Category Archives: Violence

Grassroots Masquerades: ‘Bottom-Up’ Development, Land Laundering, and Frontier State Formation in Colombia

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

My abstract for what’s looking like a symposium-sized AAG session series (including fellow bloggers Stuart Elden and Gastón Gordillo) on “Violence and Space” organized by Simon Springer and Philippe Le Billon: A paramilitary commander in Urabá, a frontier region of northwest Colombia, has always … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Development, Forests, Frontiers, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Peace, Political Ecology, Race & Ethnicity, Security, Spatiality, The State, Violence | Comments Off

Frontiers and Deadwood as Geography

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

A piece titled “Deadwood as History” by Anne Hyde in Foreign Affairs on the historical content (or lack thereof) of HBO’s Deadwood begins: “All Westerns are stories of people attempting to impose order on a chaotic, lawless, and savage environment.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Boundaries, Frontiers, Henri Lefebvre, Historical-Geographies, Law, Political Ecology, Primitive Accumulation, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, Violence | Comments Off

Everyday State Formation

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

I have a new article that was just published in the most recent issue of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space titled, “Everyday State Formation: Territory, Decentralization, and the Narco Land-Grab.” The lag between writing and printing, of course, … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Development, Drugs, Elites, Everyday Life, Hegemony, Henri Lefebvre, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Karl Marx, Land, Law, Marxism, Primitive Accumulation, Spatiality, Territory, The State, Violence | Comments Off

Critchley Against Escapism

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Simon Critchley’s “Mystical Anarchism” article in Adbusters argues against the escapism of communal utopian projects old and new: Perhaps such experiments lacked an understanding of politics as a constant and concrete process of mediation. That is, the mediation between a … Continue reading →

Posted in Guy Debord, Hegemony, Maps, Spatiality, Spectacle, Violence | Comments Off

Black and Green

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Asher, Kiran. 2009. Black and Green: Afro-Colombians, Development, and Nature in the Pacific Lowlands. Durham: Duke University Press. Kiran Asher’s Black and Green: Afro-Colombians, Development, and Nature in the Pacific Lowlands argues that “development” and “resistance” are mutually shaped in southwest … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Everyday Life, Forests, Land, Post-Colonial, Race & Ethnicity, The State, Violence | Comments Off

Panel on Drug-Fueled Violence in the Americas

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

I’m back in the San Francisco Bay Area this week for the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) conference. I organized a panel titled, “Contando lo narco: Research, Methods, and Narratives of Narco-Fueled Violence.” Contando is a play on words; it … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Violence | 1 Comment

Interweb Motley #1

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Inaugurating a new weekly installment of worthy links from around the Internet is this week’s “Interweb Motley.” Benjamin Kunkel reviews Paper Promises by Philip Coggan and Debt by David Graeber for the London Review of Books. (Kunkel, a rising Marxist “rapporteur” … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, City, David Harvey, Media, Networks, Political Economy, Race & Ethnicity, Science & Tech., Security, Violence | Comments Off

Development-Security Nexus, Part II: The Resilience Turn?

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Some authors from the most recent issue of Development Dialogue (DD) suggest that the “security-development nexus” has been superseded by something new. The new name of the game is “resilience” approaches. The authors suggest that “human security” paradigms and sustainable … Continue reading →

Posted in Assemblages, Development, Networks, Political Ecology, Science & Tech., Security, Violence | Comments Off

The Branding of U.S. Development Aid

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

In my journalistic investigations, I’ve given the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) a hard time for negligently funding the agribusinesses of drug-trafficking paramilitaries as part of its anti-drug efforts. Right, it’s like “War on Terror” money going to al-Qaida, … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Art, Drugs, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Media, The State, Violence | Comments Off

Op-Ed: Summit of the Americas Post-Mortem

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Last week, I published an op-ed on the recent Summit of the Americas recently held in Cartagena, Colombia. By now, you’ve probably heard about it because of the media frenzy around Secret Service scandal (don’t get me started on that … Continue reading →

Posted in Critique, Drugs, Illegality, Media, Violence | Comments Off