Author Archives: Teo Ballvé

Masons, Tricksters and Knowledge Spaces

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Turnbull, David. 2000. Masons, Tricksters, and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge. New York: Routledge Turnbull aims to show that all knowledge production, including the technoscientific, is “motley”—i.e. a messy meshwork of places, practices, contingencies, … Continue reading →

Posted in Assemblages, Maps, Networks, Place, Power, Science & Tech., Spatiality | 1 Comment

Sassen: Territory Authority Rights

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. I could not get into this book. Saskia Sassen’s broader goal in this book is to show the emergence of national and global scales and … Continue reading →

Posted in Law, Nation/Nationalism, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The State | Comments Off on Sassen: Territory Authority Rights

Human Territoriality

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Sack, Robert D. 1986. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Intro and Ch. 1] Sack describes human territoriality as a specifically strategic process, departing instantly from the notion of territoriality as a biological human drive. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Place, Power, Spatiality, Territory, The State | Comments Off on Human Territoriality

Paasi on Boundaries as Processes

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Paasi, Ansi. 1999. “Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows.” Geopolitics 3(1): 669-680. Paasi attempts to think the changing strategies, meanings, and identities produced by boundaries (by which he mainly means national borders) in the context of … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Nation/Nationalism, Power, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Territorial Trap

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Agnew, John. 1994. “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 1(1): 53-80. In a more recent piece, here’s how John Agnew described his influential 1994 article on the Territorial Trap: “The purpose … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical-Geographies, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Scale, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Territorialization of State Power

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso. 1995. “Territorialization and State Power in Thailand.” Theory and Society 24: 385-426. Vandergeest and Peluso’s landmark article concerns the way in which state power is territorialized within the borders of a politically defined space … Continue reading →

Posted in Forests, Historical-Geographies, Law, Power, Spatiality, Territory, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

Production of Territory

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Brenner, Neil, and Stuart Elden. 2009. “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space and Territory.” International Political Sociology 3(4): 353-377. I have read this incredibly important article enough times that I hardly need to be writing notes on it. It’s pretty engrained … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Henri Lefebvre, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Power, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Antonio Gramsci: On Hegemony

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

In Antonio Gramsci’s first Prison Notebook—he wrote 29 of them—he’s still using hegemony in the sense of a crude political leadership, much in the same way as he used it in his seminal essay “Some Aspects of the Southern Question.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony, Marxism, Power, The State | 2 Comments

Guha: Dominance Without Hegemony?

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Guha, Ranajit. 1997. Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Intro & Ch. 1] Intuitively, it’s odd that the Subaltern Studies crowd has drawn so heavily on Gramsci, since he had surprisingly little to … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Critique, Hegemony, Historical-Geographies, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Power, The State, Violence | 5 Comments

Suffering for Territory

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Moore, Donald. 2005. Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. This is a hard book to summarize because of the intricacy of the argument, its theoretical architectures, and its deep ethnographic empirics—they are … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Governmentality, Historical-Geographies, Michel Foucault, Nation/Nationalism, Place, Post-Colonial, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 1 Comment