Um, you can do that in React just fine.

It's just you don't really need Backbone with React because plain object/array models are more convenient, and controllers aren't needed because there's no need to “orchestrate changes” between view and model. Check out Flux as an example of architecture (not a framework) that works really well with React.

Exactly. I once started a project with backbone and used React for the view layer. I quickly realized I didn't need the Backbone models and collections, and ended up only using the router and a few small other things. Eventually i replaced these remaining parts with some 'micro-frameworks' like lo-dash, page.js, superagent, etc.