Development, materialities and the social actor: methodological orientations towards territorial approaches

Abstract

This work proposes methodological designs contributing to an analytical-practical repositioning of ethnographic-studies of development, beyond the exclusive human domain. Starting from a conceptual and methodological actor-oriented perspective bases, we are proposing a socio-material approach. The proposal suggests an experimental ontology of the social actor that interconnect social relations to the territories’ material properties. Considering the place of the material in human agency, we highlight interfaces of knowledge, affects, practices and values that lead to a relational epistemology. ‘Creaturization’ and assemblages are practical implications that make visible territorialization processes. By updating a series of works, carried out since the 1980s in different countries of Latin America, we illustrate heterogeneous territories, in which the development process unleashes a myriad of singular socio-material compositions, identified as counter-development processes.