Category Archives: Forests

Grassroots Masquerades: Development, Paramilitaries, and Land Laundering in Colombia

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Teo Ballvé

My article “Grassroots Masquerades: Development, Paramilitaries, and Land Laundering” was just published by Geoforum. The article will be out in hardcopy in Volume 50 (December 2013), but it’s already available online. The first version of the article was presented at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Development, Drugs, Forests, Frontiers, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Law, Michel Foucault, Peace, Political Ecology, Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation, The State | Comments Off

Narco-Geographies, Part II: Political Ecology of the Drug Economy

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Teo Ballvé

Tim Hall has recently called on geographers to more actively study organized crime and geographies of the illicit more broadly. Paul Robbins, meanwhile, has said “the political ecology of the drug trade” (2004: 215) remains almost entirely unexplored. The ferocity … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, David Harvey, Drugs, Forests, Frontiers, Historical-Geographies, Illegality, Land, Political Ecology, Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation, Spatiality, The State | 4 Comments

“Land laundering”: How Colombian Paramilitaries Hijack Grassroots Development

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

I wrote a guest blog post for Future Agricultures that gives a straight-forward preview of the talk I’m giving this week at the Global Land Grabs conference hosted by Cornell University. A teaser: With the start of peace negotiations this … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Development, Drugs, Forests, Illegality, Political Ecology, Political Economy, The State, Violence | Comments Off

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

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

Robin Hood: Cultural Politics of the Law

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

An article at Yes! Magazine traces some pop-cultural coordinates around the always-evolving Robin Hood myth. Written by Paul Buhle, the somewhat meandering article is based on his recently published book, Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and Forest Hero (2011, PM Press). … Continue reading →

Posted in Bandits, Forests, Illegality, Law, Pirates | Comments Off

Geographies of the Outlaw

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

The word “outlaw”—outside of the law—implicitly articulates the intimate relationship between geography and the law. From the perspective of state-makers and capitalists, the groups of outlaws I’m collectively labeling “Motley Crews” (as a shorthand) pose a grave ideological and spatial … Continue reading →

Posted in Bandits, Carl Schmitt, Drugs, Elites, Forests, Frontiers, Gender, Historical-Geographies, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Karl Marx, Land, Law, Michel Foucault, Networks, Pirates, Post-Colonial, Power, Primitive Accumulation, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, Terror, The Body, The Sea, The State, Violence | Comments Off

Agrarian Political Economy & Ecology

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

My path into agrarian political economy and ecology partly picks up where Marx left off. In culminating his magnum opus, Marx departs from his more dualistic model of the capitalist mode of production, which emphasizes the dialectic of labor-and-capital, … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Antonio Gramsci, David Harvey, Forests, Frontiers, Gender, Karl Marx, Land, Political Ecology, Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 1 Comment

Global Outlaws

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carolyn Nordstrom’s book is an ethnography about the extra-legal, as she calls them, flows and networks, which she sees as constituting a … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Elites, Forests, Frontiers, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, The Sea, The State | Comments Off

Guevara: Guerrilla Warfare

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Che Guevara’s manual for guerrilla warfare was published a year after his bearded rebels marched triumphantly into Havana. Rebels across the world have thumbed its pages for tactics and strategies aimed at defeating their much more powerful foes. Unfortunately, it … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, City, Forests, Marxism, Nation/Nationalism, Political Ecology, Territory, Violence | Comments Off