Abstract
Abstract. In this paper we analyze the territorial organizing of two dissimilar social movements across Greater Buenos Aires, showing how urban struggles produce territory as a key element of their political practice. Through their relational, contested character, these Latin American territories foreground an alternative to state-centric, Anglo-American models of territorial politics. First, the unemployed workers' movements in the urban periphery show how the territorial organization of production and reproduction creates new social relations, and second, an assembly-organized market emphasizes the relationality of territory in constructing solidarity economies. This paper contributes to debates on urban social movements by showing that these movements use practices of territorial organizing to produce urban territory in distinct ways, and that territorial organizing is relational, contested, and central to movements' praxis.
Highlights
Territorial movements rapidly expanded in the context of the devastating effects of neoliberalism that swept Latin America in the 1990s and early 2000s, remaking both urban and rural spaces
In this paper we explore the praxis of territorial organizing as developed by social movements in Buenos Aires
Territorial organizing is crucial to the two movements which we focus on in Greater Buenos Aires: an unemployed workers’ movement and a solidarity market
Summary
Some of the most important social movements in Latin America have concentrated on “territorial organizing”, highlighting the political importance of territory to urban struggles. From the Bolivian water and gas wars, to the Argentinian 2001 rebellion under the banner of “they all must go,” neoliberal governments were met with multiple forms of resistance (Colectivo Situaciones, 2012; Gutiérrez Aguilar, 2014; Zibechi, 2008) This resistance did occur on a large-scale, visible protests that attacked sites of centralized power and in the everyday territorial organizing of hundreds of social movements that built power and new spatial relations in neighborhoods where people live, work, and trade. Mason-Deese et al.: Territorial organizing of movements in Buenos Aires ing urban conflicts and the productive aspects of social movements This perspective moves us away from an overfocus on the spectacular moments of protest and alerts us to different forms of power. By looking at different cases we demonstrate how different non-state actors produce territories in contested and relational ways
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