Author Archives: Teo Ballvé

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

Roberto Bolaño & Geopolitics

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

David Kurnick published an interesting piece about Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño on Public Books,  which I just discovered and is a partner site of the journal Public Culture. Like many others, I’ve noted the “discovery” of Bolaño by the Anglo literary … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Everyday Life, Historical-Geographies, Jester, Place | 4 Comments

Interweb Motley # 7

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Derek Gregory’s new blog Geographical Imaginations becomes welcome addition to the geograsphere. My favorite recent post: Learning to Eat Soup with a Silver Spoon. Nils Gilman on Robert Bunker’s idea of a “plutocratic insurgency,” which describes those staging areas or … Continue reading →

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A piece titled “Deadwood as History” by Anne Hyde in Foreign Affairs on the historical content (or lack thereof) of HBO’s Deadwood begins: “All Westerns are stories of people attempting to impose order on a chaotic, lawless, and savage environment.”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

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 on Everyday State Formation

Blog on Vacation!

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Vacation is upon me, kind readers, so Territorial Masquerades will be entirely on haitus until sometime in July. Until then, enjoy the summer or winter or vaguely seasonless climate in your patch of earth. I’m off to the old continent, where … Continue reading →

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Interweb Motley # 6

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

“Occupy Buddhism: Or Why the Dalai Lama is a Marxist” by Stuart Smithers sort of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Against the Grain, a radio show of KPFK in Berkeley, had some interesting downloadable interviews with Jonathan Nitzman on his … Continue reading →

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Vibrant Matter

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Bennett begins her book stating, “This book has a philosophical project and, related to it, a political one” (vii). And, indeed, her book sometimes reads as … Continue reading →

Posted in Networks, Political Ecology, Power, Science & Tech., The Body | 2 Comments

Interweb Motley # 5

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

During World War I, satirical maps of Europe became a hotly contested battle zone of competing propaganda. Still waiting for the Eurozone version of this. Ever wonder why today’s camouflage is pixelated? Apparently, to avoid detection in today’s main source … Continue reading →

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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 on Critchley Against Escapism