academia

  • Investigative Ethnography: A Spatial Approach to Economies of Violence

    Geographical Review, Journal Article, Apr 21, 2019

    Based on research in Colombia, this article argues that violent economic situations in specific spaces can be productively studied through a hybrid style of research that combines techniques of investigative journalism with the conceptual and methodological commitments of ethnographic inquiry.

  • Narco-Frontiers: A Spatial Framework for Drug Fueled-Accumulation

    Journal of Agrarian Change, Journal Article, Dec 05, 2018

    Through a combination of García Márquez's stories and Marx's general formula for capital as a means of analysis (Magical Marxism!), this article proposes a spatial framework for understanding how agrarian spaces are transformed by the drug trade.

journalism

  • Morales Re-Election Shows Failure of U.S. Policies

    Miami Herald, Op-Ed, Oct 17, 2014

    The re-election of Bolivian President Evo Morales to a third term is a stark reminder of Washington’s self-inflicted irrelevance south of the border. His life history is itself a story about U.S. policy blunders in Latin America.

  • 60 Years After CIA Coup, U.S. Policy Hasn't Changed

    McClatchy-Tribune News, Op-Ed, Jun 16, 2014

    Washington stood on the wrong side of history when it overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president on June 27, 1954. To this day, the U.S. government has failed to learn the lessons of its Cold War interventions in Latin America.

my book

  • The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia

    Cornell University Press, Series on Land

    Book Cover

    The Frontier Effect challenges the notion that the cause of violence in Colombia’s war-torn rural areas is the absence of the state. The country’s violent frontier zones are not simple cases of Hobbesian political disorder; they are spaces in which new regimes of accumulation and rule are being produced and contested.



multimedia

  • Interview: The Frontier Effect

    New Books Network, Podcast, Jul 13, 2021

    Stentor Danielson from the New Books Network invited me to his podcast to discuss my book The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia (Cornell University Press, 2020).

  • State of the Colombian Peace Process

    TyT, TV Interview, Nov 17, 2016

    My interview with Dave Koller of TYT about the Colombian armed conflict, its origins, and current attempts to bring it to an end.


twitter


bio

I’m an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Peace & Conflict Studies Prorgam at Colgate University in Upstate New York. Before academia, I worked in journalism, covering Latin American affairs and U.S. policy toward the region. Although I'm now focused full-time on teaching and research, I continue doing journalism on the side as a way of sharing my research with broader audiences.

I am currently working on a book about Central New York. The book will be a portrait of the region that tells a broader story about some of the most pressing issues currently facing Rural America. Read More »


contact

Teo Ballvé
Teo Ballvé
Hamilton, New York

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