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This ethnographic study examines post-agrarian aspirations and rural politics in Ecuador. After decades of urban outmigration under a neoliberal agrarian order, many rural places have witnessed efforts to develop local tourism economies as a possibility to transcend stigmatised agrarian livelihoods and to (re)constitute communities. We build on anthropological studies of aspiration to explore how visions of post-agrarian futures are shifting the actors, scales and terms of rural politics in the present. Through two case studies, we observe how state actors have come to re-inscribe their role within post-agrarian imaginaries, partially rewriting the terms of state legitimacy in rural places. RÉSUMÉCette étude ethnographique examine les aspirations post-agraires et la politique rurale en Équateur. Après des décennies d'émigration urbaine sous un ordre agraire néolibéral, de nombreuses zones rurales sont le théâtre d'efforts visant à développer les économies touristiques locales pour transcender des modes de vie agraires stigmatisés et (re) constituer des communautés. Nous nous appuyons sur des études anthropologiques portant sur les aspirations pour explorer la manière dont les visions de l'avenir post-agraire agissent, au présent, sur les acteurs, les échelles et les paramètres politiques en milieu rural. À l'aide de deux études de cas, nous observons comment les acteurs étatiques ont reformulé leur rôle en fonction d'imaginaires post-agraires, modifiant partiellement les termes de la légitimité de l'État en zones rurales.

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This article presents an analysis of impact evaluations in the case of Fairtrade International in order to track the political effects of metrics and measurement procedures in development practice today. Metrics or ‘indicators’ have long been understood to have the effect of transforming the political visions of socioeconomic change that shape development interventions into seemingly non‐contentious, technical models. The common practice among development organizations of using such metrics as evidence of apolitical, technical development outcomes has wide‐ranging implications for the field of development and for development subjects. The article explores two specific implications by detailing impact evaluations on three Fairtrade‐certified cut‐flower plantations, which Fairtrade International contracted to inform a 2014 revision of its certification standards. The authors find, first, that debates over competing visions or definitions of development became concealed in technical debates over adequate metrics and measurements; and, second, that such debates over metrics and measurement consolidated the roles of experts and expert knowledge as mediators of what development can or should be. These findings enhance prior critiques of the supposed neutrality of development metrics by illustrating empirically how the processes of defining metrics and measurement conceal and circumscribe political debates over the meaning and making of development practice.

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