Counter-Hegemonic Strategy from the Global South: A Pluri-scalar War of Position

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Notes

1 See: Anisin (2020); Bieler and Nowak (2021); Blackledge (2019); Bookchin (2015); Carroll (2016); Featherstone and Herod (2008); Disney and Williams (2014); Egan (2019); Gordon (2012); Hosseini, Gills and Goodman (2017); Kellogg (2017); Panitch, Albo and Chibber (2012); Sankey and Munck (2020); Sparke (2008); Vasilaki (2018).

2 Structures, rather than fixed and static, are here viewed as relatively durable “slow processes”, in comparison to other processes (Sayer 2018: 108).

3 See my PhD research (Muhr 2008), published in revised version (Muhr 2011), and related publications as referenced. The PhD thesis contains photographic documentation of some of the place-based examples mentioned in this article.

4 Gramsci’s concept of “subaltern” enhances the Marxist category of “class” by including classes and non-classes (socially and politically marginalised and disaggregated groups) (Galastri 2018).

5 “Praxis” draws from (post-)Marxist, feminist and liberation theology thinking and expresses the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, as in Paulo Freire’s action-reflection cycle (a continuous process of acting-reflecting-acting upon the world, with the objective of transforming the inequitable society or “structure[s] of oppression”, Freire [1970] 1996).

6 As will become clearer, this is a geographical relational approach: a socio-spatial ontology that conceptualises space as socially produced through relations that extend beyond specific places while constituting place and scale; relational epistemologies, that inter alia recognise various counter-hegemonic practices and formations across difference while theorising from rather than about them; and a politics of possibility that associates academic activism with challenging hegemonic knowledges (Elwood, Lawson and Sheppard 2017). “Ontology” refers to one’s fundamental assumptions or beliefs about how the world is, and “epistemology” to how to achieve understanding of the world (Harvey 1996: 79). A relational-processual ontology is fundamental to dialectics, which to discuss, however, is beyond the scope of this article (for this, see Hart 2018; Harvey 1996: 46–68; Ollman 2003).

7 Despite a rich repertoire of imageries – “pockets of resistance”, “the anti-hegemonic locale”, “transnationalism from below”, “horizontal networks”, and the like – the failure of the Occupy movement once more reveals the limits of this approach (Muhr 2010a; Roberts 2012). Gramscian/neo-Marxist inspired movements, linked to progressive parties and/or state apparatuses, such as the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement, are outside this category (Purcell 2012).

8 Contradiction as “a union of two or more processes that are simultaneously supporting and undermining one another” (Ollman 2003: 84).

9 This is only one example of place-(re)making and rescaling within the multidimensional strategy of Venezuelan state restructuring. Donald Kingsbury (2017), for example, although not explicitly framed by place theory, illustrates the (re)making of Caracas through counter-hegemonic state transport infrastructure policies.

10 Such as the Venezuelan state passenger airline CONVIASA, founded during Hugo Chávez’s presidency in 2004, see http://www.conviasa.aero (consulted 6th July 2021).

11 For example, between 2006-2014, CONVIASA realised 506 flights transporting 78,416 Misión Milagro patients (http://www.conviasa.aero/es/nosotros/misionmilagro, consulted 6 September 2020).