The Gandarela Mountain Range and the “resistance space” against iron ore mining threat: a focus on the contrapositions

Abstract

Analyzing a clipping of Lefebvre's space theory and its dialogue with the doxa from Pierre Bourdieu as the theoretical basis, this research aims to build the concept of the “resistance space”. This is a qualitative study characterized as a metaphilosophy by which the knowledge is linked to the practice. This analysis on empirical object is based on the environmental conflict in the Gandarela Mountain Range, located in Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais. Brazil is a giant supplier of iron ore exports for the world economy, and the state of Minas Gerais is where Vale – a very large transnational mining company - started its operation in the 1940s. Gandarela is the last mountain range environmentally well protected in the heart of Minas Gerais, holding a huge aquifer, but it has iron ore underground. An environmental-social movement has arisen to protect the place. For more than two years, participant observation was carried out and also in-depth interviews were applied to people belonging to the Movement for the Preservation of the Gandarela Mountain Range, who fights to block an iron ore mining activity proposed by “Vale”. The resistance movement proposed the creation of a National Park as an instrumental strategy, and the movement goes beyond conservationism, it opposes the actual social metabolism of the world economy and believes in a different society. Inspired by Lefebvre’s space theory I developed a spacial analysis of the Gandarela case. My hypothesis is that the “resistance space” transits between the abstract space and the differential space. The notion of the “resistance space” contributes for understanding the dimensions from the resistance struggles, their thoughts, and glimpses which guide their actions in the name of territories and communities. This research reached three dialectic representations of the resistance space: the “instruments”, the “contrapositions”, and the “utopia”. The focus of the paper is on the “contrapositions” of the resistance space, the arguments against mining and the current pattern of economic development, thoughts that go beyond development and economic valuation.