Monthly Archives: August 2011

Cartographic Mexico

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Craib, Raymond. 2004. Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. I remember my social studies teacher in elementary school using the peel of an orange to show us why most world maps … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Land, Law, Maps, Michel Foucault, Nation/Nationalism, Place, Post-Colonial, Power, Science & Tech., Spatiality, Territory, The State | Leave a comment

Global Outlaws

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carolyn Nordstrom’s book is an ethnography about the extra-legal, as she calls them, flows and networks, which she sees as constituting a … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Elites, Forests, Frontiers, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, The Sea, The State | Leave a comment

The Sicilian Mafia

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Gambetta, Diego. 1996. The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Diego Gambetta’s hugely important book conceptualizes the Sicilian mafia as not an organization but as an industry that’s in the business of producing, promoting, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, City, Drugs, Elites, Illegality, Law, Political Economy, Scale, The State, Violence | Leave a comment

Offshore

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Brittain-Catlin, William. 2005. Offshore: The Dark Side of the Global Economy. New York: Picador. This impressive book by William Brittain-Catlin tells the story of the vast “offshore” world that forms an integral—if unacknowledged—part in the globe’s financial architecture. The offshore … Continue reading →

Posted in Elites, Illegality, Law, Networks, Sovereignty, Territory, The State | 2 Comments

Fernando Coronil, R.I.P.

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

I just found out Fernando Coronil, a Venezuelan scholar who I really admire, died this week. The Social Science Research Council’s Craig Calhoun wrote a post about Coronil’s untimely death. He was a leading decolonial thinker and a very geographically … Continue reading →

Posted in Everyday Life | 1 Comment

Traffick

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Bhattacharyya, Gargi. 2005. Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things. London: Pluto Books. Gargi Bhattacharyya argues that the wave of global politics marked by the creation of Bretton Woods financial institutions provided ripe conditions for the explosion of illicit … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Illegality, Law, Networks, Political Economy, The State | Leave a comment

The Global Criminal Economy

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Castells, Manuel. 2000. “The Perverse Connection: The Global Criminal Economy.” In End of Millennium, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. III. Oxford: Blackwell. [Chapter 3] Manuel Castells sums up the scope, scale, and importance of the global criminal … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Elites, Illegality, Law, Networks, Political Economy, Scale, The State | 1 Comment

State Formation as Organized Crime

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Tilly, Charles. 1985. “State Formation as Organized Crime.” In Evans, Peter, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol eds. Bringing the State Back In Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Charles Tilly draws an analogy between organized crime, with its practices of “protection,” and … Continue reading →

Posted in Bandits, Illegality, Law, Pirates, Territory | 1 Comment

Violent Entrepreneurs

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Volkov, Vadim. 2002. Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vadim Volkov’s extremely impressive book details how an entire class of “violent entrepreneurs” became the handmaidens of the Soviet transition … Continue reading →

Posted in Bandits, Critique, Dialectics, Elites, Everyday Life, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Sovereignty, The State, Violence | Leave a comment

The Mafia of a Sicilian Village

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Blok, Anton. 1974. The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860-1960: A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs. Cambridge: Waveland Press. Anton Blok’s Mafia of a Sicilian Village is one of my favorite books. It shows how “the mafia” in Sicily emerged … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Bandits, Elites, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Law, Networks, Power, Scale, The State, Violence | 1 Comment