Category Archives: Power

Space of Flows

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell. [Ch 6] Considering the historical moment it speaks to, this was a not surprisingly influential book, particularly in terms of the conceptual vocabulary it developed: network society, megacities, metropolitan … Continue reading →

Posted in Networks, Place, Power, Spatiality | Comments Off on Space of Flows

Spectacle and the Production of Space

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

The Society of the Spectacle helps me pick up where I left off with my recent comments about the centrality of “fetishism” and “critique” in Henri Lefebvre’s work. Put simply, Guy Debord’s “spectacle” is Marx’s notion of fetishism writ large. … Continue reading →

Posted in City, Critique, Dialectics, Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx, Power, Spatiality, Spectacle | Comments Off on Spectacle and the Production of Space

Security, Territory, Population

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978. Foucault says he’s following the genesis of a political knowledge that put “population” at the center of its concerns. He uses “government” as the guiding thread of … Continue reading →

Posted in City, Governmentality, Michel Foucault, Political Economy, Power, Spatiality, The State, Violence | 5 Comments

Society Must Be Defended

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Foucault, Michel. 1997. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 He starts the lectures defining “subjugated knowledges,” as those that have been both written out of history and submerged in it in a masked form. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Violence | 5 Comments

The Production of Space

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

After having just finished Capital (Vol. I), Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space makes so much more sense than the first time a read it. (Though hugely insightful, it’s still a total slog to read.) The reasons behind my understanding … Continue reading →

Posted in Dialectics, Hegemony, Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx, Marxism, Political Economy, Power, Spatiality, The State | 5 Comments

Space, Place, and Gender

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Massey is trying to formulate concepts of space and place (time, too) in terms of social relations, and further to connect these in proper dialectical fashion. “Space must be … Continue reading →

Posted in Gender, Place, Power, Spatiality | 2 Comments

Machiavelli’s The Prince

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

How to summarize The Prince? It begins by parsing all the different kinds of possible principalities: hereditary, won by force, one by popular elections, etc. His main concern is how Princes can attain and maintain new principalities, the making, unmaking, … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Power, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Machiavelli’s The Prince