The Latin American Meeting of Sociospatial and Socioterritorial Movements (ELAMSS) comes out of a process of dialogue between researchers and activists across several countries that provides a basis for a geographical reading of social movements through the concepts of sociospatial and socioterritorial movements. The struggles of movements for spaces and territories should be seen from a critical perspective and from the multidimensionality of space, moving beyond readings that prioritize absolute space, reducing it to a mere area of surface. In our Latin America the movements involved in struggle have a multidimensional perspective of space, from the land to water, from bodies to ideas, from seeds to food, from work to culture, from organization to public policy, these movements create space and appropriate territories, producing territorialities. ELAMSS is a space of interdisciplinary dialogue in the face of intense processes of social exclusion and deterritorialization provoked by neoliberal policies, thinking of spaces and territories as a means of better understanding conflicts, solidarities and processes of transformation.
The Second Latin American Meeting of Sociospatial and Socioterritorial Movements is taking place during a pandemic. This situation has transformed the event, both in its formal characteristics and the topics addressed.
The context of the pandemic and social distancing restrictions in several countries have provided new conditions through which territorial disputes in cities and the countryside are being transformed, in addition to issues like the privatization of space, racism, homophobia, questions of gender and the repression of territorial occupations, among others.
These processes present new analytical challenges which must be debated, so as to begin to systematize experiences and theoretical-methodological strategies and identify key paths for intervention and action.
The first ELAMSS (2019) took place at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP, São Paulo) and the Escuela Nacional Florestan Fernandes in Guararema in São Paulo (Brazil) and sought to open a space of debate among an international network of researchers from geography and other disciplines working across different places and scales. It generated greater knowledge of the policies that have resulted from the actions of sociospatial and socioterritorial movements, in turn helping to mobilize against the criminalization of movements, including prejudice against peoples and genders.
At this second ELAMSS we seek to continue these discussions with the expectation of strengthening our theoretical and analytical tools for defining, analysing and contributing to the understanding of sociospatial and socioterritorial movements, strengthening research, inviting them to participate, and opening up the universities to the peoples of our America.

General objectives of ELAMSS II

• Integrate all voices and approaches to the theoretical-practical debate, including: academics, state actors and social movements leaders and activists
• Incorporate problematization of the pandemic, its impacts, reconfigurations and social responses and how these play out in different spaces and territories
• Transcend segmented discussions around the urban/rural debate
• Emphasise a spatial/territorial focus in order to analyse diverse dimensions that cut across the practices, relations and meanings involved in the processes of mobilization and social organization

Contact

encuentro.elamss@gmail.com
encuentro.elamss.7
ELAMSS 2021
@elamss2021