Category Archives: Assemblages

The New Aesthetic Part I: Seeing Like A Machine

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

You know how sometimes you learn about something you had never heard of before and then you start seeing it everywhere? The New Aesthetic has been one of those things for me since Derek Gregory turned me on to it (sue … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Assemblages, Boundaries, City, Everyday Life, Media, Networks, Science & Tech., Spectacle | 2 Comments

Interweb Motley # 3

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

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

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authors from the most recent issue of Development Dialogue (DD) suggest that the “security-development nexus” has been superseded by something new.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 on Development-Security Nexus, Part II: The Resilience Turn?

Spatiality & Power

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

“A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas… on the soft fibers of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Assemblages, Carl Schmitt, Dialectics, Everyday Life, Governmentality, Hegemony, Henri Lefebvre, Illegality, Karl Marx, Law, Michel Foucault, Power, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

Friction and Global Connection

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Anna Tsing’s Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection looks at the Indonesian rainforest as a space of “awkward engagement” (xi) involving an ensemble cast of characters, … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Assemblages, Boundaries, Forests, Frontiers, Historical-Geographies, Illegality, Land, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Networks, Post-Colonial, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 1 Comment

Seeing Like a State

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. I can see why James C. Scott’s book has been such a generative work, even if there’s a … Continue reading →

Posted in Assemblages, City, Forests, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Law, Maps, Nation/Nationalism, Place, Power, Science & Tech., Spatiality, Violence | 2 Comments

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