DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.

1590/0103-6351/3971

Development? Thinking the future through a

urban-natural perspective
Desenvolvimento? Pensando o futuro a partir de uma perspectiva urbano-natural

Harley Silva
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Jakob O. W. Sparn
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Renata Guimarães Vieira
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Abstract Resumo
This article offers a theoretical discussion Este artigo oferece uma discussão teórica sobre
on urbanization, nature and development urbanização, natureza e desenvolvimento e al-
and some of the links and interdependen- gumas relações possíveis entre esses temas e con-
cies that connect these concepts. The focus ceitos. Discutimos algumas questões e dinâmicas
is on some of the underlying dynamics and subjacentes ao nosso projeto de desenvolvimento
issues of our current development project atual, definido como industrialização capitalista.
defined as capitalist industrialization. The O artigo ilustra o papel das cidades para o de-
article illustrates the role of cities for human senvolvimento humano e, em seguida, argumenta
development and then argues that the rela- que a relação entre sociedade e natureza poderia
tionship between society and nature could ser - e de fato já foi - pensada numa perspectiva
be – and indeed already has been – thought diferente. Finalmente, o artigo discute a transição
from a different perspective. Finally, the arti- da categoria teórica “campesinato” para a catego-
cle discusses the transition from “campesina- ria de comunidade tradicional, e como essa tran-
to” (peasantry) to traditional communities as sição é influenciada pelo processo de urbanização
product of extensive urbanization, as form extensiva pela qual o Brasil passou nas décadas
of resistance and as potential blueprint for an recentes. Argumenta que tal transição é parte da
alternative development and, potentially, for formação de resistências e pode contribuir para a
the Lefebvrian urban-utopia. reflexão sobre um modelo potencial para um de-
senvolvimento alternativo e, potencialmente, para
a utopia urbana de Lefebvre.

Keywords Palavras-chave
development theory; urbanization; human- teoria do desenvolvimento; urbanização; relações
nature relations; utopia. humanos-natureza; utopia; comunidade tradicio-
nal.

JEL Code R11. Código JEL R11.

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Silva, Sparn & Vieira

1 Introduction

The concept of development has always been a controversial one, from

academic theory to actual development practices. This seems particularly
true for economics. Classical authors such as Smith or Mills were quite
aware that the progress of a given economy (which they saw as embedded
in a society) depends on more than mere economic development. Howe-
ver, the discipline took a sharp turn in the post-war period towards a pure
economic analysis of development, which culminated in growth models a
la Solow (and others). This tendency has been somewhat reversed - more
so in the academic debate than in the actual “development” praxis – by
including more and more dimensions to the development concept. Yet,
more often than not, this debate is hard-lined around technical issues and
lacks a deeper and broader reflection on the context and the implications
on the current development efforts.
The discussions brought here together attempt to address this prob-
lem. They reflect the conviction that the model of development generally
considered and applied today requires a profound redefinition. There are
voices advocating the abandoning of the concept altogether, condemning
it as new forms of (Western) domination instead of a road to emancipa-
tion (Escobar, 1992; Sachs, 1992). In our opinion, this criticism is certainly
valid, has immensely enriched development studies and has to be consid-
ered. However, we fear that a complete abandoning of the concept does
not solve the problem - indeed we observe that new concepts, or arguably
new names for the same, are being established as soon as the old are dis-
credited. The efforts to re-label capitalist industrial development as sus-
tainable development (or just sustainability), and more recently as green
growth/economy, are often barely hiding this intention.
Instead of throwing the concept away, we argue that we should try to
redefine, appropriate and fight for it. Our position seems closer to what
Peet and Hartwick (2015) have advocated as ‘critical modernism’, essen-
tially a response to the post-development critique. This implies both ac-
cepting the valuable insights of post-development theory (as radical de-
velopment critique) and, at the same time, rejecting an overemphasis on
discourse and representations (at the expense of practice). Meaning also
that the focus of our reflections is rather, yet not exclusively, on the po-
tential of development than on the actual practices we can observe around

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 Development?

the globe. It incorporates the idea that modernity, as Habermas (1990) fa-
mously stated, is incomplete and has to overcome its adolescence to solve
its internal, inherent problems. Still, we emphasize that modernity and its
concept of development as capitalist industrial modernization has to be
transformed in both its meaning and practices.
This paper was born within the recently established research group on
urbanization, nature and development and as the result of a round table at
the biannual Diamantina Conference. It is an attempt to critically reflect
on those three concepts that are – in our opinion – closely linked to each
other: urbanization, nature and development. More precisely, we are try-
ing to discuss the context, implications and (some) shortcomings of the
dominant development model/approach – which could be called capitalist
industrialization – considering the other two concepts and their inter-de-
pendencies from a perspective of the Global South. It is also the attempt to
apply a wider theoretical and historical framework to these issues which
sometimes might appear as recent problems.
The various discussions in this paper differ in their degree of abstrac-
tion. Before starting a more detailed discussion, it is – in our opinion –
necessary to clarify some very general issues about the development con-
cept and its implications. These comments provide the underlying context
to further discuss the main arguments, from the role of nature and cities
to the potentialities of resistance against, or maybe more properly go be-
yond, the industrial logic. The second part highlights the importance of the
city and the daily urban life for human development. Here, a theoretical
discussion of pre-industrial societies and their relations and interactions
with nature offers insights into our understanding of nature as a produc-
tive force. Furthermore, it discusses how cities were the privileged form-
and-structure of mediation between nature and society in preindustrial
economies, working as a creative and flexible platforms in the creation
of social meaning to the diversity of natural resources. Finally, we discuss
the possibilities of Henri Lefebvre’s urban-utopia within the context of
peripheral countries. Special emphasis is given to the Brazilian case, where
the emergence of a “new” social category – the traditional community –
can be a way to include the diversity in the social structure, denying the
homogeneity imposed by the industrial logic.
Most issues discussed here are rather broad, thus the article is not meant to
provide a clear and defined description of those concepts. The focus here lies

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Silva, Sparn & Vieira

on highlighting some – in our view – very serious problems of the develop-

ment concept and its consequences for nature and urbanization. While the pa-
per is inspired by a broad variety of authors, the main theoretical background
of this article are the writings of Henri Lefebvre. His work offers a particularly
interesting approach on urbanization – a concept that, as he argues, reaches
far beyond the mere agglomeration of people in a geographical position.

1.1 Some comments on development theory and practice

Before going any further we should establish an understanding of how the

concept and narratives of development have been shaped throughout the
last decades and point out some critical issues and connections, particularly
those related to the other two concepts of this paper: nature and urbani-
zation. The first crucial observation is that we are analyzing the socially-
-constructed concept of development rather than the mere bio-physical no-
tion of something evolving into something else. To talk about the concept
of development necessarily means talking about normative issues. It also
means entering a quite controversial academic debate and discussing practi-
cal questions which have often caused human suffering - all of which leaves
the researcher with a highly sensitive topic. Thus, one of the first things we
should mention is that there are neither absolute truths nor ideal policy sug-
gestions that could be derived from this paper on development and related
issues. This results simply from the fact that no concept of development can
be universally valid or free of social values (Nohlen, 2005).
It also implies that researchers in this field might be best advised to
approach their subjects and questions with certain humbleness and with
the conscience that their ideas could (and in the past indeed did) directly
affect the lives and well-being of other humans and non-humans. Perhaps
one of the first development economists who embodied such a spirit was
Albert O. Hirschman (1967, 1981) who – after living and working in the
Global South – understood that local and cultural peculiarities impede the
application of universal development plans. As Santiso (2000) has argued,
Hirschman’s art of trespassing – particularly between academic disciplines
and technical work on the ground – and his (academic) caution provide
an excellent methodological approach to better understand development
realities. That is the spirit this article tries to embody.

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1.2 The narratives of development

The dominant ideas about development today are grounded in the ideas
of modernity and rationality that began their rise since the enlightenment.
Inherently linked with these concepts is the belief that mankind with its
unique rationality is “destined” to dominate nature – a belief that legiti-
mated a radical exploitation of natural resources and also the colonization
and exploitation of “uncivilized” cultures and people. In fact, the whole
colonization project of European imperial powers was justified by argu-
ments of “developing” poor and backward countries outside the Western
world (Escobar, 1994).
In this sense, the political Post-War Western development project (and
its economic narrative and discourse) can be seen as an extension of the
project of modernity and the former colonization processes – arguably
with less military force, yet with similar ideology and dependency-cre-
ating interventions. Here, the argument that endogenous development is
virtually impossible for underdeveloped countries, which would require
foreign capital inflows to industrialize, has played a crucial role. The
roughly 400 years of European colonialism and the social and economic
relations it created crucially contributed to the global diffusion of moder-
nity. As Paula et al. (1997) point out, the main ingredients for this project of
modernity – a market economy, modern Western science and the national
state – led to the political project of development via industrialization.
Starting with industrial revolution and certainly since the 19th century,
industry and industrialization became the dominant form of organization
in Western societies – transforming not only production processes, but
also reproduction processes. Or as Henri Lefebvre proclaimed a little later:
“industry characterizes the modern society” (2008, p.8).
The origin of the present idea of development is, as mentioned, cer-
tainly shaped by the Western idea of progress, but if we were to find a
starting point for the international project of development (as well as the
academic field) it would be 1949. That year marked the beginning of the
development era designed as a global political campaign to consolidate US
hegemony. US President Harry Truman’s inaugural address on January,
20th explicitly mentions the need to expand the scientific and industrial
progress to underdeveloped areas in order to improve and help them to
further grow (here referring to GDP growth). As Esteva (2010) points out,

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Truman might not have been the first to talk about underdevelopment,
but his adoption of the term gained an incredible colonizing virulence.
Ever since, the idea of development has meant overcoming the condition
of underdevelopment, which additionally has been defined by developed
nations as inhuman and undignified. By creating this convincing (and for
various political and economic interests also convenient) concept, a major
part of the global population was immediately condemned as inferior (in-
cluding numerous negative implications) and subject to various kinds of
interventions from developed and “civilized” nations and “international”
organizations controlled by them.
In the post-war period the idea of Development suffered another inva-
sion, more precisely a conceptual reduction when it became almost com-
pletely interchangeable with economic growth. Until today, this idea of
increasing income and production of material goods continues to colonize
the academic debate and the practical solutions in the development field
and beyond. This colonization is so strong that despite the wide accep-
tance (even in economics) that development includes many dimensions,
most of the economic discipline (and with it most of the political sphere)
still searches for ways to increase GNP/capita as a way to “develop”. Obvi-
ously, this happens not only for ideological reasons. Economic growth in a
situation of high income concentration – which today is a reality for almost
all nations, yet really severe in the Global South – means above all to secure
the political and economic power of the ruling elites, hence the support
for research and spin-doctoring that is favorable towards more growth.
Latouche (2010) and others argue that raising the ‘standard of living’ (mea-
sured by the quantity of goods and services that can be purchased) became
a unanimous global objective. And that the thoroughly application of this
quantitative indicator combined with the homogenizing force of global-
ized capitalism have contributed to a situation where different ‘modes’ of
living are merely perceived as different ‘levels’ of income.

1.3 Industrialization, urbanization and nature

Returning to the theoretical discussion above, one result of the idea that
economic growth leads automatically to more human development is the
widespread adoption of policies which are designed to induce industria-

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lization and technological advances. Specifically in the “glorious thirty

years” of capitalism (1945-75) the industrial production and income per
capita soared and helped to consolidate the “myth of development” (Fur-
tado 1974) even in the Global South. Prominent examples of the hege-
mony of this development concept are China’s industrialization efforts
or the Import-Substitution strategies in various Latin American countries
from the 1960ies on (Wagner, 1993). It is also no coincidence that the
expansion of industries occurred at the same time as the rapid increase of
huge urban agglomerations, precisely because their (population) growth
is fueled by the existence of large industries and the influx of ‘underdeve-
loped’ people/workers in search for higher incomes. We certainly have to
be careful not to simplify the complex relation between industrialization
and urbanization, but it seems that the expansion of industrial activity
strongly encouraged the growth of today’s megalopolis and their socio-
-economic, political and cultural spaces. This poses a variety of new chal-
lenges, particularly for the natural environment and for the marginalized
segments of the population.
The destruction of natural environment is far from being something
new in the history of mankind. Yet, the industrial revolution and its more
recent expansion – or we might argue its outsourcing – to the Global South
have created a new reality in which the very base of (human) life on the
planet is threatened (Boggs, 2012). The velocity in which our society (and
that means foremost the developed, industrialized nations) consumes en-
ergy and resources has reached a level that is highly unsustainable and is
already causing severe restriction for future well-being and development.
Climate change, loss of biodiversity and deforestation are just some of the
environmental results of 60 years of (industrial) development policies and
this age of irresponsibility (Jackson, 2009). Due to generally higher energy
and resource consumption per capita in urban agglomerations, cities play a
crucial role in this development project of modernity. That does not imply
that rural areas are necessarily sustainable or necessarily less destructive
towards the natural environment – in fact, we can find many contrary
examples from mining to agricultural industries.
The effects of this kind of development via industrialization and urban
concentration are not only environmentally questionable, but certainly
also from a social, cultural and political perspective. There is a vast lit-
erature about the potential effects of industrialization on the human con-

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dition, from Marx’s (1844) theory of alienation to more technical work

on negative externalities such as well-documented health issues (Szreter,
2004). However, there seems to be quite some variety regarding the im-
pacts of industrialization and urbanization on energy consumption, un-
surprisingly depending on your income level (Li; Lin, 2015), the overall
picture is not very bright.
Moreover, if we look at the Global South and the social conditions that
the development project created, it is hard to overstate the negative im-
pacts. Of course, in purely material terms of monetary income, the indus-
trialization of developing countries (in statistical terms specifically China
and India are significant here) has created a new “middle class” of several
hundred million people around the globe. However, as we argue in this
paper, this monetary catching-up process is at best an insufficient devel-
opment as it does not automatically create more well-being or liberty -
which are by no means the only potential development objectives. More
importantly, we also have to ask at what actual cost does this develop-
ment occur? The obvious environmental costs (which are almost always
externalized and almost never accounted for) are accompanied by severe
social costs such as the exclusion of those people who could not make
the ascent to those new classes. This relates directly to the issues of eco-
nomic inequality which Thomas Piketty (2014) has recently illustrated.
He demonstrates that wealth concentration is drastically increasing since
the Post-war Period and suggested that only global taxes on wealth could
actually diminish economic inequality – which in turn correlates to other
dimensions of inequality such as political representation or general access
to opportunities.
Piketty’s argument is mostly based on wealth inequality, but as Cin-
gano (2014) or Bornschier (2002) show, there is a very similar situation
in the case of income inequality which has been rising both in developed
and developing countries since the 1970ies. However, there are national
stories of decreasing income inequality, mainly in developing countries
that applied progressive social policies and were able to reap the benefits
of investments in education, such as Brazil, Argentina or Mexico during
the 2000s (Lustig et al., 2013). From a development perspective the most
important lesson we might draw from the works cited above is that – re-
gardless of the various causes of economic inequality – even in the he-
gemonic and narrow perspective of development as industrialization and

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GDP growth, it does not seem to solve the problem of inequality. At the
same time the reduction of economic inequality has been identified as one
of the main development goals by international development agents such
as United Nations, IMF or World Bank (Sachs, 2012). The failure to eradi-
cate poverty, inequality and exclusion – together with the often external-
ized costs and damage this model implies – has contributed to a growing
literature on critique of our current development concept.
However, while the negative effects and costs of industrialization and
urbanization processes seem to be far greater than the positive ones, we
should not overlook the new possibilities and realities that these processes
brought. That includes potentially life-enhancing technological advances
(in housing, food production, medicine, information technologies, etc.),
which became increasingly available even for lower income households
or individuals. It is precisely in those advances where the attraction of the
modern development project lies – even more so for the central spaces of
capitalism because its “side effects” have been externalized to the periph-
eral ones. Clearly, nobody wants to deny (or even live without) some of
the material benefits of industrialization, but we definitely can look at pre-
industrial societies to refine (and perhaps even revise) our understanding
of how we perceive nature and how our relationship with it has shifted.

2 Nature’s production and the role of cities

2.1 Nature as productive force

The birth of industry introduced a strong radical discontinuity in the history

of relations between society and nature. In preindustrial societies, nature
has been a source of livelihoods and material and cultural enrichment (Mu-
mford, 2008; Polanyi, 2012; Shiva, 1995; Robert, 1995; Esteva, 1995). If we
look at the question of the existence of resources or of the dynamics of pro-
duction, the modern and industrial epoch has greatly modified this scenario.
“Resource” originally implied life. Its root is the Latin verb surgere, which evoked
the image of a spring that continually rises from the ground. Like a spring, a
“re-source” rises again and again, even if it has repeatedly been used and consu-
med. The concept thus highlighted nature’s power of self-regeneration and called
attention to her prodigious creativity. Moreover, it implied an ancient idea about
the relationship between humans and nature: that the earth bestows gifts on

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humans who, in turn, are well advised to show diligence in order not to suffocate
her generosity. In early modern times, ‘resource’ therefore suggested reciprocity
along with regeneration. With the advent of industrialism and colonialism, ho-
wever, a conceptual break occurred. ‘Natural resources’ became those parts of
nature which were required as inputs for industrial production and colonial trade.
(Shiva, 1995, p.206)

Nature, in the perception of pre-industrial societies, was not limited to

a stock of raw material waiting to be transformed by human labor. The
secular coexistence of man with the dynamics of nature and with its capa-
city for cyclical renewal has led these societies to a refined perception of
nature as a great productive force.
That statement may seem abusive. However, if we evaluate much of
what has ordinarily been taken as the productive forces we can see that
these are mechanical, chemical, and physical processes whose effective-
ness as an apparatus of economic creation extends, controls or organizes
processes of nature. From this point of view, the socially organized pro-
ductive forces are modifications and adaptations carried out over many
dynamic generations which were before internal to a natural production:

Production comes from the Latin verb producere, which meant ‘to stretch’, ‘to
spend’, ‘to prolong’, ‘to draw into visibility’. It generally referred to an actualiza-
tion of possible existence. In terms of this ancient meaning, production is a mo-
vement from the invisible to the visible, an emanation through which something
hitherto hidden is brought within the range of man’s senses. This idea of emana-
tion fitted ordinary people’s experience, the awareness that nature, husbanded by
man, brings forth a people’s livelihood. (Robert, 1995, p.175)

In modern societies, the understanding of nature has approached the view

of a repository of raw materials, which must be introduced into a “pro-
ductive apparatus” itself. These resources, on one hand, seem to be taken
from an inexhaustible frontier, depending only on the possibilities of tech-
nology. On the other hand, the disenchantment of the world (Weber) by
the scientific advances dissolves any sacredness of nature and its cycles,
putting in its place the industrial reason, capable of handling nature al-
most without restrains (Paula et al., 1997, p.205). Here, the relative share of
artificiality inherent in the productive process, which previously seemed
smaller in the set of forces present in production, assumed the leading role
in modern understanding.
This transition is also perceptible in the constitution of political econo-
my as a field of knowledge and as a set of political prescriptions. François
Quesnay and the Physiocrats defended the protagonism of nature, of the
land, in the production of wealth. “The concept of economic production

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was popularized by the Physiocrats, a group of French philosophers, for

whom all wealth ultimately stemmed from the earth’s generative pow-
ers” (Robert, 1995, p.179). Later, Adam Smith and David Ricardo moved
away from the position of the Physiocrats. For Smith the division of labor
and extension of markets were the origin of the wealth of nations, thus he
conceptually removed the condition of the determinant of economic suc-
cess from the natural conditions. According to Robert (1995) for David Ri-
cardo “[the] ideas tended to reduce the earth’s generative powers to merely
quantifiable factors - we would say inputs - of productive labor.” Ricardo
inserted the land, among the factors of production, as a fundamental part in
the functioning of the capitalist economy, but derived this condition more
from economic dynamics and less from the natural attributes of the land.
Property, income, location, and even fertility enhancement are socially con-
stituted attributes. The wealth and well-being of society came from engag-
ing in the dynamics of trade. These attach social significance to the natu-
ral advantages held by some nation. Left out from the exchange dynamic,
these natural gifts would ultimately remain inert and meaningless.
Marx (1861), however, pointed out that the ‘physiocratic’ point of view
was not completely discarded by Smith and Ricardo, although it had been
modified. The growing importance of manufacturing and urban activities in
England was not in accord with the views of French economists on the non-
productive character of these economic sectors. Marx discusses excerpts
from the works of Smith and Ricardo, in which the importance of nature
in economic life is reaffirmed. Interestingly, Smith argues that agriculture
was, in its time, unequaled in terms of returns to invested capital, precisely
because “in agriculture, nature works together with man.” Smith adds that
such a thing did not happen in manufactures, because “in them nature does
nothing; It is the man who does everything” (Smith 1996, p.360). Curi-
ously, Ricardo does not completely agree with Smith. After agreeing with
his statement about the importance of nature in agriculture, he asks:

Does nature nothing for man in manufactures? Are the powers of wind and
water, which move our machinery, and assist navigation, nothing? The pressure
of the atmosphere and the elasticity of steam, which enable us to work the most
stupendous engines—are they not the gifts of nature? to say nothing of the ef-
fects of the matter of heat in softening and melting metals, of the decomposition
of the atmosphere in the process of dyeing and fermentation. There is not a ma-
nufacture which can be mentioned, in which nature does not give her assistance
to man, and give it too, generously and gratuitously. (Ricardo, 1996 [1819],
p.55. Note n. 24).

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Silva, Sparn & Vieira

Marx finds in Ricardo a refined perception of how the understanding of

nature, of its internal processes, deepens and enriches its cooperation with
man in economic life. Thus, he points out that Smith and Ricardo held on
to the physiocrats’ view that nature is an indispensable productive force.
At the same time, especially in Ricardo’s case, it is enough to look at the
terms in which the economist argues to realize how far he is from the
physiocratic argument; how their arguments are mediated for the typical
and inseparable knowledge and techniques of industrial practice.
Certainly this change of perception corresponds to a concrete process of
expansion / intensification / complexification of human labor which was
added to the material layer available in modernity. However, this process
also corresponds to the constitution of a specific sensitivity, in which the
perception of nature is an inert set to be dominated by human ingenuity.
In this context we could formulate the hypothesis that such perception
has close links to the relationships established by the Western imperial
powers, to the distribution of natural resources outside Europe in the pro-
cess of colonial expansion and to its unfolding in the industrial revolution
and industrialization.

2.2 Reduction and fragmentation of nature in modern science

The vision of nature that would predominate in the West was already
synthesized in the seventeenth century in the view of philosopher Fran-
cis Bacon’s science (1562-1626). This view gained practicality and turned
itself into common sense in market societies, in the globally connected
economy, and finally in industrial production (Shiva, 1995). These Western
socio-technical structures - market society, global market and industry –
have further changed the perception of nature.
Until the beginning of the industrial period, nature had been under-
stood through its natural cycles, creation and recreation, as a totality in
movement, in time and space. The approach of modern science, and thus
also gradually our common sense, has become more and more abstract.
Science and industry operate with the fragmentation and functionaliza-
tion of the natural elements and the relations between society and na-
ture. But this was not a theoretical change, isolated from practice. On the
contrary, if we consider, for example, the process of incorporating natural

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resources from the colonial territories into the industrial economy, we will
see that the fragmented perception of nature constructed by Western man
corresponds to a practice. It corresponds to the one of a panoramic percep-
tion of nature, oriented by the colonial market.
Europeans suddenly found themselves in ecological contexts in which
they could not or did not want to take root. This process resulted in the
selective inclusion of segments of nature into economic life. An inclu-
sion that only happened to the extent that it made sense in the colonial
episteme. The natural landscapes of the colonized regions were “hyper
naturalized”: their relative condition of socio-historical construction was
minimized or ignored1. Both tendencies – selective incorporation / frag-
mentation and hyper naturalization – led to the perception of nature in
that condition close to inertia. This was even more severe in peripheral
regions brought into existence within the colonial condition.
Within the colonial perception of nature, the extension of coloniality de-
grades the ontological status of nature, particularly in the periphery of capi-
talism. If we compare the understanding and management of nature that
existed in non-modern societies to the praxis of development, we observe:
[...] a tremendous loss of diversity. The worldwide simplifications of architecture,
clothing, and daily objects; the accompanying eclipse of variegated languages,
customs and gestures already less visible, and the standardizations of desires
and dreams occurs deep down in the subconscious of societies. Market, state and
science have been the great universalizing powers (Sachs, 1995, p.4).

In many ways, industrialization has renewed and prolonged the colonial

condition of peripheral societies. It brought a significant disorganization
both of the human and non-human world that existed there previously.
The inclusion of these areas in the international division of labor was
oriented towards the functioning and well-being of European societies and
only to their own needs and possibilities.
The reduction of social and natural diversity promoted by processes
of industrialization and development projects is connected to the dilapi-
dation of tacit knowledge held by non-Western populations about their
natural patrimony. This knowledge was built on the basis of their daily
practice and in fact provided them with solutions to their practical prob-
lems regarding the production and reproduction of material life. This dou-

1 There is a large literature concerning this hyper naturalization of the world carried out by
western thought, particularly in the research of historical ecology. See Hecht et al. (2014) or
Balée and Erickson (2014).

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ble dilution of their diversity - natural and epistemological - contributes

to the concretization of abstract poverty metrics such as comparison of
economic performance and access to monetary income2.
Here, we should mention that there scientific fields that try to address
this fragmentation. In economics, the work of Kenneth Boulding (1966),
Herman Daly (1968) and Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen (1971), among oth-
ers, led to the formation of a new and genuinely transdisciplinary field
within the discipline: ecological economics. Driven by the environmental
and social problems that intensified due to the rapid expansion of indus-
trial capitalism in the Post-war era, ecological economics emphasizes the
interdependencies and potentials for co-evolution of the natural environ-
ment and human economies. In this perspective nature is the foundation
of all human activity, making the economy a subsystem of society and,
ultimately, the planet.
In contrast to environmental economics which tries to internalize nat-
ural and social relations into the market via price mechanisms (Stavins,
2008), ecological economists have a more pluralistic approach (including
social, psychological, political and ethical aspects) and place an inherent
value into nature and non-human beings3. Thus, the argument that natural
(and social) environments are substitutable – in accordance to the concept
of ‘weak sustainability’ in environmental economics – is discarded in favor
of a complementary view of nature and society (Redclift et al., 2015). How-
ever, ecological economics and likewise fields are marginalized in academia
and their ideas are seldom incorporated in the “mainstream” discourse.

2.3 Cities as creative platform

Colonialism and industrialization have set in motion a renewal but also

2 This perception soon became clear to the developing world institutions themselves: “The-
re is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments.
Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds
of cast, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with
the progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated. Very few com-
munities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress” (United Nations, 1951, p.15).
3 Obviously, academic fields are fluid and not immune against appropriation; the same is
true for this distinction between ecological and environmental economics. Spash (2014), for
example, argues that the dominant perspective in ecological economics has shifted towards
a perspective far more consistent with environmental economics.

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 Development?

processes of loss of meaning for segments of the non-human world. The

industry has emerged as a (new) platform for mediation between nature
and society. But if there is something new in this position occupied by
industry, what social structure had been in place before? Let us turn to
Henri Lefebvre’s statement on the centrality of industry in the creation of
the modern world. Now, however, we want to reverse the chronological
direction, toward the past:
Industrialization provides the starting point for reflection on our time. The city
pre-exists industrialization. This is a banal observation in itself, whose implica-
tions have not been fully formulated. The most eminent urban creations, the most
beautiful works of urban life […] date back to pre-industrial times [...] When in-
dustrialization began, when competitive capitalism was born with the specifically
industrial bourgeoisie, the City was already a powerful reality . After the near
extinction of archaic cities in Western Europe, the City resumed its development
... [Cities] are, in short, centers of social and political life, where not only riches
but also knowledge, techniques and The Works. The city itself is a Work4 [...]
(Lefebvre, 2008, p.11,12)

Lefebvre’s argument begins by identifying industrialization as the organi-

zing factor of modern society. But, taking a step back, the author clarifies
that “the city preexists industrialization”, and that it was a long time ago
a powerful reality.
At this point there is a subtle aspect, which the author does not make
explicit in this text, but will do in another text, where he discusses the role
of the city in the creation of modern economy and the advancement of the
division of labor (Lefebvre, 1999). Lefebvre departs from Marx’s claim, in
the Grundrisse (Marx, 2011 [1857]), that the earth was first man’s “great
laboratory”, which provided him with “both the instrument and the mat-
ter, its base, its place” (Lefebvre, 1999, p.86).
Even before there were permanencies, settlements or large groups, men
enriched their existence through their relationship with the non-human
world. Walking through paths, searching for the conditions of their surviv-
4 Lefebvre employs this term, “work”, as opposed to “product.” In this discussion, the latter
term denotes the result of the production of commodities, of “exchange values.” Work, on
the contrary, refers to “use value” and, in the limit, the artistic character of the City itself prior
to industrialization. In this sense, the City itself was a “work of art”. “In relation to produc-
tion, we know that its concept can be taken in two respects ... one is strict and precise, the
other broad and vague. (...) The double meaning of the term stems from the fact that ‘men’ in
society produce either things (products), or works (everything else). Things are enumerated,
counted, appreciated in money and exchanged. But the works? This is more complex. To
produce in a broad sense, is to produce science, art, relationships, between humans, time
and space, events, history institutions, society itself, city, state; In one word: everything “
(Lefebvre 1999. p.80).

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al, men inscribed the natural space with their practical activity; left their
marks, seeking to understand nature and to recognize themselves in it.

On space-nature, on the Heraclitian flow of spontaneous phenomena, on this

chaos (below the body) mental and social activity launches its meshes; It establi-
shes an order which, we shall soon see, coincides, to a certain extent, with that
of words. Places are marked, re-marked, named [...] (Lefebvre, 1991, p.117)

The moment when permanent settlements arise, the expanded capacity of

men in society modifies their relationship with nature. Its power of appro-
priation, that is, of perennial use and adapted to the determined demands,
implies a nature that is no more hostile or unknown. Something closer to a
co-evolution between human groups and non-human world is established.
But it is fundamental to realize how much this change depends on the ex-
pansion of multiplication of permanent human settlements. Through this
way of life, the human capacity to appropriate nature is strengthened.
In other words, it is necessary to ask how permanent human settle-
ments have emerged as the privileged mediation between men (societies)
and nature. It is the discussion that Henri Lefebvre establishes, when he
questions the role of the city and the nature-city relations in the trajec-
tory of societies and passages between different forms of organization of
production. Lefebvre refers explicitly to the role of the city as mediation
between nature and society. It refers to the passage of man in a direct rela-
tion with nature to the situation in which the city is transformed in the
mediation between them:
What is the earth? The material support of societies. Would the earth be unchan-
geable? No. Its face changes, from pure original nature to devastated nature.
This support of human societies, [from] the origin to the end of men, is neither
immutable nor passive. The earth is first “the great laboratory,” as Marx put it
in the Grundrisse. [But] the land does not continue to be the laboratory. What
replaces it? The city. (...) What is the city then? Like the land on which it rests,
the city is a space, an intermediary, a mediation, a medium, the vastest of the
means, the most important ... In the city and through the city nature gives way to
a second nature. (Lefebvre, 1999, p.86).

From the singular relations between isolated groups, on one hand, and sin-
gular places of nature on the other, we shift to the relations of (cyclical or
linear) repetitions. Through these comes learning, meaning an organized
apprehension of knowledge about the natural world. And from there prac-
tices (techniques) and objects (technologies) are constituted. “In the course
of these modifications, a ‘social nature’ replaces immediate naturalness” (Lefebvre,
1999, p.87).

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Lefebvre then points out that Marx’s expression of nature as “the labo-
ratory” means that “nature does not remain a passive element of produc-
tion.” On the contrary, it intervenes as a dynamic element of learning and
for the constitution of sociability (and not only as an inert source of ma-
terials). From this dialectic interaction between men and nature emerges
the socialized nature, which is incorporated and densely concentrated in
urban space and practices. Here, the human being itself, socially human-
ized, becomes social in the full sense.
Now, we do not have to take Lefebvre’s argumentation as an ‘a prio-
ri’ truth. On the contrary, it can be understood as insight or theoretical
hypothesis, whose effectiveness as an explanatory framework must be
tested and investigated. This hypothesis, however, emerges from the fact
that in the evolution to a new social condition – emerging from a condi-
tion of being wholly integrated into nature – man had the city as platform.
This socially produced space, the city as constructed nature, constitutes a
privileged mediation between human groups and resources, that is, what
emerges and resurges, springs and re-grows from the cycles of nature. The
city was the place where social meanings were produced for what was
once an in-different part of becoming nature. This applies both to objects
(products) and to broad human reality (works): art, institutions and inter-
pretations of the world.
The Lefebvrian argumentation converges with other theories and also
with empirical research of other areas of knowledge, which concern the
relationship between society and nature and also the theme of the origin
of cities and their role in economic life. Regarding the relationship be-
tween nature and men in non-modern societies, there are several fields of
research in which relationships of reciprocal enrichment between society
and nature are discussed. Contrary to common sense and parts of modern
science, the binary opposition between nature and human labor is often
not concretely verified, not even in areas considered as the archetype of
isolation and naturalness. For example, empirical research in historical
ecology in the Amazon region shows that part of the current tropical for-
est diversity is due to the presence of human groups, not their absence
(Balée/ Erickson, 2006).
In the theoretical field, Lefebvre’s vision converges in part with Jane
Jacobs’s hypothesis on the role of the city as a primordial form of the orga-
nization of social space. Jacobs describes permanent settlement both as a

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place and as an inescapable structure for the creation of relations between

nature and human communities. The author constructs her hypothesis in
a hypothetical narrative about an archetypal settlement: New Obsidian.
Within this community, the diversification of daily life - uses, exchanges,
solutions, innovations - coincides with the deepening of ties with nature.
The urban daily life/routine creates the interconnection of the constella-
tion of resources of natural diversity - resources of plant, animal and min-
eral origin - that are continuously socialized, that is, inserted in social life
(Jacobs, 1969).
New Obsidian is born thanks to the sedentary nature of the produc-
tion of sharp objects made from volcanic stone. The place becomes a con-
vergence of the natural and social diversity that surrounds it. Diversity
derived from the non-human carries with it the knowledge and the uses
related to it.
As the permanence of the settlement continues in time, it concentrates
in its space the diversity that converges towards and within it. This process
molds the settlement into a place where everyday experience has great
density. In such a place, one can find the multiplicity of extracts of nature
previously handled by groups that lived only sparsely and with erratic
contacts (both among themselves and with their own resources). Hence,
the settlement/city as a place of convergence and permanent articulation
of diversity enriches human existence. And this experience in turn renews
and enlarges the human capacity to intervene in nature.
After all, in permanent settlements knowledge is not easily lost or dis-
organized. It originates from the daily dealing with diversity and from
the coexistence with multiple natural materials, for which new uses arise
with ease. This knowledge is rooted in everyday life and, when it be-
comes necessary, is transmitted, it is learned. Its repetition and cumulativ-
ity derives from coding and recording. Due to the tacit or erratic practice,
codified techniques start to emerge and soon technological artifacts. Even
if these artifacts arise at first in an elementary version, their constant mo-
bilization contributes to the non-linear evolution of its complexity. Jacobs
intertwines everyday life, nature and the emergence of the technique; and
hence demonstrates the central role of the dense experience that urban life
provides for the whole process.
It is noteworthy that the most recurrent discussion that the hypothesis
presented in the book raises is about its feasibility – or in other words,

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 Development?

could the city emerge before the countryside? (Bairoch, 1991). Meanwhile,
the consequences of the hypothesis in terms of human settlement / na-
ture relations are little discussed. Going beyond the exclusionary duality
of “first the field or first the city,” Jacobs hypothesis illuminates a crucial
question. It clarifies how small the chance of the emergence of the com-
plex use of natural resources is in the absence of the dense experience pro-
vided by a permanent, dense and diverse human settlement to which the
diversity of the natural world converges and which articulates human and
social experience. The urban base allows this experience to accumulate in
space and to form a chain over time and generations.
What escapes this “what came first” discussion is that the permanent
human settlement is disclosed as a place where the construction of social
meaning for nature occurs – or we could call it the socialization of nature. It
also eludes that this construction of social meaning - a long and fruitful
process of relations between society and nature - anticipates the creation
of the decisive (but not isolated) step of domestication; or better, the so-
cialization (insertion in social life) of animal and plant species which con-
stitute the development of agriculture and livestock. Jacobs argues that the
stereotype of a primitive society of salvage cave men has a huge power of
clouding our contemporary thought:
it is clear that the pre-agricultural man were much besides hunter: they were ma-
nufacturers, builders, traders and artists. They made large quantities and many
varieties of weapons, clothing, bowls, buildings, necklaces, mural and sculptures.
They used stone, bone, wood, leather, fur, rushes, clay, timber, adobe, obsidian,
copper, mineral pigments, teeth, shells, amber and horn as industrial materials.
They backed up their major crafts and arts with subsidiary goods: “producers’
goods” or “input items”, as economists now say - ladders, lamps and pigments,
for instance, to achieve the Paleolithic cave paintings; burins to gouge out furrows
in other tools; scrapers to dress hides. At some point the question might have been
asked, How did agriculture arise upon all this industry? Instead, the long econo-
mic history of man before the agriculture has continued to be regarded as only a
sort of prologue played out in the wilds [...] (Jacobs, 1969, p.45, 46).

Taken in a serious way, these hypotheses about the role of the city for the
relations between nature and society illuminate a set of problems inside
the conception of development as an industrial phenomenon.
So far we have discussed the fact that the city has been through history
a fundamental medium between nature and society. In sum, cities have
been platforms for the socialization of nature, thanks to which the urban
environment creates, on a daily basis, a dense experience. Now we con-
sider a link between the city and the birth of industry, thus its role in the

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constitution of the modern world. This brings us back to the initial theme:
the substance of the idea of development, its relation to nature and the
urbanization processes involved in it.
The historical differences between a city in Greco-Roman antiquity, in
ancient Asia or medieval Europe cannot be ignored, assuming that conti-
nuity or linearity did not exist, as Lefebvre (1999) repeatedly pointed out.
Therefore, what has been mentioned above about the centrality of the city
as a platform for socializing resources is relevant, but not identical in every
aspect. Yet, the birth of industry can be interpreted as a convergence - and
up-scaling - of technical, economic and social tendencies that the city ar-
ticulates throughout the European medieval period:
In the course of this process [of disintegration of the feudal world], the city en-
genders something different and superior to itself. In the economic plane [the city
engenders] the industry; on the social plane, the movable property (not without
concessions to the feudal forms of property and organization); on the political
level, the State (Lefebvre, 1999, p.46)

Within medieval cities, conditions and relations of production were con-

centrated and reproduced, which made industrial production possible; al-
though (precisely speaking) industry itself was born outside the physical
and institutional limits of cities. This aspect, however, further emphasizes
rather than invalidates the connection between the two. As a differen-
tial emergency of the urban reality, industry affirms itself in contradiction
with the city. It is a relative denial of urban institutions (Mumford, 2008)
and at the same time the expansion and deepening of other dynamics that
the city had harbored for centuries. For example, the formation of large
markets or the practice of accumulation – both as a time transfer of resour-
ces and as a planned constitution of productive forces. Also, the deepening
of the technical and social division of labor; the articulation in the inter-
regional space of commercial and financial practices. And the formation
of markets adapted to the consumption of sophisticated goods and to the
diffusion of articles of mass consumption.
Lefebvre (1999, p.60) points out that the city “universalizes competi-
tion, transforms all capital into industrial capital, accelerates the circula-
tion and centralization of these capitals”. All this came to existence with
the fulfillment of the city. But beyond the technical-economic conditions,
“the medieval city, with its corporate system, breaks and surpasses itself.
The conflicting city-field relationship engenders something new; what?
Simultaneously (or almost): capitalism and the world market, the nation

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 Development?

and the state, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat “(p.61). What Lefebvre
rescues in Marx’s work is the fundamental importance of the city for the
“development” of the capitalist system. We can extend this discussion and
realize how these are the conditions for the development project in the
twentieth century. However, as Lefebvre (1999) also points out: “with the
emergence of the great industry [...] the city (its internal-external capacity
for association, concentration and reunion) ceases to appear as a ‘subject’
of the historical process” (p.63).
This rescue of the role of the city, besides the theoretical value that the
author develops in all his work, sheds light on the existence of alterna-
tives to what we could call “narrative of the industrial protagonism”. Or in
words which became hegemonic in the twentieth century: industrializa-
tion is a trajectory without alternatives. In spite of their intrinsic tenden-
cies of social and environmental homogenization, which are accentuated
in peripheral societies (Furtado, 1978; Jacobs, 1984), production oriented
by industrial logic is presented as an inescapable path. The leading role
of industry is presented as irreducible. It is then a narrative that depends
directly on the complete invisibility of other forms of mediation between
society and nature. In the next session, the traditional community as social
category that can represent a way to resist (and deal with) this invisibility
is discussed.

3 Overcoming development from the periphery: tradi-

tional communities and the urban-utopian

Since colonial times, the Brazilian peasantry is going through processes

that endanger its way of life. It is possible, for example, to locate several
legal milestones, perhaps above all the “Lei de Terras” (Lands Law)5. Be-
fore, the land had no mercantile value except when associated with labor
(which turns it into a productive unit), but after the “Lei de Terras” land pri-
ces begin to rise substantially. This valuation is an important mechanism
to prevent the poor from gaining access to land. Hindering the peasantry’s
5 “Lei de Terras” required all land already occupied through housing and production to be le-
gally registered. After the deadline for registration, the land could only be acquired by buying
and selling or state donation. Otherwise, they would be considered as vacant land (not used
by private individuals), and would be appropriated by the State. With this new law, property
would no longer be recognized by land occupation.

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Silva, Sparn & Vieira

access to land means depriving it of its autonomy in a profound sense, and

therefore subordinating it.
In addition to the difficulty of accessing land, the industrial logic began
to travel beyond the limits of the urban centers, reaching all (or almost all)
the territory. This latter process occurred in the mid-1960s – intensified
in the 1970s and 1980s – and is synthesized by Monte-Mór (2006) in the
notion of extended urbanization. As the author explains, since then urban
structures and services, citizenship rights, laws, transport and communica-
tion systems are spread throughout the territory. But also the general con-
ditions of production and reproduction of industrial capitalism are spread,
creating new work systems and new possibilities (and necessities) to be
part of a market economy.
According to Lefebvre (2014), while we think of European history
through continuities (between agrarian, industrial and post-industrial so-
cieties), the Latin American case can be treated through the idea of simul-
taneity: the three phases are overlapped. Thus, we can say that even with
the extended urbanization the agrarian logic is not entirely driven out by
the industrial logic. Possibilities of coexistence will arise between these
different logics (of course, not without ruptures, after all the industrial
logic has a very great force of change).
From these layers overlapping would then arise the urban society (which
is not the industrial one, but the result of this encounter of two realities,
in other words, the post-industrial). The new structure would then be the
urban - the result of this encounter of different logics, described by Lefe-
bvre. But how would this new structure be like? For Lefebvre (2014), the
urban is the present, the future and the possible: the virtual. Urban society,
therefore, is not an observable result, but the possibility that arises from
the encounter with the urban-industrial logic. It is born with industrializa-
tion, in the possibility of what may be its overcoming: the post-industrial.
The urban (an abbreviated form of urban society) can therefore be defined not
as an accomplished reality, located behind the actual reality in time, but, on the
contrary, as a horizon, an illuminating virtuality. It is the possible, defined by a
direction, that moves toward the urban as the culmination of its journey (Lefebvre,
2014, p.17).

This virtuality - the urban society - would be disseminated as a possibility

through the explosion of the urban fabric, as described by Monte-Mór
(2006). The author sees in the politicization of space a force that could be
a way to substantiate this urban society. The politicization of space would

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 Development?

come as a consequence of extended urbanization, which would not only

spread out the urban-industrial but also the urban-utopia. Thus, the urban-
-utopia could, through the politicization of space, oppose the homogeni-
zing force of industry – retaking the possibility of creation and affirmation
of diversities. But, if the urban-utopia exists as a present virtuality, how
can we identify its signs? Our hypothesis is that the creation of traditional
community as social category, in the Brazilian case, could be seen as an
urban society sign.
This social category has its origins in the Amazonian social movements
(which are in some way, results of the extensive urbanization process as
a politicization of space). When Cunha (2009) discusses the formation
of new political strategies in the Amazon region to deal with territorial
threats, she argues that everything has changed when communities real-
ized the argumentative power of identity and environmental preservation.
Now, the political strategy is to “prove” that there is culture, and, above
all, a preservationist culture. Juridically, therefore, it becomes important
to be recognized as a “traditional community”, which could be defined as
groups that have conquered or are struggling to conquer (both practically and
symbolically) a public identity as conservationist which includes some of the follo-
wing characteristics: use of low impact environmental techniques, equitable forms
of social organization, presence of institutions with legitimacy to enforce their
laws, local leadership and, finally, cultural traits that are selectively reaffirmed
and re-elaborated (Cunha, 2009, p.300).

Besides being a political strategy, the term traditional community also sol-
ves the problem of the excessive generalization of the term campesinato
(peasantry). For Almeida (2007), the idea of campesinato accompanies the
tendency of modern ideas to be big narratives that bring together a diver-
sity of objects in a single theoretical language. However, these universal
narratives are in crisis because they cannot cover some specific realities.
The death of the campesinato is thus the death of a system of thought; it is the
end of a code. The pieces that this code organized in the past, however, are still
in circulation. (...) The end of the campesinato comes at the same time as the dis-
courses and practices of rural democratization, of environmental self-government,
of counter-hegemonic gender policies (…) are being activated as never before. If
we abstract the universalizing category of the campesinato, we see that the cultu-
ral, economic and ecological traits that were associated with it remain on the daily
order, although disjointed between them and highlighted in the great theoretical
narrative of which they were part (Almeida, 2007, p.170).

The idea of traditional community does not intend to substitute ‘campe-

sinato’ as a new big narrative. According to Almeida (2007), it is rather

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Silva, Sparn & Vieira

a political category, formed by innumerable attempts to recount history

from local perspectives and opposed to homogenizing or hegemonic ten-
dencies. Thus, the reconstitution of identity is carried out by the commu-
nity itself, which assigns to itself, besides a common past (mythical and/
or historical), present characteristics and common future expectations that
allow them to be externally recognized.
Hence, disappearance is not the most appropriate approach. The
preexisting shapes and structures combine with the new, generating a
wide possibility of results. The penetration of capitalist-industrial logic
does not entirely modify those preexisting structures. The campesinato,
which can be identified within the agrarian era described by Lefebvre,
perceives the risk of losing its land (and therefore its autonomy) as a
need to react politically in an innovative way.
This political reaction absorbs characteristic elements of the indus-
trial society, such as a necessity of performative culture to prove some
identity and concerns for environmental preservation which are also
ways of resisting the homogenizing force of industrial modernity. In the
end we have a new political category, which results from a metamor-
phosis of the agrarian world, generated by the encounter with the ur-
ban-industrial world. Curiously, the “traditional community” is a fluid,
mobile, diverse concept which reminds us of the Lefebvrian description
of the urban-utopia:
During this new period (of the urban society), differences are known and re-
cognized, considered, conceived, and signified. These mental and social, spatial
and temporal differences, detached from nature, are recovered on a higher plane,
a plane of thought that can grasp all the elements. (…) Urban space- time, as
soon as we stop defining it in terms of industrial rationality— its project of ho-
mogenization— appears as a differential, each place and each moment existing
only within a whole, through the contrasts and oppositions that connect it to, and
distinguish it from, other places and moments (Lefebvre, 2014, p.37).

We can therefore suggest the emergence of the traditional community,

even as a legal category, as a spark of the urban-utopia. But what about
nature? Returning to the definition proposed by Cunha, the way these
communities relate to nature is one of the few common characteristics
that allow us to unify them under a single label. And as we have dis-
cussed before, their idea of nature - and the relationship between people
and environment derived from this idea - is an inspiration to rethink our
economic and social goals. Here we can return to the fact that traditional
communities express themselves and organize themselves concretely as a

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 Development?

socio-spatial reality. As urban utopia they are a contemporary manifesta-

tion of social practices, which were once restricted to life within the city
limits. This includes the relationship with nature.
In addition to being a renewed rurality, traditional communities can
also be understood as a singular urbanity. In these terms they reconsti-
tute a form of mediation also unique between society and nature. In their
daily space practice these populations manage local and regional resources
that are the basis of their direct and indirect material survival. Direct sur-
vivorship, in so far as they locally produce food, building materials and
other basic necessities. Indirectly insofar as they mobilize resources to en-
ter markets outside the community. In both cases, the set of knowledge
and techniques employed is a composition of tacit, ancestral, and codified
knowledge. More than a broth of precarious subsistence there is in these
practice openings and concrete potentialities of economic advancement
combined with the permanence of a non-predatory relationship with the
non-human world. The concrete and daily forms of urban utopia manifest
themselves in these regions in a palpable way, although almost always
barely visible to the trained look of those seeking development guided by
a Western, modern, industrial paradigm.

4 Concluding remarks

There are many other issues involved in this debate and the few discus-
sions and arguments presented here certainly could only scratch the sur-
face of the complex links and interactions between urbanization, nature
and development. However, there are some – in our opinion – important
insights we can take away from this exercise. Perhaps, the most important
one being that this Western project of development through industrializa-
tion has severe limitations and contradictions – specifically for the Global
South, but increasingly also for the North. And while a variety of theore-
tical and practical efforts to rethink development have recently emerged,
the main efforts to “develop” are still focused on this modern vision we
described throughout this paper.
Another conclusion we have to draw is that our understanding of and
our relationship with nature has been drastically impoverished in the
modern world. Without reflecting on the broader historical, cultural and

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socioeconomic context – something we tried to do here – there seems to

be little chance of creating development ideas and solutions for highly spe-
cific and complex local realities. We also discussed how, in the process of
socializing nature, the dense urban environment plays a key role – enhanc-
ing both human creativity and potentialities for innovative development.
Many of the discussed problems – or their solutions for that matter –
require profound cultural and social shifts. Yet, public policy, which is ex-
perimenting with new approaches instead of following the old industrial
logic, could certainly support and even induce changes towards alternative
forms of development. And, as we discussed in this paper, the Lefebvrian
urban-utopian is not limited to the city. An enormous and untapped poten-
tial – following Lefebvre’s argument – might indeed be found within the
overlapping layers of realities. In this sense, (urban) policy and planning
might want to look at the (often rural) traditional communities and at sup-
posedly ancient understandings of nature and cities for new inspirations.
This implies, especially in the recent Brazilian context, the recognition of
traditional territories and communities rights, instead of the continuous
support that the state has been giving to agro-industrial agents.
There are already various examples for the emergence of new develop-
ment paradigms and practices around the world, which put (at least in
theory) people and local (or regional) needs and specificities in their focus.
We could cite, for example, the growing degrowth movement in Europe,
efforts like the transition town initiative or the Buen Vivir approach from
Ecuador. While these approaches and frameworks have been constituted
in very different realities, they seem to have a common baseline – a radi-
cal critique of the current development (or even civilizational) model, the
winning over the industrial logic and the vision of alternative worlds based
on ecological integrity and social justice 6 (Escobar, 2015). Any (urban)
planning able to incorporate such thinking without getting appropriated
by industrial and capital interests – a certainly difficult task – could have
the potential to create forms of development which share the consider-
ations of this article.

6 For any reader who has followed the sustainable development and sustainability deba-
te, these elements should be very familiar because they constitute the original ideas about
sustainability. They were already formulated in the 1987 Brundtland-Report but have been
almost entirely absent from the new green growth or green economy debate. This shift in the
sustainable development paradigm could arguably serve as an example of its appropriation
by industrial and capital interests.

1182 Nova Economia� v.26 n.Especial 2016

 Development?

Finally, it is important to note that the ideas of development, nature

and urbanization continue to be understood from the theoretical refer-
ence of modernity. And modernity, as Escobar (2015) argues, is based on
the creation of hierarchies. Thus, development continues to be related to
industrialization, which is considered superior to other productive forms.
Nature continues to be related to the extraction of resources whose nar-
rative is more powerful than the affirmation of nature’s creative potential.
Urbanization continues to be related to the degradation of the rural world,
although it can be understood as a means of strengthening it.
However, hierarchies created by the paradigm of modernity and im-
posed by colonial practices (past or current ones) have never been peace-
fully accepted. Traditional communities – often regarded as archaic and
backward-oriented – are a powerful example of resistance, and more im-
portantly, they are a promising example that it is possible to relate to the
issues proposed in this text - nature, development, urbanity - without ref-
erence to the paradigm of modernity. If traditional communities can be
considered a seed for a postmodern society that has never surrendered
to modernity imposed by colonialism, we must turn our gaze to the new
possibilities - practical and conceptual - that are being suggested.

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About the authors

Harley Silva - [email protected]
Cedeplar/ Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Jakob O. W. Sparn - [email protected]
Cedeplar/ Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Renata Guimarães Vieira - [email protected]
Cedeplar/ Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

The authors of this article are listed in alphabetical order. All three authors contributed equally in the development of this
article: conception, research and writing.

About the article

Submission received on March 15, 2017. Approved for publication on May 31, 2017.

1186 Nova Economia� v.26 n.Especial 2016 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.