Marcelo Lopes de Souza


Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor of socio-spatial development and political ecology at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he co-ordinates the . He received the first prize of the German Society of Research on Latin America/ADLAF in 1994 for his PhD thesis about the urban question in Brazil, and the Jabuti Award for his book O desafio metropolitano in 2001. His book Fobópole: O medo generalizado e a militarização da questão urbana, published in 2008, was nominated for the Jabuti Award in 2009.

Intellectual Contribution

He pioneered the study of spatiality and the social production of space from an ‘autonomist’ perspective as early as in the 1980s. Marcelo Lopes de Souza regards himself as a 'libertário'. From his viewpoint, the libertarian thought and praxis encompasses not only anarchism - second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century - and neo-anarchism - from the second half of the 20th century onwards -, but also ‘autonomist libertarian’ authors and movements.
His research projects have covered several themes related to the interdisciplinary field of urban studies and, more recently, to the interface of urban studies and political ecology. He has contributed to critical environmental geography and political ecology from a left-libertarian perspective, focusing above all on the problems of environmental injustice and the conservative discourses about environmental risk and protection.

Studies

He studied geography and urban sociology in Brazil in the 1980s, and received his PhD degree in geography from the University of Tübingen in 1993.

Career

He acted as a visiting researcher at the Geography Department of the University of Tübingen and at the Geography Department of the Royal Holloway College, University of London, as well as a visiting professor at the Habitat Unit of the Technical University of Berlin, at the Graduate Programme on Latin American Studies of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/UNAM, at the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt , at the Colegio de Geografía of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/UNAM and at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Since the mid-1990s, Marcelo Lopes de Souza has acted as a coordinator or co-coordinator of a number of research projects, which have covered themes such as: urban violence and the ‘militarisation of the urban question’ in different countries; potentialities, limits and problems of ‘participative urban planning and management’; the spatial practices of emancipative social movements in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and South Africa; and environmental justice and urban-environmental struggles in Brazil. He founded the Rede de Pesquisadores em Geografia Ambiental in 2017, whose focus is on critical environmental geography and political ecology.

Writings and participation in editorial boards

Marcelo Lopes de Souza published eleven books and more than one hundred papers and book chapters in different languages covering subjects such as spatial theory, participation in urban planning, movements theory, urban ‘utopias’/alternative visions, urban problems, and urban political ecology. His books include, besides the ones previously mentioned, Mudar a cidade and A prisão e a ágora, among others.
He is one of the editors of the prestigious Brazilian urban studies journal Cidades, and is associate editor of the international journalCity as well. He belongs to the Advisory Board of the journals sub\urban.zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies and Territorios. He further belonged to the Advisory Board of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography between 2010 and 2104.

Activism

Marcelo Lopes de Souza has collaborated with urban movements organisations since the 1980s, especially with different organisations of Brazil’s movement in different ways, from 'recherche-action' to activists in the framework of study groups and political seminars to the organisation of public events. More recently, his contributions as an activist have been mainly related to the struggle against environmental injustice in Brazilian cities.

Books

  • 1996 – Urbanização e desenvolvimento no Brasil atual. São Paulo: Ática.
  • 2000 – O desafio metropolitano. A problemática sócio-espacial nas metrópoles brasileiras. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
  • 2002 – Mudar a cidade. Uma introdução crítica ao planejamento e à gestão urbanos. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
  • 2003 – ABC do desenvolvimento urbano. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
  • 2004 – Planejamento urbano e ativismos sociais. São Paulo: Editora UNESP.
  • 2006 – A prisão e a ágora. Reflexões sobre a democratização do planejamento e da gestão das cidades. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
  • 2008 – Fobópole. O medo generalizado e a militarização da questão urbana. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
  • 2011– A produção do espaço urbano. Agentes e processos, escalas e desafios. São Paulo: Contexto.
  • 2013 – Os conceitos fundamentais da pesquisa sócio-espacial". Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
  • 2015 – Dos espaços de controle aos territórios dissidentes: Escritos de divulgação científica e análise política. Rio de Janeiro: Consequência.
  • 2016 – The Radicalization of Pedagogy.. Londres: Rowman& Littlefield.
  • 2016 – Theories of Resistance.. Londres: Rowman& Littlefield.
  • 2016 – The Practice of Freedom.. Londres: Rowman& Littlefield.
  • 2017 – Por uma Geografia libertária. Rio de Janeiro: Consequência.