Culture&Territories#3

Neighbourhood & City
Public spaces as gathering places
of different locations-in-movement:
An intercultural approach
Filipa Lourenço (0000-0001-7390-0892), Universidade Lusófona, Centro de Estudos
Interdisciplinares em Educação e Desenvolvimento – CeiED, Lisboa, Portugal.
filipa.lourenco.r3@gmail.com
Abstract - One of the challenges in this work is to open a window of discussion on
the relationship between public space and cultural interaction. The reflection argues
that global changes in contemporary cities demanded in the past, and continue
to demand, a new approach to the understanding of public space as a place of
political action, as a democratic place, as the site for multicultural gathering, as an
inclusive and supportive space, to which an emerging precious resource of intercultural
mediation is therefore (by intention) acknowledged. Spaces are dynamic, as are
cultures; both result from the interaction between each other, triggered and fedby
political, social, spiritual and symbolic actions, opening up to new socio-cultural
representations that are in permanent construction and reconstruction. From the
conception of space and the experience of the native (indigenous) people, we believe
that these can be inspiring in the future of the (re) construction, manifestation and
movement of culture, which requires a space of free "breathing" where one can
imagine and build a sense of a global community, respecting people’s expressions,
traditions, customs, art and knowledge, which will naturally come from the willingness
to redirect the relationship between space and people for a new contemporary
citizenship.
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Keywords - Interculturality, public space, indigenous knowledge, epistemologies
LOCATIONS-IN-MOVEMENT. AN-OTHER CONCEPT OF SPACE
As introductory note, I propose then that three separate spaces be presented:
the biolocal, the ethnolocal and the dis-local (Lourenço & Teodoro, 2013: 177). The
biolocalis understood here as a physical space where a people settle, closely related
to the concept of land. Understanding this concept in the voice of the indigenous
peoples will not be possible unless we distance ourselves from the “western” thought,
since for the former it is representative of a place of and for all, and in the latter,
it is representative of individual property, which is, according to Carlos Frederico
Marés de Souza Filho, a “private, eminently civil lawconcept” (Dantas, 2004: 310).
1
Dis-location: see Mignolo, W. (1999).