5. Water, Land, Socioterritorial Movements, Labour, and Capital: Territorial Disputes and Conflictuality in Brazil

This chapter is the result of a collective effort by a group of geographers in which we propose a territorialized reading of certain complex questions related to water, land, socioterritorial movements, capital, and labour in contemporary Brazil. Our starting point is that an understanding of territorial issues is fundamental as part of an integrated approach to sectoral issues, and that we need to understand territory as being something more than just the ground surface of an area of land. Territory is more than surface; people are also territories. We make reference to actions that produce social relations and, in that sense, create territories. People create territories as much as territories create people. Territories and people are therefore inseparable. We emphasize the complexity of socioterritorial relations, and argue that a territorialized understanding is essential when analysing disputes over natural resources and the processes that produce new territories. Territorial disputes are key when considering power relations through a typology of territories, meaning that a multidimensional analysis is required; in a one-dimensional examination of a territory as simply an area of land, these realities are likely to be overlooked.