Languages of Stateness: Development, Governance and Inequality

Abstract

This working paper is the result of a preliminary analysis of a research project that aims to understand the articulations between local state formation, development and violence. Such articulations are generative of a certain form of governance and of a political subjectivity mainly shaped within the language of neoliberalism. This entails a limited form of state intervention through development projects that leave most of the responsibility to guarantee well-being and even life itself to local inhabitants. As a secondary, and more preliminary line of analysis, I address how within such complex articulations we can understand mechanisms of social inequality (distanciation, exclusion, hierarchization). The specific scenario under study is located in the Colombian Caribbean Coast, where an alternative project on coca eradication was implemented. This project had the stated purpose of forging new relationships between local peasant communities and state institutions and creating new livelihood possibilities.