ‘territorial configuration, which [is]…a historic production and tends to
deny pre-existing nature, substituting it with a fully humanized nature’ (Santos 1996: 39).
Depending on science and technology, this historic production, or technosphere in Santos’s ter-
minology, ‘frequently establishes itself while translating faraway interests and thus adhering to the
local like a prosthesis’ (Santos 1996: 172).
and building materials; hunting; and visits to sacred groves. However, other man-
agement measures are of a compensatory kind so as to minimize the contradictions
between the territory’s customary uses and the new norms established through the
CU. Some examples of these compensatory measures are resettlement, compensa-
tion for expropriated families or agricultural losses, and mechanisms for economi-
cally integrating local inhabitants through, for instance, new forms of work.
New economic dynamics thus also restructure labour in these regions. For many
CUs, tourism represents a revenue solution. However, the tourist industry demands
particular forms of expertise with regards to infrastructure, professional training and
technical adaptation. Moreover, another form of dispossession takes place with
these new economic activities. The services required by tourists, such as gourmet
gastronomy or sports activities, are linked to modern objects and knowledges,
which become incorporated into the territory, displacing previously-existing ways
of being. As asserted by Santos:
[T]he introduction of new ways of performing engenders imbalances from which result, on
the one hand, the migration of local customary leadership and the break with habits and
traditions and, on the other, transformations of forms of relating. The latter, which have
been slowly shaped over a long period of time, are suddenly substituted by new ways of
relating whose roots are foreign and whose adaptation to the local is essentially mercantile.
(Santos 1997: 46)
Displacement could be minimized, for example, by strengthening place-based

action, through communicative and cooperative tools. Such measures may even
enhance the objectives of biodiversity conservation. To understand how requires an
analysis that sheds light on what Santos calls ‘successive Nature systems, which
simultaneously encompass and are encompassed by humankind’s content, includ-
ing actions; beliefs; desires; the overwhelming reality; and perspectives’ (Santos
1992: 95). Thus, our focus lies in the socio-cultural contradictions that are involved
in the competing territorial uses wrought by conservation practices.
11.4 Effects of Conservation Units in the Reshaping

of Places
Vertical valorization and transformation of the environment create new relation-

ships of ownership and thus new territories. Santos’s analytical approach of the
technique allows us to grasp the notion of place in relation to time (periodization),
to space (local, regional and global), and to society (historical/customary and
contemporary). Likewise, the part (in this case, CUs) cannot alone represent
totality. And the totality, in its movement, cuts across the parts, integrating these
into its logic. In Santos’s words (1986: 39): ‘The totality—which presupposes a
shared movement of structure, of function and of form—is dialectical and concrete’.
Places—as formative parcels of the social totality—are qualitatively and quan-
titatively mutating. Space in this conceptualization is an abstract category realized
through places’ concreteness. Social dynamics reproduce themselves in concrete
places, creating history. Customary populations, until recently isolated, could limit
their perceptions of and interactions with social space to those necessary for their
own reproduction. In contemporary society, a total understanding of space is
required for peoples’ reproduction. The internationalization of markets and cultures,
new informational technologies and international divisions of labour have con-
nected all territorial fractions into a totality, which empirically impacts all manner
of relations across diverse places. To Santos (1996) humankind has, for the first
time under globalized capitalism, the potential to undergo an empirical universality.
In other words, space, as it is increasingly interconnected at this moment, may allow
a global society to fulfil itself as a phenomenon.
New spatial forms, such as CUs, take shape through social intentionality,
inciting conflict at all scales (Santos 1997). They require an active subject capable
of creating formal and functional change. This intentionality manifests through the
establishment of CUs: the strategy to preserve biodiversity in the face of natural
resources’ scarcity is based on intentions to control, plan and manage territory.
Through these intentions the territory is constituted as an object of
political-administrative planning and norming; it becomes a functional parcel
articulated by flows of activities, populations and spatial reorganization operating
from the local to the global (Santos 1997). Such is the case for the CU territory.
Hegemonic actors’ intentionality constructs the new territory of the CU as an
assumed inhabited space and as an object of ordering. But, of course, they are not
the only social relations present in this territory. The bundle of social relations and
intentions underpinning contradictory uses of CU space—such as conservation
versus subsistence—creates a dialectical movement between environmental pro-
tection strategies and natural resource utilization. It is only by understanding used
territory as a totality that these movements become apparent. According to Santos
et al. (2000: 2), the idea of used territory ‘allows for a broad consideration of the
totality of causes and effects regarding the socio-territorial process’.
Our empirical research demonstrates that individual conservation areas are
specific outcomes of the general processes already outlined. For example, the
establishment of the Serra da Capivara National Park (SCNP) in the Brazilian Piauí
state acted as a prosthesis inserted in the local territory. Management of the park
required community resettlement, border delimitation, and surveillance and restraint
of local communities who are no longer able to undertake their productive and
customary activities, such as hunting and the use of agricultural areas, communi-
cation corridors and sanctuaries. This process triggered a series of grievous con-
flicts. For instance, households that had not resettled were fined or had their
livestock sacrificed for crossing the parks’ border. These animals also became easy
bait for wild animals that invaded the farms. The new terrritorialization—whereby
the local population no longer governed the uses of the resources—created room for
external actors to illegally exploit resources (Levy 2006). Even the management
tools that continue to seek to integrate local populations into productive and cultural
activities within the CU tend to prioritize economic efficiency rather than a
responsible and reciprocal inclusion process with these communities. These issues
are inciting conflict across Brazil and the globe more generally.
The prostheses organized by global capital and the hegemonic elite generally
disrupt specific systems of shared rights over land and other natural resources, such
as management through the ‘land of commons’ (Godoi 1999) model or
‘common-pool resource systems’ (Ostrom 2002). Naming the park legitimates the
dispossessing prosthesis. The resulting estrangement of people from their lands and
from the common management of resources not only benefits outsiders, but also
becomes common sense to many involved. We have observed similar situations
with respect to hunting in SCNP, or to wood exploitation in the CU Ankasa in
Ghana (Levy 2009). We are also informed by a decade of research in the Serra do
Mar plains and hillsides, on the north coast of São Paulo and south of Rio de
Janeiro, a region with preserved Atlantic Forest areas populated by artisan fisher
folk (caiçara) communities. Since the 1970s the expansion of CUs—and thus of
environmental law enforcement—has robbed the caiçara culture of its customary
basis of economic survival—hunting, extractive collection of plants, fruits and
wood, and smallholder agriculture (mainly cassava and banana). A process of
touristic urbanization3 (Luchiari 2000) tends to follow the direct or indirect
expulsion of these populations. Consequently, real estate speculation and a new
urban rationality dominate these lands. Once a new culture integrates with the CU
ecosystem, the caiçara become marginal people in their own territory, living on
low-qualified jobs in the urban and tourist markets.
Thus, territoralizations of CUs involve a negotiation over a given territory’s
uses. However, all actors are not equal in this negotiation. The system of resource
use imposed by hegemonic actors is shaped by managerial demands, while
pre-existing social groups, now de-territorialized, lack information and support to
access any rights they may have. This process is happening on the continent of
Africa as well: it is estimated that ‘14 million people in Africa alone are said to have
been driven off their land by environmental conservation measures (e.g. the des-
ignation of parks)’ (Kareiva, cited in Fatheuer 2014: 59).
The rationalization of activities under a global order—an ‘everyday life imposed
from outside, ordered by privileged information, which is secret and powerful’
(Santos 1996: 108)—tends to prevail in our contemporary world. With the estab-
lishment of CUs, we argue that technical-scientific logic becomes an instrument
used for domination and control. It operates through a hierarchy of power that
issues management directives via decrees, administrative rules and conventions.
This process determines which social practices are allowed and manifests in fairly
predictable ways amongst subjects who hold unequal power: the horizontal
3
Though boosting different sectors of the economy, the logic of touristic urbanization is one in
which consumption prevails over production, and with it the precarization of working conditions,
the intensification of migratory fluxes and the hybridization of culture. Furthermore, real estate
speculation ends up selling the value of the estheticized landscapes and seasonal infrastructures
prioritize uses for an elite. All of these are factors differentiating this process from industrial
urbanization, positioning tourism as a vector of place transformation (Luchiari 2000).
relationships of those who have historically inhabited an area that is now a con-
servation territory tend to be displaced by the vertically ordered relationships of
global capital.
11.5 Final Thoughts
Milton Santos did not specifically address the debate on biodiversity conservation.
However, his thinking leads us toward a comprehensive view on territorial uses and
management in conservation areas. Established by a dominant global demand using
technical-scientific logic as an instrument of power (Santos 1998), a new system of
nature introduces norms that govern territories in the name of conservation of a
global natural heritage. It does so while excluding local knowledges from the
relations established between humanity and nature, and brings to evidence the
conflicting and complementary dialectic between totality and part, globe and place.
Conservation thus becomes the crystallization of the representation of oft-times elite
groups—the natural science-centred environmentalist, and the construction and
tourism sectors—to the detriment of other, less organized groups on the margins of
the capitalist rationale, such as local indigenous peoples.
If we allow the environmental milieu to substitute the geographic milieu, we
lend ourselves to the spectacularization of Nature. Understanding the geographic
milieu through Santos’s technique allows us to comprehend the social totality of the
world. Conceptual rigour is fundamental to this task, along with the ethical
imperative of acknowledging place-based knowledges (Castro 2000). Of course, the
preservationist and bio-centred models of conservation have useful aspects. But
there is much to be done before a large number of conservation areas are created at
the expense of long-established peoples and their ways of life. A way forward
might be through the use of communicative action approaches for the design of
CUs’ management tools.
References
Becker, B. K. (2005). Geopolítica da Amazônia. Estudos Avançados, 19(53), 71–86.

Castro, E. (2000). Território, biodiversidade e saberes das populações tradicionais. In A.
C. Diegues (Ed.), Etnoconservação: Novos rumos para a proteção da natureza nos trópicos
(pp. 165–182). São Paulo: Hucitec.
Delphim, C. F. M. (2009). O patrimônio natural no Brasil. In P. P. A. Funari, S. Pelegrini & G.
Rambelli (Eds.), Patrimônio cultural e ambiental: Questões legais e conceituais (pp. 167–
186). São Paulo: Annablume/Nepam-Unicamp/Fapesp.
Diegues, A. C. S. (1993). O mito moderno da natureza intocada: populações tradicionais em
unidades de conservação. NUPAUB/USP, São Paulo: Hucitec.
Fatheuer, T. (2014). New economy of nature: A critical introduction. Berlin: Heinrich Böll
Foundation.
Godoi, E. P. (1999). O trabalho da memória: Cotidiano e história no sertão do piauí. Campinas:

Centro de Memoria, Unicamp.
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naturel. In Y. Lamy (Ed.), l’Alchimie du patrimoine: Discours et politiques, editions de la
maison de sciences de l’homme d’aquitaine (pp. 109–135). France: Talence.
Levy, C. (2006). Gestão e usos do território: Conflitos e praticas socio-espaciais no Parque
Nacional da Serra da Capivara, Piaui, Brasil. Campinas: Unicamp.
Levy, C. (2009). Participatory forest management in Ghana. In K. Gaesing (Ed.), Reconciling
rural livelihood and biodiversity conservation (pp. 133–144). SPRING Research Series 52. TU
Dortmund.
Luchiari, M. T. D. P. (2000). Urbanização turística: Um novo nexo entre o lugar e o mundo. In C.
Serrano, H. T. Bruhns & M. T. D. P. Luchiari (Eds.), Olhares contemporâneos sobre o turismo
(pp. 105–130). Campinas: Papirus, Coleção Turismo.
Meadows, D. H., et al. (1972). The limits to growth. New York: Universe Books.
Santos’ theory. International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4)1–12.
Ostrom, E. (2002). Reformulating the commons. Ambiente & Sociedade, 5(10), 1–21.
Pimbert, M. P., & Pretty, J. N. (1997). Parks, people and professionals: Putting “participation” into
protected area management. Social Change and Conservation, 297–330.
Santos, M. (1986). Pensando o espaço do homem. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1992). A redescoberta da natureza. Estudos Avançados, 6(14), 95–106.
Santos, M. (1995). A questão do medio ambiente: desafios para a construção de una perspectiva
transdisciplinar. Anales de Geografía de La Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 15, 696–706.
Santos, M. (1996). A Natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo; Razão e emoção (4th ed., Vol. 4). São
Paulo: EDUSP, Universidade de São Paulo.
Santos, M. (1997). Espaço e Método (4th ed.). Sao Paulo: Nobel.
Santos, M. (1998). O Retorno do território. In M. Santos, M. A. A. de Souza, & M. L. Silveira
(Eds.), Território: Globalização e fragmentação (4th ed., pp. 15–20). São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. et al. (2000). O Papel ativo da geografia: Um manifesto. Território, 9, 103–109.
Chapter 12
Environmental Crisis Through
the Theories of Milton Santos
Francisco J. Toro
Abstract Milton Santos, in his epilogue and synthetic work A Natureza do Espaço
(The Nature of Space), asked a vital question, one rarely raised in official envi-
ronmental discourse: Should we talk about deterritorialization of environmental
crisis? In this chapter I explore how a deep engagement with this question might
help us face, in a more effective manner, current and future environmental chal-
lenges. This chapter uses several works of the Brazilian geographer to develop an
ideal theoretical background to better understand and interpret environmental crisis
in the contemporary age. My analysis of environmental crisis will consider four
dimensions through which Santos’s insights may be structured: ontological, epis-
temic, technical and ethical. Any approach to human-nature relationships must
consider both space and territory not merely as scenario, but as meaningful vari-
ables, as Santos did. Thus, I use Santos’s notions of space and milieu as key
concepts of environmental crisis. I attempt to show that Santos’s theory enriches the
environmental paradigm with new theoretical tools, and places the discipline of
geography in a strategic position to respond to and challenge epistemological issues
of environmental crisis.
12.1 Introduction1
The environmental crisis depicts a new age in the history of humankind, inaugu-
rated with 19th century industrialization. The crisis has been exponentially
intensifying since the 1950s, a period recently dubbed the ‘Anthropocene’
Francisco J. Toro, Associate Professor, Department of Regional Geographic Analysis and

Physical Geography University of Granada, Spain; Email: [email protected].
1
A sincere thanks to Prof. Margarita Carretero, Department of English and German Philology of
University of Granada (Spain), for her comments and suggestions; to Lucas Melgaço, Department
of Criminology of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) for his specific reading of Santos’s insights
and suggestions; and to Carolyn Prouse, Department of Geography of The University of British
Columbia for her several readings and reviews.

138 F.J. Toro
(Crutzen & Stoermer 2000) and characterized by the generalization of electricity

and fossil fuels, mostly oil. Environmental crisis in the Anthropocene refers to the
global rift between the metabolism of human systems and the incapacity of the
biosphere to provide unlimited material resources and absorb diverse sources of
waste and heat.2 This environmental crisis produces ‘global environmental change’
(Turner et al. 1990; Goudie 2006).
Many scholars point out the hegemonic role played by the Western model of
development in precipitating environmental crisis (see, for instance: White 1967;
Moncrief 1970; Schumacher 1973; Redclift 1984; Hernández del Águila 1985; Leff
1986; Norgaard 1994; Naredo 2006; Sachs 2010; Toro 2011; Escobar 2015). This
model is guided by an epistemic and ontological philosophy that represents and
perceives Nature3 in opposition to human issues. According to these scholars,
behind environmental crisis there is a cultural problem closely linked to a specific
way of representing, knowing and perceiving the world. Many point to the
importance of broadening our understanding of ‘cultural’ to include not only the-
ories, rationalities and philosophies, but also objects, tools, customs and even built
environments, which mediate humans’ relations with physical attributes and
functions of Nature. Following this approach, any theoretical attempts to under-
stand the roots of environmental crisis should interrogate both technical and
material transformations of geographic reality.
On this last point it is worth highlighting the epistemic contributions of Brazilian
geographer Milton Santos to geography, in particular, and to social sciences, in
general. His thought offers a theoretical background that may assist in the epistemic
and cultural challenges posed by our current environmental crisis.4 Unfortunately,
2
Beyond the scientific verification of many environmental disruptions induced and caused by
human activity during the last century, the interpretation of the environmental crisis is not
monolithic. Indeed, it depends on particular scientific, political or ideological frameworks, pro-
ducing a wide range of metanarratives in its etiological analysis. During the 1960s and 1970s, with
the emergence of modern environmental concern, diverse factors were variously pointed to as the
main driving force of environmental crisis, responding to different metanarratives: population
growth, economic model of development, technological advances and scale, affluence and con-
sumerism of rich societies and anthropocentric ethics, among others.
3
Given the polysemy of the term ‘nature’, to avoid confusion I will use ‘Nature’, capitalized, to
denote the social construct created in opposition to the human-artificial realm, and as that which
existed before the significant environmental transformation instigated by human societies. I use
‘nature’ to refer to the essence of the things, except in the case of works’ tittles (e.g. The Nature of
Space). The adjective ‘natural’ or ‘nature’ will refer to the biophysical condition of the environ-
ment, milieu or objects subjected to physics and biological rules and which is connected to the idea
of ‘Nature’. In the case of the use of nature or Nature in Santos’s quotes, I will keep the original
term.
4
I synthetize the ‘cultural problem’ of environmental crisis through five principles: (1) the rela-
tivism and polysemy of the idea of Nature; (2) the hegemony of scientific-technical rationality
(linear conception of natural processes) in the usage and exploitation of natural resources; (3) the
exclusion of nature from Western discourses of progress and development; (4) the construction of
economic science in an isolated universe apart from the biosphere and society; and (5) the pro-
motion of consumerist patterns in the post-industrial era (Toro 2011).
12 Environmental Crisis Through the Theories … 139
this aspect of Santos’s theory is not very well known or referred to in published
literature and research; yet, its scope takes environmental issues into account,
directly or indirectly. As Melgaço (2013: 2) reveals: ‘Santos was in fact a specialist
in theory, geographical theory to be more exact. He created a set of articulated,
coherent concepts that together form a solid and fruitful body of work’ including, as
I will discuss, thoughts on the environment.
Santos turned to diverse disciplines and scholars from natural to social sciences
in order to bolster his arguments. In fact, one of his main concerns was to provide
Geography with a distinct conceptual and theoretical framework while breaking the
rigid and seemingly impassable borders between neighbouring disciplines. As such,
Santos embodies the cross-disciplinary attitude that is demanded by any scientific
and theoretical approach to understanding environmental issues; these issues, of
course, traverse disciplinary boundaries.
The thought of Santos is a unique combination of fundamental concepts from
geographic theory and from philosophy. Theorizing ontological categories, such as
technique, space, time and Nature—all of which characterize and influence the
human environment—has two virtues: (i) it makes cross-disciplinary dialogue
easier by mobilizing shared concepts of different disciplines; and (ii) it remains
valid and reliable over time, as he teases out the most essential aspects of Homo
geographicus (Sack 1997). Indeed, Santos’s ontological categories are immanent
realities of any historical period and may help to interpret interactions between
human and biophysical structures in the Globalization Age.5
The main arguments of Santos’s theory and perspectives on ontology are found
in his most substantial work, A Natureza do Espaço (The Nature of Space)
(Melgaço 2013: 10), which is a kind of epilogue and compilation of his main
theoretical contributions. But he also wrote a number of essays that provide fun-
damental insights, offering a critical approach to understanding environmental
crisis, scientific knowledge and, above all, environmentalism. These include A
Redescoberta da Natureza (The Rediscovery of Nature) (Santos 1992) and A
Questão do Meio Ambiente: Desafios para a Construção de uma Perspectiva
Transdisciplinar (The Question of the Environment: Challenges for Building a
Cross-Disciplinary Perspective) (Santos 1995).
This essay provides a review of Santos’s theory as it is relevant for under-
standing contemporary environmental crisis. I discuss four aspects that help to
synthesize the cultural dimensions of the environmental crisis, aspects that Santos
5
The concept of ‘globalization’ was originally proposed by the economist Levitt (1983) to identify
the progressive standardization of markets as a result of the strategies applied by international
companies. Roland Robertson was the first sociologist in 1985 to coin the term ‘globalization’,
inspired by world systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein (Robertson & Lechner 1985). Later, in
1995, Robertson popularized the term ‘glocalization’, pointing to the intimate and reciprocal
connections between local processes and global trends (Robertson 1995). Amin (1997) called one
of his most famous works Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, in which he criticized the
growing inequalities that the globalization of capital is creating.
140 F.J. Toro
refers to explicitly or implicitly: (a) ontological; (b) epistemic; (c) technical; and
(d) ethical. Finally, I reflect on the Brazilian geographer’s question: ‘Should we talk
about deterritorialization of the ecological crisis?’ (Santos 1996: 170).
12.2 Ontological
Humans’ relationship with Nature, understood here as a biophysical-environmental

reality, is not unmediated. On the one hand, societies and peoples, according to
their cultural contexts, share a preconceived idea of Nature that shapes the way it is
subsequently perceived, felt and used. Yet, on the other hand, the environmental
conditions of the places we live, the landscapes we see, and the buildings we use,
also affect and shape our idea of Nature (Tuan 1974). This reciprocal relationship is
often confused, and it can thus be difficult to determine which features of Nature are
a function of our cultural understandings, which correspond to environmental
conditions, and how these interact to shape our perceptions.
Santos approaches the essence and reality of Nature in the global, hybrid and
transformed environment where our civilization currently resides. He bases his
considerations in history (Peluso 2013), which leads to his first conclusion: we can
solely know Nature in its historical context, that is, the concept of Nature is relative
and even enigmatic.
Historically, humans have tried to imitate the appearance, features and functions
of Nature, designing and creating landscapes to adapt to the most diverse human
needs and desires. In terms of production, agricultural practices have domesticated
Nature, increasing reproduction of selected plants to extract from them the highest
profit. Gardens and parks reflect the creation of aesthetic landscapes imbued with
symbolic, political and/or leisure intentions. More recently, environmental concerns
have led to a yearning for a symbolic Nature, as its healthiest and purest conditions
are increasingly threatened by industrial development. As a result, nature parks
have been established to protect the last redoubts of a supposed primitive and sacred
Nature. Here, individuals socialized within a ‘risk society’ can meet Nature in urban
environments, but in a simulated way, in a Nature that is a product of Arts (Beck &
Willms 2003), that is, a cultural representation or artificial imitation of the original.
Sustainability-oriented policies have been developed by numerous cities to offer the
illusion of a balanced reunion with Nature, which is more ideal than real. In such a
context, the idea of Nature is confused and mixed, a hybrid (Latour 1991).
Santos initially confronts the ontological problem of Nature through a Marxist
approach (Peluso 2013), differentiating between ‘first nature’ and ‘second nature’
(Santos 1996). Both Natures do not of necessity correspond to consecutive stages
of human evolution, where the first yields to the latter; rather Santos refers to the
transition through two ontological categories of a pure Nature and of a transformed
Nature: from the ‘natural milieu,6 as societies interact intimately with biophysical
components and functions, to the ‘technical-scientific-informational milieu’, a sit-
uation in which the ‘natural nature, where it still exists, tends to retreat, sometimes
brutally’ (Santos 1996: 160). Tautologically, Santos uses the expression ‘natural
nature’ to refer to the marginal presence of biophysical features within the domain
of human technical environments and to describe how Nature has been virtually
stripped from our daily landscapes, both urban and rural. He asserts: ‘But now,
when the natural cedes, the artificial and victorious rationality shows itself as an
instrumental Nature…it expresses itself to us as supernatural’ (Santos 1992: 96).
That is, Nature is something increasingly strange in our daily environments, habits
and thoughts, almost a myth or utopia.
Santos believes that an appropriate assessment and analysis of environmental
impacts requires establishing a clear distinction between anthropogenic Nature
(‘second nature’) and natural Nature (‘first nature’). He reminds us that Nature, as
‘ecological environment’, is ‘the set of territorial complexes that constitute the
physical basis of human labour’ (Santos 1985: 23), the material sustenance of our
progress and reproduction. But he is really admitting that we need to be involved
and integrated within the original structure and complexity of Nature, since ‘second
nature’ is strongly dependent on and a part of ‘first nature’.
Therefore, for the Brazilian geographer it is not accurate to refer to ‘impacts on
environment’ as though Nature is something external to societies, because ‘what
nowadays are called environmental damages are really damages to livelihood, that
is, the milieu seen in all its integrity’ (Santos 1995: 697). It is a concretized-spatial
way of understanding the idea of Nature. In terms of conceptualization, Nature is
inseparable from milieu, but the first is a tributary of the latter.
12.3 Epistemic
One of the greatest epistemic challenges faced by humans is confusing the repre-
sentation of reality with reality itself. As Morin (1999: 6) said: ‘Our systems of
ideas (theories, doctrines, ideologies) are subject to error and, in addition, they
protect errors and illusions contained in themselves.’
6
‘Milieu’ is a French word that may be translated into English as ‘social environment’ and offers
an historical contextualization of Human-Nature relationships in space. The humanistic geographer
Anne Buttimer differentiates four dimensions or ‘constellations’ of milieu, to which Geography
and geographers have paid attention: ‘identity (national, regional or local), order (spatial, structural
or administrative), niche (resources, Raum, or demographic base or potential) and inventory
(information and communication of knowledge about one’s world)’ (Buttimer 1993: 31). For
Buttimer, milieu ‘opens up a vast range of potential inquiry and reflections about the practice of
geography’ (Buttimer 1993: 34). According to Melgaço (2013: 3), Santos ‘generally used milieu to
refer to space, to the way technique is imbricate with geographic space, while period is related to
history, time, and processes’.
142 F.J. Toro
In his most famous work entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,

Thomas Kuhn (1962) introduced the concept of ‘normal science’ as the legitimate
way to understand reality in which a scientific community consolidates a regular
procedure, that is, a scientific paradigm. In his formulation, the application of a
normal scientific method will lead to a valid and objective knowledge in every
discipline. This theory has been largely discussed by both partisans (Popper 1965;
Lakatos 1978) and critics (Feyerabend 1975; Morin 1977; Funtowictz & Ravetz
1993) of the scientific method.
It is necessary, as a starting point, to clarify what may be understood as scientific
method in order to address the limitations of scientific knowledge and the confusion
of representation with reality.
Recently the Spanish physicist Wagensberg (2014) attempted to synthetize the
scientific method through three fundamental principles: objectivity, intelligibility
and dialectics. These principles lead to a systematic, normalized and useful
knowledge; however, this representation of reality is extremely simple, reductive
and abstract. Moreover, for some critical thinkers, the scientific method and/or
normal science may feed the cultural problem of environmental crisis if they
reproduce the patterns of Cartesian and mechanistic views of Nature (Capra 1982;
Martínez 1993). The extreme specialization, isolation and fragmentation of
knowledge make it difficult to comprehend the complex, non-linear and uncertain
ecological and social dynamics. Therefore, Santos advocates for an interdisciplinary
scientific approach to understand and face environmental challenges.
Santos takes issue with a notion central to the scientific method: the idea of
objectivity. The principle of objectivity is ‘to attain the maximum universality of
the science vis-à-vis the observer, in other words, the least influence from her
particular beliefs, prejudices, or circumstances’ (Wagensberg 2014: 336). This
principle connects with the aspiration for neutrality and asepsis in scientific
research. Santos is concerned with science’s approach to the reality under analysis.
He asserts that: ‘if we do not take into account the manifold perspectives of how
reality reveals itself to us, it could lead to the theoretical construction of a blind and
confusing whole’ (Santos 1995: 696). In fact, normal science cannot absolutely
control the complex and unpredictable reality: ‘features of reality turn autonomous
themselves and require an autonomous and special treatment’ (Santos 1995: 696).
Climate change serves as a good example. Many scientists have based their
analyses on diverse trends of climate change variables to forecast future scenarios.
Thus, climate change only exists as a prediction of a more or less probable reality,
constructed from a set of statistical parameters. But laypeople do not handle
probability and speculation very well; they need certainty. It is much easier to trust
and believe sides of radicalization of climate change narrative, which are not pre-
cisely neutral and do not represent complexity: complete negation, supported by the
discourse of an environmental conspiracy; or apocalyptic fate, giving extreme and
deliberated credibility to specific scenarios. In this regard, Santos suggests to trust
moderately in science and use a complex and integral perspective: ‘if it is necessary
to face pollution and environmental degradation, we must do so with our eyes wide
open, basing ourselves on scientific analysis and not just shouting: Fire!’ (Santos
1992: 101). This assertion may seem ambiguous, insofar as he does not specify
what kind of scientific analysis we need to trust.
Nowadays, science is somewhat of a religion to lay societies (Naredo 2006). It is
thought to be central to human progress, thus occupying a privileged position in the
epistemic world. However, science and scientists are shaped by values. Because
scientific knowledge is produced by inter-subjectivities, scientists and scholars
share common patterns, theories and methods, but they are ultimately motivated by
different reasons and have different intentions, be they economic, ethical and/or
political. The ‘principle of objectivity’, or the idea that the scientific method pro-
duces objective science, is thus overestimated. Anticipating more recent arguments
about the neoliberalization of education, Santos reveals how manipulation and
selfish knowledge have materialized in the university, once-considered an inde-
pendent and autonomous institution: ‘In the name of scientism, the pragmatic
behaviors and technical reasons, which ride roughshod over the efforts of integral
understanding of reality, are imposed and rewarded. In a university of results, the
will of being genuinely intellectual is penalized, pushing the best talents to a
spasmodic research that is statistically profitable’ (Santos 1992: 103–104).
Santos is very critical of reductionist analyses as they contribute to the frag-
mentation of knowledge into disciplines. For instance, the ‘principle of intelligi-
bility’ often shapes analyses, creating ‘the most compact form of understanding…
[that] tends to determine the minimum of a maximum’ (Wagensberg 2014: 337).
According to Santos, the problem of a fragmented knowledge is seen fairly often
with respect to environmental issues. The interactions and feedback between natural
and human systems far exceed the reductive disciplinary boundaries that attempt to
study them. However, Santos does not invalidate the role of disciplines and spe-
cializations; as he states, ‘the need for metadisciplines that drive a systematic view
of reality does not exclude the specializations; they are still necessary’ (Santos
1995: 696). Overall, then, Santos believes that complex and multidimensional
environmental issues require holistic and global analytic approaches. He appeals for
‘a review of disciplinary theories and practices insofar as [the environmental crisis]
demands a comprehensive and all-encompassing analysis’ (Santos 1995: 695),
which necessarily involves an intimate relationship between specializations and
metadisciplines.
Moreover, these epistemic patterns of objectivity and reductivity condition the
analysis of crisis in a counterproductive manner. Reductions such as a purely
ideological view, a purely economic view or an exclusively present concern ‘renew
the risk of making a causal chain that leads to the absurd in knowledge production
whereby effects eventually precede the causes’ (Santos 1995: 702). This confusion
affects the way in which many environmental problems are being managed.
‘Make-up’ and corrective measures (also known as end-of-pipe measures7) are
7
For instance, technical solutions for exporting pollution in time and space include: the con-
struction of increasingly deeper outfalls into the sea for sewage; or the system of catalysts in cars
for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
144 F.J. Toro
applied instead of preventive agents,8 the former which feedback positively on

environmental risks and their impact in space and time.
Santos does not necessarily oppose the progress of science, if the old knowledge
is a ‘prisoner [that resists] change and risks falling into the drift of interpreting the
present’ (Santos 1995: 695). However, the excessive focus on innovation and
progress in science may blind the attempt to understand the causes and roots of
environmental problems. For Santos, turning to history is an antidote against a kind
of scientific activity that ‘ventures to work only in and from the present’ (Santos
1995: 696). He suggests a historical de-construction of study objects according to
their respective contexts and formational processes. In his work, Santos uses this
epistemology for understanding the historical roots of contemporary phenomena: he
mobilizes a dialectical approach that attains ‘“the highest degree of falsifiability
available” in pursuit of progress of science’ (Wagensberg 2014: 339). He argues for
a historical approach to understanding concepts such as Nature, environment,
milieu, culture and technology in order to learn lessons from the past for facing
today’s environmental crisis.
A summary here is useful to understand how Santos resolves his ambiguity
regarding the value of science and the scientific method. He denounces certain
attitudes and streams in normal science: (a) the current research system that
penalizes autonomy and creativity of scholars (likely referring to the disciplines of
physics, math and technics) and (b) the production of academic knowledge to
obtain short-term results, subjugated to an instrumental and technical rationality. In
this regard, Santos agrees with other authors claiming that knowledge is becoming
capitalized and increasingly oriented to business aims (Blackmore 2001; Krimsky
2003; Lander 2008; Galcerán 2010). Interpreting Santos, we may conclude that if
science were to become epistemologically relativist (Boghossian 2006) or be
co-opted by business (Porrit 2000), it could lead to the discrediting of important
environmental information, allowing media, political discourse and profit-oriented
companies to take advantage of a common but not too reliable knowledge (see
Sect. 5 ‘Ethical’).
12.4 Technical
Likely the most recurrent concept in Santos’s theory is technique, and it can be used
to understand the environmental crisis. According to Melgaço (2013), the concept
of technique is an abstract and comprehensive approach and is defined by Santos
8
For example, the introduction of biological methods such as natural predators for controlling
plagues in agriculture; or prohibiting industrial and transgenic products in the market, of which
there is a certain probability of serious problems for both human and environmental health.
‘as the main form of relationship between humanity and milieu’ (Santos 1996, in
Melgaço 2013: 12). For Santos (1996), and following the insights of Séris (1994),
every artificial object in the environment, even the natural ones, might be included
among technical objects, if the criteria of its possible use are considered. Thus,
technical objects have a potential and instrumental use for any given technical
activity. This technical activity—that uses technical objects—includes any way of
manipulating the environment for human purposes. As such, technical objects and
technical activity have a spatial connotation, and should be studied as part of
something broader and more complex, a ‘technical’ environment. In this regard,
Santos views the environmental crisis as a technical problem of our contemporary
age: ‘interpretation [of the environmental crisis] is not possible without bearing in
mind, once more, the typology of technical objects and the motivations for their use
in the current historical period’ (Santos 1996: 170). For him, ‘technique is an
environment itself’, insofar as ‘technical objects need to be analyzed jointly by their
environment’ (Santos 1996: 22). Understanding the environmental crisis must be
done by analyzing it as a historical process: ‘nature and space are redefined by
technical evolution. Technique would be a pivotal reference in every historical
moment’ (Santos 1995: 696).
Historical analytic approaches often privilege industrialization to categorize
human progress into different stages (that is, pre-industrial, industrial and
post-industrial). But, according to Santos, industrialization is merely a feature of a
broader reality, that is, of technique. The main contribution of Santos is infusing
technique with a spatial dimension, which takes into account its specific geography
(Santos 1996). Using ‘technique’, Santos arrives at a different historical sequence.
He presents three sorts of milieu: a natural milieu, a technical milieu, and a
technical-scientific-informational milieu.
Santos calls the natural milieu the period where ‘technique does not have an
autonomous existence’ (Santos 1996: 157). Here, humans began a kind of domi-
nation by domesticating plants and livestock, but with a low level of intensity and
degradation. He explains that technique was in harmony with Nature, as long as it
was perfectly integrated without compromising the limitations of natural resources.
Moreover, some agrarian techniques (such as fallow, crop rotation and shifting
cultivation) enhanced certain natural conditions and restored temporary impover-
ishments of resources. To Santos, the main motivation or rationality of these
societies was ‘the preservation and maintenance of livelihood’ (Santos 1996: 158).
Divergence between technique and forces of Nature characterizes the technical
milieu. If technique was previously integrated with natural processes, now technical
objects are fashioned by an instrumental logic that ‘challenges natural logics and
creates…mixed and hybrid conflicts’ (Santos 1996: 158). Thus, technique makes its
own rules and shapes new environments, to the point that technical objects ‘are no
longer an extension of bodies, but extensions of territory, real prosthesis’ (Santos
1996: 158). In other words, technique is no longer adapted to a ‘human scale’, and
146 F.J. Toro
becomes a sign of a ‘progress trap’ (Wright 2004; Kingsnorth 2013).9

Mechanical-instrumental rationality superimposes itself onto Nature’s logic and
supports an economical rationality, that is, actions motivated by maximizing profit
and commodifying goods. The first great environmental impacts were created
through the technical milieu with the growth of cities, railroads and factories, which
incited protests, as Santos recognizes: ‘Luddite uprisings heralded environmentalist
struggles’ (Santos 1996: 159).
The technical-scientific-informational milieu expresses the highest level of
spatial transformation, in which reciprocal connections between local and global are
produced everywhere. Understanding this milieu requires a joint analysis of how
science, technology and the global market operate, which may provide a new
interpretation of environmental issues, since changes in Nature are subordinated to
those logics (Santos 1996: 159). For Santos, information is the power that drives
these forces. A global logic transmits stored and coded information in actions and
objects ‘dominating all territories and each territory as a whole’ (Santos 1996: 160).
Until two centuries ago, every society used and managed a section of Nature, but
the latest technologic leap and, more recently, the globalization of the economy,
‘has made possible the unification of Nature, by adopting a unique technical model’
(Santos 1995: 697), which serves a global economic logic. Consequently,
exploitation of resources and environmental damages are also unified with space.
This is one of the greatest contributions of Santos: he relates a global spatial logic to
global environmental crisis, which is not usually included in official environmen-
talist discourse. Interrogating spatial logics and their effects on technical environ-
ments reveals the real causes of the current environmental upheavals.
12.5 Ethical
It is a big paradox—and a tragedy—that the increasing worldwide environmental

concern has not helped to rectify many of our unsustainable behaviours. It would
appear contradictory to think that widespread acknowledgement of environmental
issues is, in the end, responsible for maintaining and, in fact, worsening environ-
mental illness. Unfortunately, there is some truth in this and Santos, once more,
may shed some light on this controversy.
For Santos, a particular image, or aesthetics, of Nature is projected by mass
media and shapes attitudes toward environmental problems. The mass media is
9
Wright (2004) refers to ‘progress trap’ as an innate condition of the historical evolution of
societies: in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, human societies introduce problems they
do not have the resources or political will to solve. Kingsnorth (2013: 53) explains it as follows:
‘each improvement in our knowledge or in our technology will create new problems, which
require new improvements. Each of these improvements tends to make society bigger, more
complex, less human-scale, more destructive of nonhuman life, and more likely to collapse under
its own weight’.
central to Santos because it disperses information that is assimilated by large and

diverse sectors of society. As he describes, ‘perception is mutilated whenever the
media consider it necessary; attracting attention through fear and sensationalism.
Many environmentalist movements, driven by media, destroy, mutilate, and repress
Nature’ (Santos 1992: 102). The image of Nature usually broadcast in the mass
media has two aesthetics: a positive aesthetics, exalting and stressing the wilderness
or what Santos calls ‘fantasy’; and a negative aesthetics, presenting a desolated,
polluted and dark face of Nature, or what he calls ‘fear’ (Santos 1992).
Asserting the importance of temporal and spatial contextualization, Santos
argues that ‘spectacle nature substitutes historic nature’ (Santos 1992: 102). In other
words, spectacle nature displaces that nature which is livelihood, ‘the place of
labour of all humans’ (Santos 1992: 102). It is usual in the media but also in
political discourse to find a yearning for a pristine Nature that humans have never
known; they offer a sense of affection for a stereotyped idea of Nature, mobilizing
images of beautiful landscapes, friendly wildlife, and healthy and pure environ-
ments. According to Santos’s ontology, these technical objects, that is, the mass
media milieu, also have intentions, intrinsic values and moral values, which asso-
ciate the good, the correct and, thus, the desirable with such aesthetic Nature.
However, as Santos denounces: ‘The power of images tends, therefore, to wipe out
the concepts, empty them of their respective meanings’ (Santos 1995: 702).
Climate change provides us with perhaps the best example of the way the media
use images to dramatically caricature Nature. For instance, the award-winning Al
Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) presents pairs of pictures of the
same place from different years in order to convince the audience that glaciers in
different regions are receding. Wide shots of landscape degradation transmit
veracity. Impressive scenes of flooding, fire and evacuation are shown in order to
provoke strong emotions, whether the images are directly related to climate change
or not.
Following Santos, technical objects such as these films have specific intentions,
which denaturalize and fragment the complexity of Nature itself. In short, the
denaturalization of Nature is the dehumanization of Nature, insofar as human
dimensions and human environments are not given the same prominence and
equivalent treatment as wilderness: ‘media…threatens the integrity of people…and
precisely, the human factor must be recovered by an environmentalism whose main
motivation should not be emotion’ (Santos 1995: 703). Accordingly, nature and
environmental problems are part of human affairs, insofar as humanity interacts
inevitably and constantly with the global biophysical system, that is, the biosphere.
Humans need specific environmental conditions to survive and natural resources to
produce technical objects, which allow sustenance and societal progress. This is
Santos’s premise for a proper ethics with respect to the environment in the transition
to more sustainable societies.
148 F.J. Toro
12.6 Final Remarks: Santos and the Environmental Crisis

as ‘Deterritorialization’
As I mentioned in the introduction, environmental issues were not one of Milton

Santos’s central concerns, save for his two aforementioned essays. However, his
broad and holistic theoretical approach encompasses the main ontological dimen-
sions that intermediate between humans and Nature. He presents coherent views of
human environment or milieu, where space operates as a crucial dimension. He
offers tools for a distinctive analysis of the environmental crisis, being specifically
and originally geographic. In addition, Santos’s thought is versatile and
cross-disciplinary, as well as both critical and radical.
In line with his thinking, a proper framework for the study of the environmental
crisis must include a broader sense of environment as milieu or geographic envi-
ronment. Santos believes that ‘the problem of human space has today a magnitude it
never had before’ (Santos 1992: 97), and that understanding the association
between problems of the environment and problems of human space is imperative.
Hegemonic agents of globalization operate within a model of development that has
severely affected our way of conceiving and handling Nature, a model that operates
within the new technical-scientific-informational milieu. A globalized economic
logic is often indifferent to ‘local and environmental realities,’ which ‘explains why
the environmental crisis has taken place in the current historical period, because the
power of triggered forces in a place overcomes the local capacity to control them’
(Santos 1996: 170). Environmental damages are thus locally produced, but trans-
ported by techniques moved by distant interests (Santos 1996: 170) in what Santos
(1996) calls deterritorialization. A globalized economic logic is behind our sense of
instability and the constant movement of people, capital and information. Our links
with objects, people and places are increasingly ephemeral and unstable (Bauman
2000). In turn, the global environmental crisis may be depicted through the
metaphor of ‘ecological uprooting’ (Toro 2011: 645). People, traditional uses,
cultural artifacts and activities operating in balance with the physical limitations of
local environments are being replaced by delocalized and expansive patterns. The
ecological disaster, according to Santos, is thus deterritorialized and even
globalized.
Santos’s interpretation of environmental crisis is real, that is, situational, con-
textual, non-apocalyptical and non-speculative. In addition, it is ontologically
geographically-based, emphasizing those features which constitute an artificial- and
natural-made milieu. Focusing on human environment or space requires moving
beyond disciplinary biases or geographic corporatisms, and being guided by
veracity: ‘efforts [that] concern us…are typical of an age which illustrates risks…
and the need for, in all fields of knowledge, acting heroically, while pursuing the
truth’ (Santos 1992: 105).
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Milton Santos’s Selected Bibliography
This is a selection of some of Milton Santos’s most relevant works organized by

type and language. For a more complete list of Santos publications see Santos
(2001).
Books (In Portuguese)
Santos, M. (1948). O Povoamento da Bahia: Suas causas econômicas. Salvador:

Imprensa Oficial da Bahia.
Santos, M. (1959). O centro da cidade do salvador. Salvador: Livraria Progresso
Editora.
Santos, M. (1960). Marianne em preto e branco. Salvador: Livraria Progresso
Editora.
Santos, M. (1965). A Cidade nos países subdesenvolvidos. Rio de Janeiro:
Civilização Brasileira.
Santos, M. (1978). Por uma geografia nova. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1978). O trabalho do geógrafo no terceiro mundo. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1978). A pobreza urbana. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1978). O espaço dividido. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Editora Francisco
Alves.
Santos, M. (1978). Economia espacial: Críticas e alternativas. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1979). Espaço e sociedade. Petrópolis: Vozes.
Santos, M. (1980). A urbanização desigual. Petrópolis: Vozes.
Santos, M. (1981). Manual de geografia urbana. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1982). Pensando o espaço do homem. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1982). Ensaios sobre a urbanização latino-americana. São Paulo:
Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1985). Espaço e método. Sao Paulo: Nobel.
Santos, M. (1987). O Espaço do cidadão. Sao Paulo: Nobel.
Santos, M. (1988). Metamorfoses do espaço habitado. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1990). Metrópole corporativa fragmentada: O caso de São Paulo. Sao
Paulo: Nobel.
Santos, M. (1993). A urbanização brasileira. São Paulo: Hucitec.

Science, Engineering, Practice 11, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53826-6
152 Milton Santos’s Selected Bibliography
Santos, M. (1994). Por uma economia política da cidade. São Paulo: Hucitec -
Editora PUC-SP.
Santos, M. (1994). Técnica, espaço, tempo: Globalização e meio técnico-científico
informacional. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (1996). A Natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo; Razão e emoção. São
Paulo: Hucitec.
Santos, M. (2000). Território e sociedade: Entrevista com Milton Santos. São
Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo.
Santos, M. (2000). Por uma outra globalização: Do pensamento único à
consciência universal. Rio de Janeiro: Record.
Santos, M., & Silveira, M. L. (2001). O Brasil: Território e sociedade no início do
século XXI. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Record.
Books (In French)
Santos, M. (1970). Dix essais sur les villes des pays sous-développés. Paris:
Ophrys.
Santos, M. (1971). Le métier du géographe en pays sous-développés. Paris: Ophrys.
Santos, M. (1971). Les villes du tiers monde. Paris: M.-Th. Génin, Librairies
Techniques.
Santos, M. (1975). L'espace partagé. Paris: M.-Th. Génin, Librairies Techniques.
Santos, M. (1985). Pour une géographie nouvelle. Paris: Editions Publisud.
Santos, M. (1990). Espace et méthode. Paris: Publisud.
Santos, M. (1997). La nature de l'espace: Technique et temp; Raison et émotion.
Paris: L'Harmattan.
Books (In Spanish)
Santos, M. (1973). Geografia y economia urbanas en los países subdesarrolados.

Barcelona: Oikos-Tau.
Santos, M. (1986). Espacio y metodo. Barcelona: Geocritica, 65, Septiembre,
Universidad de Barcelona.
Santos, M. (1990). Por una geografia nueva. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Santos, M. (1996). De la totalidad al lugar. Barcelona: Oikos-Tau.
Santos, M. (2000). La naturaleza del espacio: Técnica y tiempo; Razón y emoción.
Barcelona: Ariel.
Santos, M. (2004). Por otra globalización: Del pensamiento único a la conciencia
universal. Bogotá: Convenio Andrés Bello.
Book (In English)
Santos, M. (1979). The shared space: The two circuits of the urban economy
in underdeveloped countries. Translated by C. Gerry. London and New York,
Methuen.
Santos, M. (2017). Toward an other globalization: From the single thought to
universal conscience. Translated by L. Melgaço and T. Clarke. Cham: Springer.
Milton Santos’s Selected Bibliography 153
Book Chapters (In Portuguese)
Santos, M. (1960). Geografia e desenvolvimento econômico. In M. Neto & A. Luís

(Eds.), Desenvolvimento: Problemas e soluções (pp. 107–126). Salvador: Imprensa
Oficial de Bahia.
Santos, M. (1982). Geografia, marxismo e subdesenvolvimento. In R. Moreira
(Ed.), Geografia: teoria e crítica (pp. 13–22). Petropolis: Vozes,
Santos, M. (1991). Involução metropolitana e economia segmentada. In: A. C. T.
Ribeiro & D. B. Pinheiro Machado (Eds.), Metropolização e rede urbana:
Perspectivas dos anos 90. Rio de Janeiro: IPPUR, UFRJ.
Santos, M. (1994). O Retorno do território. In M. Santos, M. A. de Souza & M.
L. Silveira (Eds.), Território: Globalização e fragmentação (pp. 15–20). São
Paulo: Hucitec and ANPUR.
Santos, M. (1996). As Cidadanias mutiladas. In J. Lerner (Ed.), O Preconceito
(pp. 133–144). São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado.
Santos, M. (2000). A era da inteligência baseada na máquina. In A. L. Trindade &
R. Santos (Eds.), Multiculturalismo - mil e uma faces da Escola (pp. 149–157),
Rio de Janeiro: DP&A.
Santos, M. (2000). Globalização e meio geográfico: Do mundo ao lugar. In A.
J. Souza, E. Clemente de Souza & L. Magnomi Jr. (Eds.), Paisagem, território,
região: Em busca da identidade (pp. 51–56). Cascavel: Edunioeste.
Book Chapters (In English)
Santos, M. (1973). Economic development and urbanization in underdeveloped

countries: The two-flow systems of the urban economy and their spatial impli-
cations. In D. McKee & W. Leahy (Eds.), Urbanization and the development
process. New York: The Free Press.
Santos, M. (1979). Circuits of work. In S. Wallman (Ed.), Ethnicity at work
(pp. 215–226). London: The Macmillan Press.
Santos, M. (1995). World time and world space or just hegemonic time and space?
Geography, History and Social Sciences (pp. 45–49). Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Santos, M. (1995). Contemporary acceleration: World-time and world-space.
In G. Benko & U. Strohmayer (Eds.), Geography, History and Social Sciences
(pp. 171–176). Dordretch: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Santos, M. (1996). São Paulo: A growth process full of contradictions. In A. Gilbert
(Ed.), The mega-city in Latin America. Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations
University Press.
Articles (In Portuguese)
Santos, M. (1982). O Espaço e seus elementos: Questões de método. Revista

Geografia e Ensino. 1, 19–30.
Santos, M. (1982). Para que a geografia mude sem ficar a mesma coisa. Boletim
Paulista de Geografia, 59, 5–22.
Santos, M. (1985). O período técnico-científico e os estudos geográficos. Revista do

Departamento de Geografia da USP, 4, 15–20.
Santos, M. (1989). O espaço geográfico como categoria filosófica. Terra Livre, 5,
9–20.
Santos, M. (1991). A revolução tecnológica e o território: Realidades e perspecti-
vas. Caderno Prudentino de Geografia, 13.
Santos, M. (1991). Flexibilidade tropical. Arquitetura e Urbanismo, 38, 44–45.
Santos, M. (1992). 1992: A redescoberta da Natureza. Estudos Avançados, 14(6),
95–106.
Santos, M. (1993). Metrópole: A força dos fracos é o seu tempo lento. Ciência e
Ambiente, 5(7), 7–12.
Santos, M. (1993). Objetos e ações: Dinâmica espacial e dinâmica social. Geosul,
14, 49–59.
Santos, M. (1996). Por uma geografia cidadã: Por uma epistemologia da existência.
Boletim Gaúcho de Geografia. 21, 7–14.
Santos, M. (1996). O Lugar: encontrando o futuro. RUA-Revista de Arquitetura e
Urbanismo, 6, 34–39.
Santos, M. (1997). Da política dos estados à política das empresas. Cadernos da
Escola do Legislativo, 3(6), 9–23.
Santos, M. (1999). O Território e o saber local: Algumas categorias de análise.
Cadernos IPPUR, 3(2), 15–26.
Santos, M. (1999). O dinheiro e o território. GEOgraphia, 1(1), 7–13.
Santos, M., et al. (2000). O Papel ativo da geografia: Um manifesto. Território, 5
(9), 103–109.
Articles (In English)
Santos, M. (1974). Geography, marxism and underdevelopment. Antipode, 6(3),

1–9.
Santos, M. (1975). The periphery at the pole: Lima, Péru. In G. Grappert & H.
N. Rose (Eds.), The Social Economy of Cities, Urban Affairs Annual Review, 9,
335–360.
Santos, M. (1975). Space and domination: a Marxist Approach. International
Social Science Journal, 27(2), 346–363.
Santos, M. (1975). Underdevelopment, growth pole and social justice. Civilisations,
25(1–20), 18–31.
Santos, M. (1976). Articulation of modes of production and the two circuits of
urban economy wholesalers in Lima, Peru. Pacific Viewpoint, 3, 23–36.
Santos, M. (1976). Economic development and urbanization in underdeveloped
countries: The two sub-systems of the urban economy. Journal of the
Geographical Association of Tanzania, 6–36.
Santos, M. (1977). Society and space: Social formation as theory and method.
Antipode, 9(1), 3–13.
Santos, M. (1977). Spatial dialectics: The two circuits of urban economy in
underdeveloped countries. Antipode, 9(3), 49–60.
Santos, M. (1977). Planning underdevelopment. Antipode, 9(3), 86–98.

Santos, M. (1995). Universal reason, local reason: The spaces of rationality.
GeoJournal, 36(1), 108–110.
Santos, M. et al. (2017). The active role of geography: A manifesto. Translated by
T. Clarke & L. Melgaço. Antipode, 49(4). Retrieved February 1, 2017, from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12318/abstract.
Articles in Spanish
Santos, M. (1984). La Geografia a fines del siglo XX: Nuevas funciones de una
disciplina amenazada. Revista Internacional da Ciencia Sociales, 102(36), 693–
709.
Santos, M. (1991). Modernisación, medio tecnico científico y urbanización en
Brasil. Anales de Geografia de la Universidad Complutense, 10, Madri.
Santos, M. (1993). El mundo y la geografía hoy. Revista Geográfica Venezolana,
33, (1), 5–9.
Santos, M. (1995). Los espacios de la globalización. Revista Universidad del Valle,
10, 36–41.
Santos, M. (1997). Nuevas concepciones de la Geografia. GeoUruguay, 1(set),
117–123.
Santos, M. (1997). La fuerza del lugar: Orden universal, orden local Geographikós.
8(7).
Articles in French
Santos, M. (1959). Quelques problemes geographiques du centre de la ville de

salvador. L’Information Géographique, 23, 93–98.
Santos, M. (1968). La géographie urbaine et l’économie des villes dans les pays
sous-développés. Revue de Géographie de Lyon, 4(43), 361–376.
Santos, M. (1969). De la géographie de la faim à la planification régionale. Revue
Tiers Monde, 37, 95–114.
Santos, M. (1972). Les villes incomplètes des pays sous-développés. Annales de
Géographie, 445, 316–323.
Santos, M. (1974). Sous-dévéloppment et poles de croissance économique et
sociale. Revue Tiers Monde, 58, 271–286.
Santos, M. (1977). Une géographie de la médecine. Hérodote – Des résponses aux
questions de Michel Foucault, 6, 28–29.
Santos, M. (1978). De la société au paysage: La signification de l’espace humain,
Hérodote, 9, 66–73.
Santos, M. (1980). Société et espace transnationalisés dans le Venezuela actuel.
Revue Tiers Monde, 21(84), 709–720.
Santos, M. (1981). Structure, totalité, temps: L’espace du monde d’aujourd’hui.
Espaces-Temps, 18–19–20, 103–122.
Santos, M. (1988). Reflexions sur le rôle de la géographie dans la periode technico
scientifique. Cahiers de Géographie du Quebec, 32(87), 313–319.
Santos, M. (1992). Temps-monde et espace-monde: Relever le défi conceptual.

Strates, 7.
Santos, M. (1993). Les espaces de la globalisation. Cahiers du GEMDEV, 20,
161–172.
Full Texts in Proceedings of Conferences (in English)
Santos, M. (1970). The urbanisation of underdeveloped countries and its effects on

the nutrition of urban populations. Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress
on Food, Science and Technology, Washington D.C., Aug (pp. 169–174).
Santos, M. (1973). Urban crisis or epiphenomenon? Proceedings of the
International Population Conference, Liège, Belgium (pp. 287–291).
Santos, M. (1979). The cities of the third world: Industrialization and spatial
repercussions. Proceeding of the 22nd International Geographical Congress,
Montreal, Canada (pp. 10–17).
Santos, M. (1979). Research for the urban future: The case of Latin America.
Proceedings of the 22nd International Geographical Congress, Ottawa, Canada
(pp. 125–129).
Santos, M. (1992). Management and planning of great metropolis of the Third
World. Acts of the Second Conference of the World Capitals, Dakar (pp. 44–48).
Santos, M. (1992). Issues concerning the capitals of the world: capital cities in
developing countries, Foreword. Acts of the Second Conference of the World
Capitals, Dakar (pp. 44–48).
Other Publication in English
Santos, M. (1975). Underdevelopment and poverty: A geographer’s view. Toronto:

The Latin American in Residence Lectures 1972–1973, University of Toronto.
About Santos (In Portuguese)
Costa, P. E. F. (2013). O “jovem Milton Santos”: personagem do protótipo

metodológico: Revelar [matrizes clássicas originárias] para definir [van-
guarda, universalidade e viés geográfico]. (Ph.D. dissertation). Rio Claro: UNESP.
Ferreira, A. M. de A. (2000). Para um vocabulário fundamental da obra de Milton
Santos: Com equivalência em francês. (Ph.D. dissertation). São Paulo:
University of São Paulo.
Grimm, F. (2011). Trajetória epistemológica de milton santos. (Ph.D. dissertation).
São Paulo: University of São Paulo. Retrieved August 25, 2016, from http://
www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8136/tde-26062012-143800/pt-br.php.
Moraes, A. C. R. (2013). Território na geografia de Milton Santos. São Paulo:
Annablume.
Silva, M. A. (2002). Milton Santos: a trajetória de um mestre. In El Ciudadano, La
Globalización y la Geografía. Homenaje a Milton Santos. Scripta Nova, 2(124).
Retrieved August 18, 2016, from http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-124f.htm.
Silva, F. S., & Silva, M. A. (2004). Uma leitura de Milton Santos (1948–1964).
Geosul, 19(37), 157–189.
Souza, M. A. (Ed.) (1996). O Mundo do cidadão: Um cidadão do mundo. São
Paulo: Hucitec.
Tendler, S. (2006). Encontro com Milton Santos ou o mundo global visto do lado
de cá. Rio de Janeiro: Caliban Produções, DVD (89 min), son., color.
Tiercelin dos Santos, M.-H., & Levy, J. (2011). Biografia. Milton Santos [website].
Retrieved August 18, 2016, from http://miltonsantos.com.br/site/biografia/.
Vasconcelos, P. A. (2001). Milton Santos, geógrafo e cidadão do mundo (1926–
2001), Afro-Ásia, 25–26, 369–405.
About Santos (In English)
Melgaço, L. (2013). Security and surveillance in times of globalization: An

appraisal of Milton Santos’ Theory. International Journal of E-Planning
Research, 2(4), 1–12.
Melgaço, L. (2017). Thinking Outside the Bubble of the Global North: Introducing
Milton Santos and “The Active Role of Geography”. Antipode, 49(4), Retrieve 5
March 2017, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12319/full.
Melgaço, L & Clarke, T. (2017). Introducing Milton Santos and “The Active Role
of Geography”. Symposium. Antipode. Retrieved 5 March 2017, from https://
antipodefoundation.org/supplementary-material/the-active-role-of-geography/.
Souza, M. A. (2009). Santos, M. In R. Kitchin & N. Thrift (Eds.), International
Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (pp. 11–14). Oxford: Elsevier.
About Santos (In Other Languages)
Levy, J. (Ed.) (2007). Milton Santos, philosophe du mondial, citoyen du local.

Paris: Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes.
Maurel, J. (1996). Homenaje al profesor Milton Santos. Anales de Geografía de la
Universidad Complutense, 16, 203–223.
Scripta N. (2002). El ciudadano, la globalización y la geografía: Homenaje a Milton
Santos, 6 (124). Retrieved August 18, 2016, from http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/
sn-124.htm.
Reference
Santos, M. (2001). Curriculum Vitae. Milton Santos [website]. Retrieved August 18,
2016, from http://www.miltonsantos.com.br/site/miltonsantos_curriculum.pdf.
About Milton Santos
Milton Almeida dos Santos (1926–2001) was one of

the most important and prominent geographers in the
so-called Global South. Despite his specialization in
themes such as urban studies, developing countries and
globalization, his main contributions to human science
are his expansive theorizations operating well beyond
any specific subdiscipline of geography, creating what
could be called today a ‘Miltonian School of
Geographic Thought’. He assembled a set of coherent
and complementary concepts and ideas that together
explain different spatial phenomena.
Born in Brotas de Macaúbas, Brazil, Santos first
obtained a degree in law, but his passion from his earliest professional years was
geography. He worked in high schools as a teacher of geography, in journalism and
in politics before starting his academic life as a geographer. He completed his Ph.D.
in Geography in 1958 at the University of Strasbourg, France, under the supervision
of Prof. Jean Tricart. Returning to Brazil, Santos worked in different universities
until 1964, when a military coup d’état ousted Brazil’s democratically elected
government. Santos was arrested by the military police and was released on the
condition that he be deported. During 13 years of exile Santos worked as an
academic in different countries in Europe, North America and Africa.
In 1977 Santos returned again to Brazil and from 1983 onwards was affiliated
with the University of São Paulo where he worked until he passed away on 24 June
2001 at the age of 75. Santos received the honoris causa distinction from 20
universities. His impressive academic production includes almost 300 scientific
articles and more than 40 books, including classics like The Shared Space, A
Natureza do Espaço and Toward an Other Globalization. Milton Santos was the
only geographer from outside the Euro-Anglo world to be awarded the Vautrin Lud
International Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of Geography.

About the Editors
Lucas Melgaço is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology of the

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium where he combines his background in
geography with his specialization in security, surveillance and policing studies. He
holds a doctorate degree in Geography from a partnership between the University of
São Paulo (USP) and the University of Paris 1—Panthéon Sorbonne with a thesis
entitled ‘Urban securitization: from the psychosphere of fear to the technosphere of
security’. Lucas is a former post-doctoral researcher at the Crime and Society
Research Group (CRiS) at the VUB, at the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s
University, Canada and at the Department of Geography of the Federal University
of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His main scientific interests are in the domains of urban
security, urban conflicts, surveillance, public order, social movements and protests,
and in the relationships between information and communication technologies and
security. He has also worked on translating and introducing the theories of Milton
Santos to the English-speaking community. Lucas is editor-in-chief of the journal
Criminological Encounters.
Address: Lucas Melgaço, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
Email: [email protected]
Carolyn Prouse is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at the
University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. She holds a Master’s
degree and bachelor’s degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Carolyn
has spent time at the University of São Paulo and at the cultural and research institute
Barraco #55 in Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research interests
are in urban studies, critical development studies and critical health geographies. She
operates conceptually at the nexus of postcolonial/decolonial and anti-racist feminist
approaches.
Address: Carolyn Prouse, 210D-1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2,
Canada

About the Contributors
Sarita Albagli is a sociologist with a Ph.D. in Geography. She is a Senior

Researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology
(IBICT), and Senior Lecturer in the Post-Graduate Program in Information Science,
developed by IBICT and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She
coordinates the Interdisciplinary Laboratory on Information and Knowledge Studies
(Liinc) and she is Editor of the scientific journal Liinc em Revista. Her research
interests include the following topics: information, knowledge and social innova-
tion; open and collaborative science and technology; network and territorial
informational dynamics.
Aurélien Reys is a geographer who specializes in Development Geography. He
wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the Brazilian gemstones industry. He is currently a
Post-doctoral Researcher at the Centre de Coopération International en Recherche
Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD). His current research focuses on
the impacts of agricultural investment on household livelihoods and food security in
East Africa.
Eliza Pinto de Almeida holds bachelor, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Geography
from the University of São Paulo (USP). She is Associate Professor in the Institute
of Geography, Development and Environment at the Federal University of Alagoas.
Her scientific interests include the relationships between territory and health with an
emphasis on the organization of public health services.
Samuel Frederico has graduate (2002) and Master’s (2004) degrees in Geography
from the State University of Campinas, and a Ph.D. (2009) in Human Geography
from the University of São Paulo, with a doctoral internship (2007/08) held at the
Université de Toulouse II Le Mirail, France. He is currently Assistant Professor at
the São Paulo State University (UNESP—Rio Claro) and Assistant Professor of the
Graduate Program in Geography at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).
Samuel’s research is in Economic and Regional Geography, and focuses on the
following themes: modernization and expansion of Brazilian agriculture;

164 About the Contributors
competitive regions; urban-rural relationships; agro-logistics; the sugarcane

industry; coffee production; soybeans; and financial capital and agribusiness.
Marina Castro de Almeida has a graduate (2002) degree in Geography from the
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, a Master’s (2005) in Geography from
the State University of Campinas, and Ph.D. (2013) in Human Geography from the
University of São Paulo, with a doctoral internship (2012) held at the City
University of New York (CUNY). She is currently Assistant Professor at the Minas
Gerais Triangle Federal University (UFTM). Her research in Geography has an
emphasis in Economic Geography, focusing on the following themes: globaliza-
tion; uneven geographical development; territorial distribution of business services;
and precarious work.
Luís Angelo dos S. Aracri holds bachelor, Master’s and doctoral degrees in
Geography from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Since 2011 he
has been Associate Professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). His
scientific interests include: technological transformations and their impacts on the
organization of territory; dynamics of regional productive structures; and the
political economy of the territory.
Fabrício Gallo holds bachelor, Master’s and doctoral degrees in Geography from
the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. He is an Assistant Professor
in the Department of Territorial Planning and Geoprocessing (DEPLAN) of
Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). His scientific interests include Brazilian
territorial integration with emphases on federalism; intergovernmental transfers of
public resources; and territorial politics.
Júlia Adão Bernardes is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she also completed her bachelor
(1974), and Master’s (1983) degrees. She holds a Ph.D. (1993) in Human
Geography from the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. Julia’s interests include
economic geography; regional geography; and modernization of Brazilian
agriculture.
Roberta Carvalho Arruzzo holds bachelor (2002), Master’s (2004) and doctoral
(2009) degrees in Geography from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
In 2011 and 2012 she engaged in teaching and research activities at the same
university. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Rural Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro, Coordinator of the Research Group of Territorial Resistance
(COLETIVO), and a researcher with the research group Geography and Indigenous
Peoples (Geopovos) at the same institution. She has experience in the fields of
Human Geography and Agricultural Geography and for more than ten years has
About the Contributors 165
been studying the territorial relations between the modernization of agriculture and
indigenous peoples.
Maria Tereza Duarte Paes graduated (1985) from Geography at the Universidade
Estadual Paulista (UNESP). At the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) she
concluded a Master’s (1992) degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. (1999) in Social
Sciences. She has been Professor at UNICAMP since 1994: first in the Sociology
Department and, from 1999 onwards, in the Geography Department. In 2007 she
concluded a Post-doc in Geography at the Université de Pau et des Pays de L’Adour
in France. Her research is focused on cultural heritage, tourism and the urban
environment, and she coordinates the research group Geography, Tourism and
Cultural Heritage.
Claudia Levy holds a Master’s (2006) in Geography from the State University of
Campinas (UNICAMP). She completed a Joint International M.Sc. (2008) on
Regional Development Planning and Management at the University of Dortmund in
Germany and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Kumasi in Ghana under a DAAD
scholarship. From 2009 to 2013 she was a Researcher associated with the German
Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITSL), joining the International
Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) at the University of Kassel in
Germany. Within this international network her Ph.D. was completed in 2016 with
her project on rural livelihoods and farmer groups in Mozambique.
Francisco J. Toro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Regional
Geographical Analysis and Physical Geography. His doctoral dissertation, com-
pleted in 2011, was entitled ‘Crisis ecológica y geografía: Planteamientos y prop-
uestas en torno al paradigma ecológico-ambiental’. The main foci of his research
publications are theoretical and critical approaches to sustainability and degrowth;
the relationship between environmental identity and urban space; and environ-
mentalism within anarchist geographic thinking. He has recently contributed a
chapter to The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit
of Revolt (2016) and is Co-editor of Historical Geographies of Anarchism: Early
Critical Geographers and Contemporary Challenges.

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Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 11

Milton Santos: A Pioneer

Acknowledgement: We would like to express our gratitude to Marie-Hélène Tiercelin,

ISSN 2509-5579 ISSN 2509-5587 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932412

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Copyediting: PD Dr. Hans Günter Brauch, AFES-PRESS e.V., Mosbach, Germany

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Milton Santos and the Centrality of the Periphery . ............. 1

4.4 The Two Circuits and the Shared Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

8.4 Selective Renovation of Materialities and the Distribution

12.3 Epistemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 141

Lucas Melgaço and Carolyn Prouse

Abstract This chapter introduces Brazilian Geographer Milton Santos to

Lucas Melgaço, Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Email: [email protected].

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

1.1 Milton Santos: A Geographer of the South?

Santos theorizes processes, too, that cannot be adequately captured by any of

1.2 The Restless Thinker

boarding school. As a descendent of slaves,5 it might be easy to assume Santos had

Santos became editor of the newspaper A Tarde, a prestigious local media

1.3 A Miltonian Epistemology

Milton Santos reinterpreted ‘traditional’ geographic concepts in his own way.

slow people, dynamic inertia, rugosity, sociospatial formation, hegemonic and

An accessible introduction to Milton Santos’s thought is through the docu-

later in Portuguese in 1978. Many in geography consider The Shared Space a

article ‘Security and surveillance in times of globalization: An Appraisal of Milton

1.4 Crossing Linguistic Divides

This book is a project in interpretation and translation. Committing to translate

an interpretation of key concepts, but also involve very politicized decisions as to

1.5 The Book

This book is a collection of translations and interpretations made by an array of

Translated by Lucas Melgaço, Tim Clarke and Carolyn Prouse.

Abstract (by the translators) This chapter is an annotated interpretation and

We live with a notion of territory that is inherited from an incomplete modernity1,2

Lucas Melgaço, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 25

This simultaneous happening,8 made possible thanks to the miracles of science,

meaning of how actions, things, people and places interact.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 33

dynamics of communication in the territory. To conclude, I propose an agenda of

3.2 Space, a Hybrid

3.3 Technical-Scientiﬁc-Informational Milieu

3.4 The Geography of Networks

Within the technical-scientiﬁc-informational milieu, space is increasingly moulded

• they encompass and reverberate different logical systems and types;

3.5 Horizontalities and Verticalities

Santos establishes a difference between the dynamics of information and of com-

3.6 New Frontiers

of the globalization process. However, he also acknowledged the potentialities that

Albagli, S., & Maciel, M. L. (2013). Informação, conhecimento e democracia no capitalismo

Abstract During his academic career Milton Santos published approximately 40

Aurélien Reys, Post-doctoral Researcher, Centre de Coopération International en Recherche

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 45

4.2 Milton Santos and the Third World

4.3 Cities of the Third World

disadvantaged suburban areas, an analysis similar to that of centre-periphery