News

From 29 June to 4 July, three Wealth & Space researchers took part in POLLEN2026, the political ecology conference, at the Universitat de Barcelona. Claudia Alonso (Universidad de Chile) presented "Vertical political ecologies of the desert," on how the energy transition disputes ground, infrastructure, and sky in the Atacama desert. Manuel Bayon (El Colegio de Mexico) examined the persecution of socio-environmental organisations in Ecuador amid expanding megamining. Francisco Montano (KIT) discussed the labour conflict between the avocado industry and the autonomous community of Cherán, Michoacan. Three different scales, one shared question: who decides over territories.

On 3 June 2026, a seminar was held in Seville focusing on tourism issues through the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s thinking on topics such as alienation, everyday life, centrality and the right to the city. Manuel Bayón, from El Colegio de México, offered a comparative perspective between the Yucatán Peninsula and the Ecuadorian Amazon, to situate tourism within the context of planetary urbanisation.

M.-W. Wolf

The article “Money, meaning, and territory: family business groups and agro-extractive systems in Latin America” by Maria-Dorothea Wolf (KIT), David Kornbluth Camblor (UCHILE), Manuel Bayón Jiménez (COLMEX), Michael Lukas (UCHILE), and Michael Janoschka (KIT) was published in the journal Extractive Industries and Society. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the Maggi (Brazil), Angelini (Chile), and González Hank (Mexico) family business groups, the article expands research on agro-extractivism by offering a new perspective on the coordinating role of family business groups.

IfR

Besides internal meetings, we will offer a two-day public workshop on geographies of wealth. On 15 December, we will celebrate the public launch of "Geographies of Wealth", our new platform for critical research on territorial power. Details to follow.

From 17 to 18 March 2026, the symposium "Perspectives on Wealth 2026" brought together Wealth & Space and 14 more projects funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung. At Schloss Herrenhausen, Hannover, we presented preliminary research findings from Chile, Brazil and Mexico.

The meeting in Mérida fostered exchange on current research topics in the Yucatán Peninsula and advanced the development of the Observatory of the Geography of Wealth.The meeting consisted of four days of intensive dialogue, academic work and a specialized transdisciplinary workshop to develop our interactive platform “Geographies of Wealth”. A public conversatory highlighted the need for a participatory platform to document the social and environmental impacts of extractive development models.