Category Archives: Race & Ethnicity

Zapatistas and Territory

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Teo Ballvé

After their silent and momentary seizure of five municipal plazas on December 21, the Zapatistas issued a new communiqué (in Spanish or English). In sum, it describes how they will continue consolidating their “other way of doing politics.” Among their … Continue reading →

Posted in Henri Lefebvre, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Marxism, Media, Networks, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

Meanwhile… Actual Living Mayans: Zapatistas Retake the Plazas

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

After months (years?) of people talking about Mayans in the past tense, as a bygone civilization that predicted the end of the world, tens of thousands of Zapatistas quietly filed out of the mountains in southern Mexico and flooded into … Continue reading →

Posted in #Occupy, Bandits, City, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 1 Comment

In Conversation: E.P. Thompson and C.L.R. James

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

An interesting conversation recorded sometime around 1982 between two of my favorite historians: EP Thompson and CLR James. The most fascinating part of the 50-minute conversation/interview comes toward the end, beginning at about minute 43′ in which they start talking … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical Materialism, Marxism, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Race & Ethnicity | Comments Off

Video Abstract: Territories of Life and Death

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/9ChdRWJkF4o”] A more in depth written description of my project is forthcoming in the pages of Antipode. Thanks to the entire Antipode crew for the award and to others for their kind words.

Posted in Frontiers, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Peace, Political Ecology, Race & Ethnicity, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, 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

Frontiers and Deadwood as Geography

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

A piece titled “Deadwood as History” by Anne Hyde in Foreign Affairs on the historical content (or lack thereof) of HBO’s Deadwood begins: “All Westerns are stories of people attempting to impose order on a chaotic, lawless, and savage environment.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Boundaries, Frontiers, Henri Lefebvre, Historical-Geographies, Law, Political Ecology, Primitive Accumulation, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, 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

Interweb Motley #1

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Inaugurating a new weekly installment of worthy links from around the Internet is this week’s “Interweb Motley.” Benjamin Kunkel reviews Paper Promises by Philip Coggan and Debt by David Graeber for the London Review of Books. (Kunkel, a rising Marxist “rapporteur” … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, City, David Harvey, Media, Networks, Political Economy, Race & Ethnicity, Science & Tech., Security, Violence | Comments Off

Arendt, Foucault, Benjamin: On Violence, State, Law

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

This post discusses some scattered points raised about violence by Hannah Arendt’s On Violence, Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence,” and Michel Foucault’s Society Must be Defended. Arendt makes a worthwhile distinction between power and violence, while recognizing that the two rarely … Continue reading →

Posted in Carl Schmitt, Critique, Illegality, Law, Michel Foucault, Power, Race & Ethnicity, Sovereignty, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

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