ELECTRONIC COMMERCE IN BRAZIL AND LATIN AMERICA: GEOGRAPHY, GEOPOLITICS AND IMPACTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

In this article, electronic commerce is taken as the guide for geographic analysis of its structure and different aspects. Among these aspects, we will present some theoretical sketches about its infl uence on the economic scenario in Brazil and Latin America. To this end, the text contextualizes the emergence of this activity in the context of new macroeconomic scenarios, focusing on information technology and changes in the relationship between companies, thus emphasizing the analysis of recent changes in the scope of merchandise realization, confi gured in the form of commerce, and its spatial logistics. The analysis is presented through a parallel between the factors that represent the change in trade and its relationship with the industry, bringing as a background to this discussion a reading of some notes of classical political economists such as Karl Marx and others, so that the understanding of these changes by geographic science has its spatial dynamics as its support. In December 2019, the world became aware of a new disease that was rapidly spreading to the current evolution in its Pandemic state. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. And it had its origin of zoonotic characteristics and its first case reported in the city of Wuhan, China. The years 2020 and 2021 will certainly be marked by drastic changes in social behavior as a form of prevention and safety, but also by the impacts brought on the economic field. Given this, this work aims to analyze the scenario of electronic commerce in the context of macroeconomic transformations and its conceptual approach to Geographical Science, contextualized by the changes generated by the COVID-19 Pandemic environment and the scope of territorial reconfi gurations, based on the spatial mobility made possible by the new information technologies.