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

ended

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.