Periferias da internacionalização na pesquisa sócio-espacial

Abstract

Internationalization has been a central criterion for legitimating and funding research in all areas of knowledge. However, for research in the (semi-) periphery, participation in international networks is often done under the premise of subordination to conceptual apparatuses and agendas driven by the center. After briefly discussing that structure of the international division of research labor, on which the type of knowledge produced and the corresponding possibilities of social use depend, this article points out its specific implications for socio-spatial research. Given that in this case the concrete territory not only defines institutional conditions, but constitutes the empirical field, the political arena and the place of actual or potential applications, internationalization produces or reinforces cognitive biases and operational distortions. This requires systematic criticism, not for a withdrawal from the international arena, but, quite the contrary, to pave the way for non-subordinated exchanges.