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H2020Staff exchange2020–2025

CONTESTED_TERRITORY · From Contested Territories to alternatives of development: Learning from Latin America

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2020-03-01 → 2025-12-31
EU contribution
€2,461,000
Participants
26
Scheme
MSCA-RISE

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

From Contested Territories to alternatives of development: Learning from Latin America

Contested Territories was an international and intersectoral consortium bringing together 22 academic and non-academic organisations from Europe and Latin America in a joint research programme running from 2020 to 2025. The project addressed a central societal and scientific challenge: how to understand, document and support territories shaped by unequal power relations, capital accumulation, dispossession and socio-environmental conflict, while also recognising the collective practices through which communities defend, reimagine and co-produce alternatives. This challenge is highly relevant for society because territorial conflicts are intensifying in both urban and rural contexts, often in connection with extractivism, housing pressures, environmental degradation, exclusion and the unequal distribution of resources and risks. Against this background, the overall objective of Contested Territories was to generate conceptual, empirical and methodological knowledge on innovative and sustainable bottom-up models of territorial development. The project sought to move beyond mainstream understandings of sustainable development by producing collaborative and situated knowledge in dialogue with communities, civil society actors, cultural practitioners and researchers. It examined how communities shape, negotiate, imagine and manage territories under contested conditions, and how they develop alternative forms of social integration, adaptation and resistance. A core ambition was to connect critical territorial studies with Latin American popular thought, Indigenous worldviews, decolonial “otros saberes”, ecological, feminist and Marxist perspectives, while also experimenting with audiovisual, artistic and performative methodologies that place communities at the centre of horizontal and trust-based research partnerships. By the end of the action, the project concluded that contested territories must be understood not only as sites of conflict and dispossession, but also as spaces where alternative territorial futures are actively produced. The project demonstrated that collaborative, participatory and creative research approaches can generate robust scientific knowledge while also strengthening epistemic justice, public debate and the visibility of community-based alternatives.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The overall objective of CONTESTED_TERRITORY is to form an international and intersectoral network of organisations from across Europe and Latin America on a joint research programme that pursues conceptual and empirical knowledge generation on innovative and sustainable bottom-up models of territorial development. We consider community-led practice enacting alternative knowledge as basis for a productive framework to grasp transformations of space and society supporting local-to-global knowledge diffusion. In particular, the RISE action will deliver novel understandings on how ordinary people produce innovative models for more sustainable and resilient environments. By this, we will learn how they shape, negotiate, imagine and collaboratively manage territories in contested and uneven power relations and how they progress models of social integration.The participants of the network will exchange and generate new knowledge to surpass mainstream understandings of development and contribute to scientific breakthroughs by integrating bottom-up strategies to adapt to risk, vulnerability and exclusion. Our progress will engage with and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Agenda from alternative conceptual and practical perspectives. At the same time, we will nurture novel approaches to redefine the relations between humanity and the envi-ronment by including discourses emerging out of Latin American popular culture and indigenous cosmovision. This provides opportunities for academic and non-academic participants to actively shape practice and policies targeting more inclusive territorial development and different models of social cohesion. This will generate significant benefits for societies in Latin America, with transferable out-comes to Europe. Staff members participating in this action will develop new skills; be exposed to inspiring research environments, significantly widening their career perspectives in and beyond academia.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FUER TECHNOLOGIE · KarlsruheCoordinatorGermany
  • ASOCIACION CIVIL POR LA IGUALDAD YLA JUSTICIA A.C.I.J · Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos AiresArgentina
  • BASURAMA ASOCIACION · MadridSpain
  • CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisFrance
  • CONSEJO NACIONAL DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS Y TECNICAS (CONICET) · Buenos AiresArgentina
  • FACULTAD LATINOAMERICANA DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES · CurridabatCosta Rica
  • HABITA65 - ASSOCIACAO PELO DIREITO A HABITACAO E A CIDADE · LisboaPortugal
  • IDRA BARCELONA INSTITUTE SCCL · BARCELONASpain
  • INSTITUT DE RECHERCHE POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT · MarseilleFrance
  • POLITECNICO DI MILANO · MilanoItaly
  • PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD JAVERIANA · BogotaColombia
  • TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT BERLIN · BerlinGermany
  • THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD · SHEFFIELDUnited Kingdom
  • TORERO FILM GBR · KonstanzGermany
  • UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE MADRID · MadridSpain
  • UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES · Buenos AiresArgentina
  • UNIVERSIDAD DE CHILE · SantiagoChile
  • UNIVERSIDAD DE LA FRONTERA · TemucoChile
  • UNIVERSIDAD DE LA LAGUNA · San Cristobal de La LagunaSpain
  • UNIVERSIDAD MAYOR DE SAN ANDRES · La PazBolivia
  • UNIVERSIDAD MAYOR DE SAN SIMON · CochabambaBolivia
  • UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE GENERAL SAN MARTIN · San Martin Buenos AiresArgentina
  • UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE RIO NEGRO · ViedmaArgentina
  • UNIVERSITAET LEIPZIG · LeipzigGermany
  • UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS · LeedsUnited Kingdom
  • UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE · Newcastle Upon TyneUnited Kingdom

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union