Political Ecology of Urbanization: Convergences and Divergences from Latin America

Abstract

Political ecology and urban studies are fields of heterogeneous and dynamic knowledge that are difficult to delimit both due to their breadth and complexity, but also due to their folds, voids and juxtapositions. For this reason, it is necessary to contribute to the construction of an intellectual map that allows locating the contributions of the political ecology of urbanization from Latin America. In this sense, we develop a bibliographic research to identify and understand the theoretical and political-ideological convergences and divergences between these still emerging fields. For this, we carry out a content analysis that relates 30 articles from scientific journals. The results show convergences in the theoretical integration of the urbanization phenomenon into the transdisciplinary and holistic frameworks of political ecology, and divergences in the radical nature of the criticism of the capitalist system, the intellectual influences of multilateral organizations and the greater or lesser tendency to reproduce the fragmentation of the urban phenomenon. We conclude with a proposal for a general research agenda.