Tactics of the governed: figures of abandonment in Andean Peru

TY - JOUR

T1 - Tactics of the governed

T2 - figures of abandonment in Andean Peru

AU - Rasmussen, Mattias Borg

PY - 2016/10/24

Y1 - 2016/10/24

N2 - Abandonment has become a performative idiom in Andean Peru, where it retains its purchase despite the investments of the state. Local development is tied to the desire to be governed. In spite of prolonged state presence, the villages’ relationship to authorities is continuously and persistently figured as one of abandonment: villages are abandoned because someone is deliberately holding them in such unfortunate conditions. To figure abandonment in village politics is to draw on this idiom as an effective means of both communicating the historical experience of governance and putting forward morally grounded claims to local authorities. The idiom of abandonment is therefore both effective and affective as a critique of governance and a claim to citizenship.

AB - Abandonment has become a performative idiom in Andean Peru, where it retains its purchase despite the investments of the state. Local development is tied to the desire to be governed. In spite of prolonged state presence, the villages’ relationship to authorities is continuously and persistently figured as one of abandonment: villages are abandoned because someone is deliberately holding them in such unfortunate conditions. To figure abandonment in village politics is to draw on this idiom as an effective means of both communicating the historical experience of governance and putting forward morally grounded claims to local authorities. The idiom of abandonment is therefore both effective and affective as a critique of governance and a claim to citizenship.

U2 - 10.1017/s0022216x16001826

DO - 10.1017/s0022216x16001826

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0022-216X

VL - 49

SP - 327

EP - 353

JO - Journal of Latin American Studies

JF - Journal of Latin American Studies

IS - 2

ER -