Geografares is affiliated with the Graduate Program in Geography and the Department of Geography at the Federal University of Espírito Santo. In 2025, the journal marked its 25th anniversary, publishing 40 issues. Up to issue 7, it appeared only in print, although all issues are now available in PDF format on the journal’s website. Beginning with issue 8, it became a digital journal. Full automation of the submission system, however, was only implemented with issue 9, published in the second half of 2010. From that point on, journal management and publication were conducted digitally via the Open Journal Systems platform. The journal publishes two issues per year. It accepts individual articles and may also organize dossiers on specific themes. Geografares includes sections for articles, interviews, research notes, reviews, and translations. The topics it covers span both “physical” and “human” geography. It also welcomes texts from other fields that engage with geography, especially through territorial and spatial approaches. The journal’s main geographical focus is Brazil and Latin America. Its primary language is Portuguese, but it also accepts submissions in English, Spanish, and French. All published articles are assigned a DOI.
Departamento e Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geografia da UFES
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Introduction. Thematic dossier of GT-1 of the Space and Economy Colloquium. “Financial dominance, platform capitalism, and productive restructuring”
The dossier brings together the articles presented in the homonymous Working Group that was part of the V International Space and Economy Colloquium, and it features research that unveils the voracity of the association between financialization and platformization in the different domains of social life and the productive sphere. The papers present analyses of various contemporary manifestations of the territory's digitalization process, which began a few decades ago. By presenting an overview of emerging themes, we hope that this set of texts can help other researchers advance in their investigations, with rigorous theoretical-conceptual debates and creative methodologies. We hope that the results shared here can broaden the dialogues of researchers dedicated to the theme, with the presented works opening paths for new debates and perspectives on capitalist restructuring in its multiple and contradictory processes.
Thematic dossier. Space and Economy Colloquium. Financial dominance, platform capitalism, and productive restructuring
Copyright (c) 2026 Geografares https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Notes for a Labor Geography under platform capitalism: an analysis of the circuits of the urban economy and the social relations of production of app-based workers in Largo do Machado, Rio de Janeiro
The article analyzes the transformations of labor under platform capitalism through a case study of iFood delivery workers in Largo do Machado, Rio de Janeiro. It is theoretically grounded in Milton Santos's circuits of urban economy, as updated by Montenegro and Tozi. The qualitative research combines systematic observation and interviews conducted between September and November 2025. The results show that iFood operates as an upper circuit agent, imposing algorithmic subordination and cost transfer while relying on workers from the lower circuit. The neoliberal psychosphere naturalizes precarity, but delivery workers establish sociability networks, such as WhatsApp groups, that engender collective tactics of resistance. It is concluded that the articulation between circuits is structurally asymmetric, and it updates historical processes of productive restructuring within contemporary urban spatialities.
The dynamics of auctions for social-interest properties in Rio de Janeiro: digital strategies, commercialization process, and territorial impacts
Amid high real estate delinquency, especially in social housing, this article seeks to update indebtedness relevance by bringing attention to the role of digital platforms in the reorganization of the real estate auction market in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Based on netnography procedures, it was analyzed how the emerging platformization (Pessanha, 2020a) of real estate auctions, by accelerating the circulation of repossessed properties, consolidates a new circuit of real estate commercialization with potential implications for the production of urban space and the deepening of housing-related indebtedness.
Digitalization of money, reorganization of payment systems, and new services in Latin American territories
In recent decades, Latin American territories have undergone an accelerated transformation in their financial dynamics, driven by the digitalization of money and the expansion of new financial services and instruments, requiring a profound reorganization of national payment systems. Understanding money as one of the forms of geographical space and, as such, imbued with technical and political dimensions, this study aims to examine how these processes take shape in particular ways across Latin American countries, marked by historical legacies, institutional frameworks, structural vulnerabilities, and contradictions, but also by the production of materialities, networks, and services that are reshaping urban dynamics..
Corporate urbanization and the computerized city: between hierarchization and territorial selectivity in Brazil
This article analyzes the contemporary mediations of corporate urbanization in the Brazilian context. It is argued that such articulation contributes to the production of new norms and forms of command over urban space. It further discusses how mechanisms of territorial hierarchization and selectivity orient municipal agendas that are increasingly directed toward corporate interests and the legitimization of competitiveness. Finally, it concludes that the informatization of cities represents the most consequential development of this model, in which neoliberal rationality deepens historically constructed sociospatial inequalities.
Rental housing assetization through property management: the role of platforms real estate in Brazil
The consolidation of rental housing as a new asset class in core capitalist countries is rooted in the massive privatization of housing stock from social welfare programs and the loss of property due to mortgage defaults after the 2008 crisis. In contrast to the Brazilian scenario, this article argues that the absence of these conditions has required the adoption of alternative instruments to address the fragmented private market with multiple owners. Through the analysis of new products offered by platforms, the paper shows how these platforms have influenced the transformation of rental contracts and the flow of rents into capitalized property titles, deepening the financial logic and the hierarchization of space, thus strengthening the Wealth Management Industry.
Between digital platforms and investment funds: short-term rental in the age of Financialization
The article seeks to critically analyze the recent convergence between short-term rental real estate and Real Estate Investment Funds. Although the impacts of “Airbnb-ization” have been widely considered on a global scale in recent decades, there are still few studies investigating how short-term rental sector has emerged as a field of activity for investment funds. In Brazil, a recent trend of this type of financial instrument has been observed expanding into the short-term rental sector. The research is grounded by the dialectical method, seeking to analyze the triadic relationship between tourism, the production of space, and the global processes of the financialization, using the case of Brazilian short-stay FIIs as an empirical reference. The study concludes that this dynamic reflects a trend toward convergence between finance and tourism, revealing a new strategy for the reproduction of financial capital through the financialization of real estate products oriented toward tourism consumption.
Time, labor, and racial and spatial inequalities: work intensification among platform-based ride-hailing drivers
This article analyzes the repercussions of the expansion of digital platforms on time management and the intensification of labor, focusing on the reality of Uber drivers in Belo Horizonte and its metropolitan region. It examines how the emergence of “uberization” reconfigures the historical dispute between capital and labor by introducing technological mediations that enhance the extraction of absolute and relative surplus value through algorithmic management and the reduction of porosity in the labor process. The methodology is based on the analysis of microdata from the UBER/RMBH Survey (2022), combined with a literature review. The results reveal an intense process of precarization among Uber drivers, manifested in the extension of working hours, the deregulation of the distribution of these hours, and a tendency toward the uninterrupted nature of work. Furthermore, the study shows that precarization does not occur homogeneously; rather, it is mediated by social markers of race and territory, which define different degrees of exposure to exploitation.
Platform capitalism and expansion of wholesale retailers in the Porto Alegre City-region, Brazil
The research analyses the transformations and the socioeconomic and socio-spatial repercussions resulting from the expansion of self-service wholesale stores (called “atacarejos”) in the Porto Alegre city-region (RS, Brazil). We investigate the transition from the post-Fordist accumulation regime toward “platform capitalism,” and the interactions between these “geographical objects” and their dynamics, and the productive and logistical restructuring associated with the growing financialization, flexibilization, and platformization of labor and consumer markets in the city-region. Theoretically, we engage with the debate and research about economic and metropolitan restructuring and the configuration of new socio-spatial logics. Methodologically, we use socioeconomic data and map the units of the main national and international distribution networks and its logistics centers in the study area. Finally, we discuss role of wholesale retailers in the metropolitan metamorphosis involving Porto Alegre city-region and conclude that it is increasingly inserted in global flows and networks of circulation of goods, capital, and information.
The platformization of small ride-hailing companies: between technical rationality and local demands
This article presents partial results of an ongoing study on the platformization of the economy, focusing on the app-based transportation sector in the municipalities of Ouro Preto and Diamantina, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The study is grounded in the understanding that platformization constitutes a defining process of the contemporary geographical milieu, intensified by the widespread diffusion of information technologies. In this context, the study examines the emergence of locally based digital platforms, a phenomenon referred to here as the “platformization of the small.” Although these platforms operate at the local scale, they depend on software licensed from national firms, thereby reflecting an informational division of labor. Methodologically, the research draws on fieldwork involving open-ended and semi-structured interviews with platform managers and users, as well as documentary research. The findings provide a mapping of the development of the phenomenon, highlighting the cities under study and demonstrate how small economic agents adapt to the imperatives of platformization. The article concludes that these firms mimic the practices of the sector’s big tech companies while also creating activities shaped by local conditions.
Datafied corporate metropolis: initial notes on fintech ecosystems in São Paulo’s informational center
This paper situates the problem of sociospatial restructuring stemming from the emergence of fintech ecosystems within São Paulo’s Informational Center. Methodologically, it combines a critical literature review on finance platformization within advanced producer services complexes with the compilation and preliminary systematization of secondary data from the Central Bank of Brazil and Distrito Report 2024. Grounded in an analytical approach that highlights the spatial selectivity of modernization processes in the periphery/semi-periphery of the world-economy, we conceptualize fintech ecosystems in the São Paulo metropolis as functionalizations of contemporary datafication. Accordingly, it advances a research agenda addressing new morphologies, specializations, and hierarchies shaped by interdependencies between startups, Big Tech firms, incumbent banks, investors, and state entities within the current phase of the metropolitan corporate complex.
Territory, technosphere and psychosphere: foundations of digital sovereignty
The article analyzes the digitalization of territory, current phase of the technical-scientific-informational milieu, emphasizing the disputes over the meanings of digital sovereignty in Brazil and the ongoing popular period of history. Based on the categories of technosphere and psychosphere, it argues that sovereignty involves the simultaneous control of technical infrastructures and of the meanings of actions that guide the use of territory as both resource and shelter. It discusses the role of big techs, datafication, and platformization in the production and organization of space and in the reproduction of technological dependency, characterized as data colonialism. The analysis of an emerging core of public policies aimed at digitalization reveals tensions between regulation, development, and subordination to international capital. Finally, the article highlights the emergence of popular digital sovereignty as an alternative, grounded in the collective appropriation of technologies and in the construction of public and community digital infrastructures guided by the social function of technology.
Health platformization, public interoperability, and territorial selectivity: the digitalized public health system and the role of the private NAV platform in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
This article examines health platformization as a process of territorial and capitalist reorganization of care in Brazil, based on two distinct regimes of digitanization: on the one hand, the public construction of interoperability within the Unified Health System (SUS); on the other hand, the operation of NAV, the digital platformod Diagnósticos da América S. A. (Dasa), a private health group originally linked to diagnostic medicine and recently expanded inte integrated health service. The objective is to understand how data, interoperability, and platforms become strategic resources for coordination, command, and accumulation, articulation technique, regulation, the State, and the market. The article starts from the hypothesis that digital health is not merely a form of technical modernization, but a contemporary form of territorialization of informational power, wich recentralizes coordination, data, and command in selective points of space. Methodologically, the study combines theoretical review, documentary analysis, and territorial interpretation, drawing on documents and reports from the Ministry of Health, as well as operational and financial data, corporate reports from Dasa and survey of territorial distribution of its network in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Copyright (c) 2025 Geografares https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of the book “Historical Journey to Brazil”
Review of the book “Historical Journey to Brazil”, by the French painter, artist and professor Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768–1848). Debret was part of the French Artistic Mission, led by Joaquim Lebreton and conceived during the reign of Dom João VI. He arrived in Brazil in 1816 and remained in the country until 1831. His works depict enslaved people, ethnographic themes, indigenous populations, clothing, urban landscapes, monarchs, utensils, religious ceremonies, natural areas, political events, fauna and flora, among other aspects of Brazilian daily life. His production constitutes a contemporary look at an ancestral Brazil, allowing the visualization of the past and reflection on the historical formation and current society.
Editorial of the thematic dossie "Energy transition and extractive dependence: Latin America’s dilemmas in the age of critical minerals"
Editorial of the thematic dossie.
Dossier Energy transition and extractive dependence — Latin America’s dilemmas in the era of critical minerals
Environmental characterization in the context of sand extraction in a locality of the municipality of Vila Velha, Espírito Santo, Brazil
This article presents an analysis of the environmental conditions and a description of the geological, geomorphological, and pedological aspects of a sand extraction area located in the municipality of Vila Velha, Espírito Santo, Brazil. Its main objective is to evaluate the current environmental conditions associated with sand extraction activities in the area. The methodological approach integrated office-based analyses, including the preparation of thematic maps using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and a review of relevant literature. Field analyses consisted of the identification and macroscopic evaluation of geological, geomorphological, pedological, and environmental characteristics through the description of materials and site features, using geological hammers, hand lenses, and a Brunton compass to assess environmental impacts. A topographic survey was conducted using a total station, and the methodology adopted to calculate the volume of extracted mineral material was based on ABNT Standard NBR 13133/94. The results revealed environmental issues related to sand and clay extraction activities, indicating the need for erosion control measures and containment structures to mitigate the significant environmental impacts associated with clay extraction. Finally, the adoption of vegetative buffer zones and the installation of monitoring wells were recommended to control extraction depth and prevent damage to local soil resources.
The digitization of rotating parking spaces: regional platforms and the modernization of urban mobility services in the contemporary world
The current stage of development of information technologies allows for the exponential growth of financial transactions conducted through digital means and the implementation of new public functionalities. Thus, the objective is to contribute to the discussion of the relationship between technology’s integration into urban mobility and how it influences actions and the creation of models for monitoring on-street parking, from a new perspective of the city’s digital connection. Our methodology consists of gathering secondary data, both quantitative and qualitative, obtained from scientific articles and reports on the subject, along with fieldwork conducted in selected cities in the state of São Paulo. It is concluded that this company is positioned within the process of expanding financial services and new forms of digital payment, and that digitalization aligns with better effectiveness in extracting more revenue from public spaces.
Market territories and urban centralities: a comparative analysis of public food markets in São Paulo (Brazil) and Santiago (Chile)
This article analyzes, from a comparative perspective, the public markets of São Paulo (Brazil) and Santiago (Chile) as mercantile territories and resilient urban centralities in Latin America. Based on a historical-cultural and territorial approach (period from 1850 to 2021), supported by qualitative research using documentary analysis, field observation, and spatial mapping, it investigates how these spaces articulate traditional trade practices, circulation networks, power relations, and local identities. The results show that public markets are spaces of social production of territory, mediating tensions between tradition and modernity, public and private, local and global. The analysis reinforces their role as social institutions that resist contemporary urban transformations, contribute to the consolidation of local food supply networks, and structure urban centralities in their surroundings.
The geography of rail freight transport and the flows of mineral-based raw materials in Brazil
In spatial interactions, railways play a strategic role in the (re)organization of freight flows, which require connections and intersections of infrastructure, as well as the provision of transport services in the movement of mineral products across the Brazilian territory. The purpose of this article was to analyze the socio-spatial dynamics of the rail transport system in the circulation of mineral-based raw material shipments in Brazil, considering the flows on the routes between the origin and destination rail stations of the transported products, in the period from 2006 to 2025. The methodological procedures were structured in the literature review, collection, tabulation, and analysis of data provided by the National Land Transport Agency of Brazil (ANTT). Mineral product shipments were concentrated in the states of Minas Gerais and Pará, being predominantly transported via the Carajás Railway, the Vitória-Minas Railway, and MRS Logística, connecting the port complexes of São Luís, Vitória, and Itaguaí.
Spatial analysis of solar panel imports in the state of Minas Gerais (2010-2024)
Solar energy is one of the renewable energy sources in which the country has great potential for its dissemination throughout the national territory. Therefore, one of the aspects contributing to this process is solar panels, whose characteristics, linked to high costs and accessibility, are one of the determining factors for their development. Thus, this article aims to understand the dynamics of solar panel imports in the state of Minas Gerais from 2010 to 2024, adding geoprocessing and decision-making techniques. It concludes that the increase was significant, since 78.57% of the years analyzed showed average annual growth rates of 200,28%.
Territory use and mineral exploitation: mobilization and popular consultation in Mercaderes, Cauca (Colombia)
The legitimate mining popular consultation of Mercaderes, Cauca (Colombia), held in 2019, emerged as a process of community reaffirmation within the framework of an environmental conflict. This process consolidated dynamics of defense and resistance, accompanied by the radicalization of horizontal solidarities. This article demonstrates the existence of a dialectical movement in the configuration of political geography in Mercaderes, Cauca, with social mobilization and territorial conflicts at its core, arising from the threat of appropriation of the territory for its feasibility as a mineral resource. The emergence of hydrocarbon and mining exploitation processes contrasts with the loss of river springs in the municipality, hydric stress, and the arrival of illegal mining activity that profoundly affected the Sambingo River and the social dynamics associated with it. The legitimate popular consultation on mining, within an adverse social context, upheld the community’s plans and its conception of its territory.
Mexican lithium: from its “nationalization” to the dispute with China
This article analyzes the growing global demand for lithium, emphasizing its use in electric batteries, which account for nearly 90% of consumption. It examines strategic territories, including Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru, which collectively hold the world’s largest lithium resources. Specifically, the study focuses on Mexico. Given its lithium wealth—ranking tenth globally—former President López Obrador declared lithium a strategic element and national heritage. This measure sought to protect the resource by preventing the granting of mining concessions to private companies, which had previously seized more than half of the national territory. Nevertheless, a Chinese company has sued the Mexican government to exploit Mexico’s lithium. The corporation had proposed exporting the raw clay to Asia without domestic processing. Such practices perpetuate permanent primary accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, the primary-export model, and necroeconomics.
Smart agriculture: new impulses to the financialization of the agricultural business. Some notes on Argentina and Brazil
Significant transformations are underway in agriculture. These shifts are driving new strategies and alliances among leading global business conglomerates. From this perspective, the article explores the characteristics of the biological-digital paradigm. It examines the diffusion of its productive, commercial, and spatial dynamics, which interact with the so-called “China effect,” particularly in the Southern Cone of Latin America, especially in Argentina and Brazil. Special analytical attention is paid to land grabbing amid a deepening climate crisis. Finally, the study addresses new regulatory pressures that, among other aspects, result in eco-financialization through the development of so-called green businesses.
The open-pit metallic extraction dilemma in Panama concerning “Minera Panamá”: between life’s sustainability and nature’s exploitation
The present article analyzes the sociopolitical crisis in Panama caused by the approval of Law 406 and its implications for the contract with Minera Panamá, S.A. Throughout 2023, the controversy over the lack of transparency and citizen participation in decision-making triggered massive social mobilizations, highlighting the involvement of social movements, trade unions, and young activists who demanded the defense of the environment and national sovereignty. The government’s response was to repeal the law and issue a landmark Supreme Court ruling declaring the mining contract unconstitutional for violating fundamental rights and constitutional provisions that protect natural resources and social welfare. We highlight the diverse positions that arise from the convulsive reality of open-pit metallic mining extractivism in Panama.
The Port of Chancay, the Belt and Road Initiative, and Peru’s economic developmen
This article examines the Port of Chancay’s role in China-Peru relations, arguing that it deepens Peru’s extractivist economy and dependence. Peru is a dependent capitalist economy mainly supplying resources to advanced countries and China. While the port promises GDP growth, jobs, and logistical integration, these benefits largely exclude most people, reinforcing an exclusionary, super-exploitative model with high informality. The study highlights that Chinese investment is part of a geoeconomic strategy to secure resources, cut costs, and increase China’s influence over Peru and Latin America.
South America amid hegemonic narratives of critical minerals and the corporate energy transition
From a critical South American perspective, this article analyzes how global actors contest and control hegemonic narratives about critical minerals and the so-called Corporate Energy Transition. Using an exploratory, mixed-methods approach, this study examines the geopolitical dimensions of these minerals in the global energy transition. The methodology draws on international organization reports, a comprehensive literature review, and my previous research. Results demonstrate that the corporate energy transition reproduces a framework of “green neocolonialism” under the guise of decarbonization. This process shifts structural dependence from fossil fuels to a multi-dependency on critical minerals, thereby deepening neo-extractivism across the Global South. In this context, I argue that South America faces the urgent challenge of redefining how its strategic resources are used and controlled. The region must overcome its subordinate global position and realign the energy transition with its own sovereign development priorities.
This text reflects on the thinking of sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad, highlighting the relationship between migration, state thinking, and work. We highlight the interdependence between these categories and also the stages of emigration, namely: temporariness and return. Throughout the text, we appreciate the importance of his work for the analysis of migration in the contemporary world, especially when we consider the political and methodological perspectives of this production.
From land conflicts to the consolidation of lasting peace in Aboisso (south-eastern ivory coast)
Ivory Coast’s development is based on agriculture. This sector currently represents 22% of GDP, and more than two-thirds of the working population earn their living from farming. However, the challenges of agriculture face several problems, including the land issue. Nearly all regions of Côte d’Ivoire are affected by land conflicts (OASIS, 2017, p.12). This land situation is strongly marked by intense agrarian migration supported by the state since the 1960s. In the department of Aboisso, in the face of land conflicts, strategies are adopted for maintaining peace. This study therefore aims to understand, in the face of land conflicts, the strategies adopted for maintaining peace in Aboisso. Based on a mixed survey (qualitative and quantitative), it emerges that the absence of land titles, multiple sales of the same land and poor administrative management are the main causes of conflicts in Aboisso. The study also reveals that land conflicts in Aboisso pit indigenous peoples themselves against agricultural land exploitation rights, indigenous peoples against migrants, and village communities against large agro-industrial companies. Faced with these conflicts, victims resort to customary, judicial, and administrative settlement methods to consolidate peace in Aboisso.
Sand extraction and coastal degradation in San-Pedro (south-west Ivory Coast)
Public policies regarding environmental preservation in the coastal city of San-Pedro face a crucial development in sand extraction activities. This activity, which has an economic dimension along the beach, bears the dual impacts of intense coastal urbanization and coastline erosion. Given the urgency of this situation, this study aims to understand the extent to which sand extraction can be practiced while reducing impacts on the coastline. To achieve this objective, this contribution analyzes the forces at play that embody the emergence of this activity through a mixed-method approach primarily focused on creating qualitative scenarios. Data was collected from 52 stakeholders, including workers, truck drivers, members of the village community, NGOs, private organizations, and local elected officials. Based on the results obtained, it is important to note that sand extraction, due to its economic and social productivity, exacerbates environmental degradation, particularly along the coastline. However, it is evident that there is currently a lack of local policies or strategies capable of integrating this activity within an ecological framework. That being said, awareness-raising, ecological transition, and corporate social responsibility prove to be key tools for simultaneously reducing coastal destruction and safeguarding this profession that sustains many in the city of San-Pedro.
Organisation and structural constraints of the catfish supply chain in Côte d’Ivoire
In Côte d’Ivoire, catfish remains marginal in aquaculture despite real consumption potential and strong dependence on fish imports. This article examines the organisation and structural constraints of its supply chain. The study combines a quantitative survey of 200 fish farmers and 38 fishers with semi-structured interviews conducted with 128 actors across the chain. Results show a triply fragmented structure: weak and poorly specialised local aquaculture production, continental catches that remain largely invisible in official statistics, and growing dependence on imported Asian siluriforms. The sector operates mainly through informal relations, with no contractualisation or vertical coordination. Catfish is also constrained by persistent food taboos. Together, these factors maintain a structural lock-in. The article argues for integrated governance linking input provision, market structuring and the sociocultural revalorisation of the product.