The port and the linkage between the local and the global

Abstract

Ports used to be spaces of little interest during the Í€œinwardsÍ€ development model based on imports substitution. Hence, the indifference for its study in the diverse fields of social science, even in areas too close to this topic, as regional analysis and economical geography. However, due to the recent restructure of global capitalism system, these coast line spaces have got more importance at establishing themselves as main hubs in the articulation of productive networks recently globalized. Precisely, this article intends to analyze space and temporal implications of this recent rol of ports in the articulation of extended production-distribution networks, which redefines the links between local and global, but at a time they originate wide exclusion spaces. Here, concepts as Í€œflow spaceÍ€, Í€œnetwork territoryÍ€ and Í€œsimultaneous space-timeÍ€ of globalization, that rescue from the regional analysis and the economical geography, the systemic-structural tradition developed in the social sciences, mainly by Braudel and Wallerstein, result important by its explanatory force in times of a firm restructure of the seaport space and generally of the capital world-economics.

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