Sociocultural Practices and Deterritorialization: A Reading from Social Phenomenology and Grounded Theory

Sandra del Pilar Gómez Contreras
sdgomez@universidadmayor.edu.co
Universidad Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca

Paula Alejandra Luis López
pluis@universidadmayor.edu.co
Universidad Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca

Abstract:

Nowadays, globalization has sped up the loss of territorial control and social precarization, by driving deterritorialization processes that disrupt traditional agricultural practices across territories, which has resulted in undermining community food security and disrupting rural relations. While literature in the field addresses sociocultural tensions, there is an analytical gap on how these processes reconfigure local meanings of land, sowing, and ancestral wisdom. This article examines that interrelation through a qualitative case study performed in the villages of Fosca and Fómeque (Cundinamarca, Colombia). Twelve semi-structured interviews were performed guided by social phenomenology and grounded theory. The findings show that recovering sociocultural practices and reinforcing community-based organization allow for reterritorialization, symbolically reconfiguring our relationship with land, reaffirming food sovereignty as cultural resistance, and bringing in new shared meanings, all of which has an effect in the abovementioned policy.

Keywords: deterritorialization, social phenomenology, reterritorialization, grounded theory, food sovereignty.