Author Archives: Teo Ballvé

Interweb Motley # 4

Imagine a segregated road system where color dictates which roads you can drive on. This infographic from Visualizing Palestine offers a typology of segregation for Israel’s roads in the occupied Palestinian territories. Jared Diamond’s review of Why Nations Fail, made … Continue reading

Posted in Interweb Motley | Comments Off on Interweb Motley # 4

Black and Green

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 on Black and Green

Panel on Drug-Fueled Violence in the Americas

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 # 3

Michael Lima, founder of Visual Complexity, which I follow, makes a great addition to the RSA Animate videos with an animated talk on the power of mapping knowledge and patterns of information. Trees are soooooo last century. (ᔥ Explore) I … Continue reading

Posted in Assemblages, Drugs, Everyday Life, Networks | Comments Off on Interweb Motley # 3

Interweb Motley # 2

RIP Carlos Fuentes, who in reference to Latin America’s colorful cast of dictators, wrote: “All of them pose a tremendous problem for Latin American novelists. How to compete with history? How to create characters richer, crazier, more imaginative?” The government … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Law, Political Economy | 1 Comment

David v. David: Graeber and Harvey in Conversation

[vimeo video_id=”41997338″ width=”600″ height=”337″ title=”Yes” byline=”Yes” portrait=”Yes” autoplay=”No” loop=”No” color=”00adef”] Sponsored by Verso Books and The CUNY Center for Place, Culture and Politics. (ᔥ David Harvey)

Posted in City, David Harvey, Political Economy, The State | Comments Off on David v. David: Graeber and Harvey in Conversation

Holy Hatchet Job

In the literary world, a book review with this caliber of snarkiness and bite is known as a “hatchet job.” The review opens: “In disgust research, there is shit, and then there is bullshit. Colin McGinn’s book belongs to the … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Critique | Comments Off on Holy Hatchet Job

Interweb Motley #1

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 on Interweb Motley #1

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

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

Beholden: David Graeber & Rebecca Solnit

Guernica magazine published a great conversation between David Graeber and Rebecca Solnit, two people who I admire as genuinely original thinker-writers with ample street-cred to back it up. They talk mostly about debt, anarchism, and occupy. “Neoliberalism isn’t an economic … Continue reading

Posted in #Occupy, David Harvey, Everyday Life, Hegemony, Political Economy, The State | Comments Off on Beholden: David Graeber & Rebecca Solnit