Por uma Geografia Nova / For a New Geography

Abstract

Milton Santos, the most renowned Brazilian geographer in the Western world, made a fundamental contribution to the study and interpretation of space as a product of society. In Por uma Nova Geografia, published in 1978 and still a seminal text today, he presents reflections and perspectives of striking relevance. We have chosen to publish a chapter in which the geographer not only anticipates by twenty years the debates that would later underpin the development of postcolonial approaches to urban studies, but also introduces the concept of Nature—not as something external to human beings, but intrinsically connected to them. This is an approach we now seek, perhaps desperately, to recover, and which may be found precisely within those cultures considered “other” in relation to the Western world. We therefore choose to publish it also in the author’s own language, Brazilian Portuguese, not only because it is spoken by 260 million people worldwide, but also as a modest attempt to challenge the “colonialism” of the English language within academia.