Category Archives: Territory

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

A Scale Debate

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Marston, Sallie. 2000. “The Social Construction of Scale.” Progress in Human Geography 25: 219-42. Brenner, Neil. 2001. “The Limits to Scale? Methodological Reflections on Scalar Structuration.” Progress in Human Geography 25(4): 591–614. Marston, Sallie and Neil Smith. 2001. “States, Scales … Continue reading →

Posted in Gender, Henri Lefebvre, Nation/Nationalism, Networks, Place, Power, Scale, Spatiality, Territory, The Body, The State | 3 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

Political Theology

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Schmitt, Carl. 2005. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schmitt defines the essence of sovereignty as the decision over what is an exception and decide the measures taken to eliminate such an … Continue reading →

Posted in Carl Schmitt, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Law, Power, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The State | 3 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