Category Archives: Nation/Nationalism

Politics as Vocation

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Weber, Max. 2004. “Politics as Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, edited by David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, translated by Rodney Livingstone. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Lets face it, Max Weber was sort of a downer. On January 28, … Continue reading →

Posted in Law, Max Weber, Nation/Nationalism, Power, The State | 7 Comments

Everyday State Formation and Hegemony

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Joseph, Gilbert and Daniel Nugent eds. Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press. [Front Matter, Part I, Florencia Mallón, Part III] This brilliant collection of essays edited by Gilbert … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Everyday Life, Hegemony, Historical-Geographies, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Nation/Nationalism, Power, Scale, The State, Violence | 2 Comments

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

Lefebvre: State, Space, World

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. [Intro, Ch. 1, 2, 3, 11] So far, as this particular reading confirmed, no other thinker seems better equipped than … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Carl Schmitt, Critique, GWF Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Historical Materialism, Historical-Geographies, Karl Marx, Law, Marxism, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 3 Comments

The Colonial Present

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Gregory, Derek. 2004. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Oxford: Blackwell. [Ch. 1-3] I won’t go into a whole lot of detail. I just wanted to read these chapters to get a sense of how Derek Gregory is using and … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical-Geographies, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Power, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory | Comments Off

Boundaries, Sovereignty, Necropolitics

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Mbembe, Achille. 2000. “At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa.” Public Culture 12(1): 259-284. ———. 2003. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15(1): 11-40. In these two articles, Achille Mbembe explores changing territorial arrangements and configurations of sovereignty. … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Carl Schmitt, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Post-Colonial, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The Body, The State, Violence | 2 Comments

Nomos of the Earth

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Schmitt, Carl. 2006. The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. New York: Telos Press Publishing. Carl Schmitt’s Nomos of the Earth could be called legal genealogy of the territorial spatial ordering of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Carl Schmitt, Illegality, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The Sea, The State, Violence | 3 Comments

In the Space of Theory

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Sparke’s aptly titled book interrogates how contemporary global affairs have stretched, unglued, glued, reconfigured, and (re)invented the presumed ties between states and their “respective” nations both within their putative borders and across/beyond them. He builds each chapter of the book … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Historical-Geographies, Maps, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 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

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