Experience, work, and ways of life: Towards a debate on territories of traditional peoples and communities and processes of struggle and
resistance
Rev. Educação e Fronteiras, Dourados, v. 13, n. 00, e023002, 2023. e-ISSN:2237-258X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30612/eduf.v13i00.16859 12
communities, from a methodological point of view, presupposes ethnographies of the territories,
but observing the contradictions, the crossings of the capital's orders, but also the subversions,
the values and cultures that constitute class relations.
From this perspective, we understand the category territory from Santos (2005, p. 253,
our translation), for whom "[...] the use of territory is given by the dynamics of places [...]",
which implies considering that it is "[...] the space of existence and coexistence [...]", resulting in
forms of relationships through a "solidary happening" (SANTOS, 2011 apud ANJOS, 2011, p.
55, our translation), woven daily.
Given this, we understand that every place, as territory, is constituted from life stories
loaded with peculiar characteristics that constitute singular identities, but also collective, in the
existence of people who lived and lived, organized and organized themselves in a given time and
space. Therefore, "The territory is the ground plus the population; this is an identity, the fact and
the feeling of belonging to what belongs to us [...]" (SANTOS, 2003 apud ANJOS, 2011, p. 55,
our translation). And still, for Anjos (2009, p. 108, our translation):
The territory is essential because it defines the human group that occupies it,
where they are located, and why they are in that space (historicity). The land -
the terreiro (meeting places) - is not only a physical dimension but, above all, a
common space, ancestral that everyone has records of the history, the personal
and collective experience of its people, in short, an instance of concrete work
and experiences of the past and the present.
How individuals direct, therefore, both their social and personal lives enable conditions
for a being beyond the guarantee of food and clothing, but can also understand the expansion of
consciousness in the face of what we understand as a citizen formation, in which the welfare of a
whole passes through the way each one acts, each one and vice versa, in collective, starting from
the understanding that "Consciousness is defined by men when living their history"
(THOMPSON, 1984, p. 34, our translation), with experiences, although in appearance
individual, but collective in relationships mediated by work, which constitute us as social beings
(MARX, 2008),
For Santos (2003 apud ANJOS, 2011, p. 55, our translation), "When we talk about the
territory, we must, therefore, understand that we are talking about territory used, used by a
population" that reflects, works, studies, expresses its ideological position, and participates in
occasional or constant religious and cultural manifestations. It is in this sense that, according to
Santos (2003 apud ANJOS, 2011, p. 55, our translation), "Territory is the basis of work,
residence, material and spiritual exchanges, and life, over which it influences".