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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

PUTTING PORTUGAL ON THE MAP

João Ferrão

PhD in geography by the Universidade de Lisboa and

Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais of the Universidade de Lisboa.

Coordinator of several projects and research networks and consultant in the fields of economic

and social geography, territorial planning, and local and regional development.

He coordinates several studies on evaluation of public policies

for the Portuguese government and the European Commission.

He was a Secretary of State for Land and City Planning

during the 17th Constitutional Government.

Abstract

This paper argues the need to “put Portugal on the map” in a double sense: in a prospective

way, in order to place the country on the required map(s), something which entails strategic

vision and capacity for action; and in an analytical way – to enable us to understand

Portugal from the map(s) it is part of, which presupposes a capacity to analyse and

understand the current state of affairs. By drawing inspiration from the polymorphic vision

on the spatialities of contemporary societies and economies defended by Jessop, Brenner

and Jones (2008), we propose the creation of a unifying reference framework to “put

Portugal on the map”, using a combination of five elements: territory as a geographic

location; territory as a unit of reference of the nation-state; places; geographic scales; and

networks. The polymorphic nature of the spatialities that characterize, or should

characterize, Portugal’s place in the world reflects several, and even contradictory, ethical

values, interests, preferences, and options. Accordingly, the supported polymorphic

spatialities ought to stir up controversy based on knowledge and arguments that are solid

from a theoretical and empirical stance, and should make explicit the objectives and values

they are based on.

Keywords

Geography; Geopolitics; Geoeconomics; Portugal; Territory; Place; Geographic Scale;

Network

How to cite this article

Ferrão, João (2010) "Putting Portugal on the map". JANUS.NET e-journal of International

Relations, N.º 1, Autumn 2010. Consulted [online] on date of the last visit,

observare.ual.pt/janus.net/en_vol1_n1_art8

Article received in July 2010 and accepted for publication in September 2010

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

PUTTING PORTUGAL ON THE MAP

João Ferrão

Putting Portugal on the map: strategic vision and analytical capacity

The idea behind putting a place, region or country on the map is generally associated

with the purpose of conferring it greater visibility, importance, and recognition.

Distinct initiatives, such as joining the European Union, economic diplomacy and

territorial marketing actions, the support given to the internationalisation of Portuguese

companies, participation in international football tournaments cups, tourism campaigns,

or encouragement to participate in science, creativity, and innovation networks, no

doubt contribute to putting Portugal (or parts of it) on the map (or on specific maps).

Albeit with very different results in terms of intensity and duration, all these initiatives

aim to reposition Portugal on various cognitive and power maps on a European, even

world, scale.

However, at the same time, Portugal is continuously being repositioned on those maps

by external agents and processes with exogenous origin and led from the outside: the

global financial crisis, changing international migration flows, pandemics, the relocation

of investment or climate change, to name just a few examples, may contribute to a

profound change of our position on maps marked by spatialities in constant

transformation. So, what does “putting Portugal on the map” mean? Which Portugal

and on which map(s)? And how? On our own initiative, through a proactive individual or

collaborative effort involving national and external players – putting ourselves on the

map? Or as a result of an initiative by a third party – to be put on the map?

The expression “to put Portugal on the map” has, in fact, a double meaning: a

prospective one – to place the country on the required map(s), which entails strategic

vision and capacity for action; and an analytical meaning – to enable us to understand

our country from the map(s) it is part of, which presupposes capacity to analyse and

understand the current situation.

Efforts with a prospective purpose have, so far, been fragmented and, generally

speaking, unarticulated, as they are normally devised from a sectoral perspective to

address specific conjunctures as part of one-off initiatives, programmes, or events. On

the other hand, the multiplicity of used areas of reference, such as the European Union,

the whole of the Portuguese communities scattered all over the world, Portuguese

Speaking Countries, the Mediterranean, Macaronesia, the “North Atlantic”, or Mercosul

countries, are almost always associated to specific topics and objectives. Prospective

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

exercises normally lack a comprehensive view of the whole that would ensure a more

systemic strategic stance about the country’s position on the world, and on the

envisaged outcome. However, broader perspectives can be found in official documents

(for example, in the Programa Nacional da Política de Ordenamento do Território, or in

the Estratégia Nacional de Desenvolvimento Sustentável – ENDS 2015), or in the

interesting works on possible scenarios for the geoeconomics insertion of Portugal and

its regions, which are regularly prepared by the Departamento de Planeamento e

Prospectiva - DPP1.

Conversely, from an analytical perspective, we also find that fragmented stances

predominate, mirroring the conventional divisions among fields of scientific knowledge.

Areas as diverse as climatology, geography, political science, economics, or

international relations, attempt to understand the country from the physical, cognitive,

and power maps in which it is inserted, but they do so in an autonomous way, almost

always ignoring external contributions. It is, thus, paramount, that we develop a

broader analytical capacity that is able to scrutinize Portugal from its multiple insertions

within vaster spaces and domains.

A reflective approach to the country requires that we confer a broader meaning to the

expression “to put Portugal on the map”: to propose new futures (strategic vision)

implies understanding the present and, necessarily, the past (analytical capacity); and

to understand the present, both the one we have inherited and the emerging present

(analytical capacity) points to evolution dynamics which, depending on specific cases,

must be fought, inflected, replaced, enhanced or completed (strategic vision). We,

therefore, need a unifying reference framework to help us bring together strategic

vision and analytical capacity. They are, after all, the two sides of the same coin.

1 See http://www.dpp.pt/pages/pub/estudos.php

Figure 1. Changing maps

Fig. 1a. Continental drift

The Economist 24May2010

Source:

http://www.economist.com

Fig. 1b. Europe/Climat changes

2071

Source:

http://www.nonformality.org

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

Portugal on the map: a polymorphic view

Contrary to spatial metaphors announcing a “borderless world” (Ohmae, 1991), the

“end of geography” (O´Brien, 1992), or a “flat world” (Friedmann, 20052), we

increasingly live in a reality that Jessop, Brenner and Jones (2008) call polymorphic,

whereby territory, place, geographic scale and network connect together in a

contingent, sometimes volatile, but decisive manner for the development of

contemporary societies and economies. In fact, security walls alongside borders which

have either been built recently, are being built or whose construction is planned, in

such different regions as North America (Mexico/USA), the Near East (Israel/Cisjordan

and Israel/Egypt), or in Africa (Ceuta/Morocco; Botswana/Zimbabwe), remind us of the

unrealism of the aforementioned spatial metaphors.

By drawing inspiration from the polymorphic vision of the spatialities of contemporary

societies and economies defended by Jessop, Brenner and Jones (2008), we propose

the creation of a unifying reference framework to “put Portugal on the map”,

encompassing both strategic vision and analytical capacity, and that includes the

following elements:

i) Territory as a geographic location

Territory as a geographic location influences the development of countries.

The fact of being located in the southern area of the sea front of the European

continent, close to the Mediterranean and in a peripheral position regarding the

whole of Europe, means that Portugal’s territory is inevitably conditioned by its

location. However, that limitation is dynamic and varies along time.

Old Portugal, provincial and rural, that Orlando Ribeiro (1963) described and which

persists on a physical or subjective basis in so many aspects of our collective life,

was characterized by its significant dependence on factors directly connected to the

country’s geographic location. The growing modernization and tertiarization taking

place from the 1960s have contributed to reducing the country’s dependence on

those factors. However, recent changes of a very distinct nature remind us how

geographic location, even now, continues to be important.

2 See Carmo (2010) for a critique of this view.

Fig. 1a: several countries are repositioned in the map of Europe, so that they

can be closer to other countries with which they share common problems. The

United Kingdom, for instance, is placed between the Azores and mainland

Portugal, to be aligned with Southern European countries, due to the worrying

state of public finances affecting all of them.

Fig. 2a: several cities in Northern and Central Europe are repositioned in the

Iberian Peninsula (Stockholm, Oslo, London, and Paris) or even North Africa

(Barcelona, Berlin), becoming closer to locations which currently have the

temperatures forecasted (in a quite speculative way) for those cities in 2071,

according to climate change prospective scenarios.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

As an example, let us highlight the fact that Portugal became politically and

economically more “peripheral” with the expansion of the European Union to the

east, or how its location makes it particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate

change. It can be negatively affected both by the average sea level rise (location

by the sea), and by the intensification of extreme conditions, particularly heat and

draught (location in Southern Europe).

ii) Territory as a unit of reference of the nation-state

The territory as a unit of reference of the nation-state is also a key element that is

undergoing change.

Portugal’s ancient and stable European border, allows us to clearly define its

internal and external spaces (with the exception of the one-off and irrelevant

episode of Olivença). Accordingly, for Portugal, its territory represents a solid and

unquestionable symbol of affirmation of national sovereignty and of differentiation

from other States. However, here, too, we find recent changes, of a distinct nature

but, nonetheless, significant.

Over the past years, the rigid land border, whose impermeability nurtured,

throughout history, well-known lively smuggling activities, has become porous and

inexistent, as a result of the free movement of people, goods, and capital within

the EU. This fact undermined the importance of our land border in favour of port

and airport infrastructures. Furthermore, it even fostered positive interactions on

the two sides of the border, which were initially encouraged by high investment,

made as part of cross-border European cooperation programmes and, more

recently, by the development of active reciprocated employment pools and flows of

equipment and services of a cross-border nature.

At the same time, the instability of the sea border increased. This is due to the

reduction of our coastal area, which, as a result of erosion and decrease in

sediment deposits on our beaches, may reach, in extreme cases, 20 metres per

year (MAOT, 2010). This value runs the risk of growing substantially if some of the

predictions on the rise of the average sea water level caused by climate change are

confirmed (Santos and Miranda (ed.), 2006).

From a “portulan chart“ perspective that is to say, looking at earth from the sea,

Portugal is actually shrinking…

Nevertheless, at the same time, the country may considerably expand its

jurisdiction over the current 1.7 million square metres of maritime Exclusive

Economic Zone.

The territory as a basic unit of the nation-state is, thus, undergoing change. In

some cases this is due to the functional change of its borders, in others this is

because this line is physically being redrawn.

iii) Places

People’s everyday lives, as well as those of companies and organisations, take

place within the context of specific places.

However, the growing mobility stimulated by sub-urban growth enabled by mass

public transport and generalized use of private transport implies that current living

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ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

spaces tend to be larger and polycentric, associated to areas of residence,

employment, study, consumption and leisure, often quite apart from each other.

Locations and even cities which, until recently, had a relatively compact geography

regarding their direct daily influence on population from neighbouring areas, are

being replaced by functional areas. These are large spaces or constellations of

places where living and proximity forms of socialization, which confer meaning to

the lives of individuals and groups, develop and get consolidated. Simultaneously,

other agglomerations with ageing populations, uncompetitive activities, and fragile

companies become more marginal, undergoing a process of spatial disintegration

that contradicts the physical geography that stubbornly keeps them in the same

space.

Places where everyday life takes place continue to be based on proximity.

However, that proximity increasingly presupposes the intensification and

diversification of forms of mobility, underpinned by a dynamic that reconstructs

centralities and peripheries, thus shaping a changing geography of winner and

looser places.

iv) Geographic scales

Perhaps never so much as today geographic scales have played such a decisive

role in analysing dynamics, understanding behaviours, and identifying changes. In

this area too, distinct examples abound.

Let us recall, on the one hand, how local and global dynamics increasingly

intertwine, even leading to the emergence of the neologism “glocalization”, made

popular by Robertson (1995). Examples of this growing dialectics between global

and local dynamics, observable in several domains, include: globalisation of

investment and relocation of companies, fair trade of local products and world

markets, climate change and local adaptation strategies, ethnic neighbourhoods,

and globalisation of migrant flows.

But, equally, the forms of multi-scale governance, which are so important in the

context of the European Union, require that we pay attention to the “geographic

scale” component in which the various players – international, European

community, national, regional, and local – organize themselves and distribute or

share tasks and competences, decisions and initiatives, or use the scales, as

Charnock (2010) described it, to build new and successive forms of hegemony.

Unsurprisingly, Portugal cannot escape these two trends.

Thanks to the visibility it offers, enabling us to identify the analytical scale that is

more appropriate to each phenomenon through zoom-in exercises, the interactions

it allows to detect through multi-scale analysis, and the forms of organization it

permits, as pinpointed in the previous paragraph, the “geographic scale” dimension

and the reading and hierarchy exercises it permits, constitute a powerful source of

intelligibility and power with regard the present and the future of any territory.

v) Networks

We currently live in an increasingly interactive and networked world.

The globalisation of the most varied components of active life – financial world,

economy, drug traffic, migration movements, terrorism, media, tourism, social

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

activism, etc. – presupposes an intensification of flows and mobility relying on

networks with extremely variable degrees of organization and duration, which

benefit enormously from the new information and communication technologies and

point to plans, strategies and practices that are increasingly conceived on a global

basis.

More recently, the expansion of services related to Web2.0 (blogs, wikis and social

network sites) enabled the exponential development of online communities,

transforming cyberspace into a huge communication platform involving many

thousands of networks and many millions of people and organizations.

Physical and virtual networks complement and strengthen one another, resting on

strategic connections and players who know how to take advantage of the

enormous potential offered by connective proximity, which may be accompanied,

or not, by the intensification of movement of people, capital and goods.

Our strategic understanding of the spatialities of today’s societies and economies

requires us to know how the several aforementioned components – territory, place,

geographic scale and network – specifically combine in distinct contexts. This means we

need to decipher the polymorphic nature of those spatialities according to existing or

desired situations.

For example, the analysis and strategic management of cooperation networks involving

cities scattered around the various member States of the European Union with very

distinct hierarchal positioning within the European urban system mobilizes,

simultaneously, the territory, place, and geographic scale and network components.

The higher the capacity all the players involved have to understand and foster the

polymorphic nature of this complex relations network, the more productive and

powerful they will be.

“To put Portugal on the map” requires a systemic view on those various components

that is able to integrate the spatialities of distinct powers – political, economic, and

social. These components are currently taken into account in areas such as geography,

modern and postcolonial geopolitics, and geoeconomics (Cowen and Smith, 2009). This

systemic view must, nevertheless, go beyond these domains and have, as a reference,

the “geographic” relational matrix advanced by Jessop, Brenner and Jones (2008).

This relational matrix involving the territory, place, geographic scale, and network

components has, however, a nature that is, above all, instrumental. It only makes

sense in the light of integrated versions, and is desirably developed from distinct

viewpoints that complement each other. Portugal, as perceived by local communities,

as a national project, as part of the European Union or in the context of global decisions

will mobilize, necessarily, distinct aspects and combinations of the four elements

mentioned above.

The scenario exercises developed as part of ESPON – European Spatial Planning

Observation Network on Europe’s role in the world (ESPON 2007a) and on the future of

Europe’s territory by 2030 (ESPON 2007b) – which obviously include Portugal –

illustrate how important it is that we understand territorial dynamics better, and

consider territorial objectives in politics and policy agendas aiming at building visions

that favour a more promising future.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 92-101

Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

Conferring intelligibility and meaning to Portugal by putting it on the

map(s)

The polymorphism underlined by Jessop, Brenner and Jones (2008) does not vary in

time and space only. It also changes according to the perspective and analysis adopted.

This point is particularly important, as it implies accepting that there is no such thing as

a “correct polymorphism” for Portugal, or any other country or area in the world,

associated to each historical and geographical context, able to be identified and

deciphered with precision and objectivity. On the contrary, there are several

combinations of the elements of reference referred to earlier, and these combinations

inevitably mirror distinct, even contradictory, ethical values, interests, preferences, and

choices, both from an analytical and a strategic stance, which means they are subject

to controversy and opposition.

The actual construction of global and contrasting projects in and for Portugal is

manifestly insufficient, reflecting aspects as diverse as the lack of a culture of

interdisciplinarity, the scant dialogue among the scientific, political, entrepreneurial

communities and civil society, and the total absence of stable and credible think-tanks.

The scientific community ought to give the first step by making available for public

scrutiny a research agenda aiming at the collective construction of more integrated and

prospective visions that allow putting Portugal on the map(s) which confer it

intelligibility and meaning.

These responsibility and ambition are inalienable. The use of the extensive collection of

the Janus Magazine and of the Observatory for External Relations that supports it can,

no doubt, help attain this goal.

Figure 2. Portugal on other people’s maps

Fig. 2c. Irrelevant

Portugal

Headquarters of

transnational companies

Source: ESPON 2007a, p. 28

Fig. 2b. Portugal at the

edge

World-map centred on

New Zealand

Source:

http://www.aucklandma

pcentre.co.nz

Fig. 2a. Portugal out of

place

Source: CNN

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Putting Portugal on the map

João Ferrão

100

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Figura 1a.

http://www.economist.com/realarticleid.cfm?redirect_id=16003661

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101

Figura 1b.

http://www.nonformality.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/02-large.jpg

Figura 2a.

http://www.cnn.com

Figura 2b.

http://www.aucklandmapcentre.co.nz/assets/resized/img/sm/340/11/22-320-640-240-

480.jpg

Figura 2c.

http://www.espon.eu/export/sites/default/Documents/Publications/ESPON2006Publicati

ons/EuropeInTheWorld/EIW_light_25-3-25008.pdf (p.28)