National Atlas of Brazil Project: The Theoretical Conception

Summary

This paper presents the theoretical conception underpinning the National Atlas of Brazil, a project developed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The Atlas is conceived as a dynamic cartographic resource aimed at researchers, planners, educators, and the public, offering multiple interpretations of Brazilian spatial reality. Its central object of analysis is the nation's constantly transforming social and environmental fabric, viewed fundamentally as a product of societal production and reproduction, class relations, and the development of productive forces. The framework integrates six interconnected analytical dimensions: present–past, form–process, continuity–discontinuity, quality–quantity, reiteration–differentiation, and description–interpretation, all expressed across various cartographic scales. Three interrelated categories structure the content: natural resources, understood as socially perceived and dynamically utilized elements; spatial organization, the material crystallization of social labor; and environmental changes, seen as impacts and imbalances arising from socio-economic processes. The temporal reference marks are the 1950s (post-war transformation baseline), 1960, 1970, and 1980–85 as the present, capturing spatial reorganization and environmental shifts. By adopting a guiding conceptual thread that privileges the interplay of form and process, the Atlas moves beyond a mere inventory of phenomena, treating universal themes through a singular, theoretically informed lens. This approach ensures that the final cartographic product coherently reveals the reiterative and differentiating patterns of Brazil's spatial and environmental dynamics.