Category Archives: Post-Colonial

Coercing Conservation

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Peluso, Nancy Lee. 1993. “Coercing Conservation?: The Politics of State Resource Control” Global Environmental Change 3(2):199-218. The premise of Nancy Peluso’s influential article “Coercing Conservation” is that “some state interests appropriate the ideology, legitimacy, and technology of conservation as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Forests, Land, Political Ecology, Post-Colonial, Spatiality, Territory, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Coercing Conservation

Political Ecology, I

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Robbins, Paul. 2004. Political Ecology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Paul Robbins’ Political Ecology offers a sweeping and surprisingly complete overview to this exciting body of work and practice. I like the way Robbins bills it as, more than a body of … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Gender, Governmentality, Historical-Geographies, Land, Networks, Political Ecology, Political Economy, Post-Colonial, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Science & Tech., The State, Violence | 3 Comments

Denaturalizing Dispossession

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Hart, Gillian. 2006. “Denaturalizing Dispossession: Critical Ethnography in the Age of Resurgent Imperialism,” Antipode 38(5): 977-1004. Through empirically grounded examples and encompassing debates on resurgent imperialism and ongoing primitive accumulation, Gillian Hart offers theoretical and methodological suggestions for analyzing dispossession. … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Antonio Gramsci, David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Historical-Geographies, Land, Networks, Place, Post-Colonial, Primitive Accumulation, Race & Ethnicity, Scale, Spatiality | 2 Comments

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

Thread of Blood on the Frontier

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Alonso, Ana María. 1995. Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Ana María Alonso traces the “thread of blood” that links frontier settlers’ warfare in Chihuahua against indigenous groups to … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Boundaries, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Gender, Hegemony, Historical-Geographies, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, Territory, The Body, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

How the Indians Lost their Land

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Banner, Stuart. 2005. How the Indians Lost their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Stuart Banner’s main thesis is that the loss of U.S. Indian land cannot be reduced to a story of violent dispossession. … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Boundaries, Frontiers, Land, Law, Post-Colonial, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

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 on The Colonial Present

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

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

Guha: Dominance Without Hegemony?

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Guha, Ranajit. 1997. Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Intro & Ch. 1] Intuitively, it’s odd that the Subaltern Studies crowd has drawn so heavily on Gramsci, since he had surprisingly little to … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Critique, Hegemony, Historical-Geographies, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Power, The State, Violence | 5 Comments