Post-agrarian aspirations: tourism and rural politics in Ecuador

Abstract

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.

Agrarian crossroads: rural aspirations and capitalist transformation

“…Gender and race are mutually reinforcing social formations that differentiate access and user rights (Mollett and Faria 2013). Our cases similarly show how subject positions are structured by social differences such as caste (Jakobsen and Nielsen 2020), class (Dorondel andŞerban 2020) andethnicity (Aguilar-Støen 2020;Lyall, Colloredo-Mansfeld, and Quick 2020;Rasmussen 2020). People must thus reconcile seemingly contradictory imaginaries of community, individual identity and progress in capitalist modernity.…”

“…These visions of alternative futures, we argue, always entail negotiations over the meaning of self and community. The mobilisation of aspirations is a core element in contemporary approaches to rural development that interpellate rural residents as entrepreneurial subjects who are, indeed, expected to aspire (Rose 1992;Cross 2014, 135;Bröckling 2016; see also in the present issue Lyall, Colloredo-Mansfeld, and Quick 2020;and Bennike 2020). Yet, as "people encounter development in the process of trying to build something of their own" (Bebbington 2000, 513), rural aspirations stretch beyond their interpellation by such programmes.…”

“…Here, the newly perceived possibilities of a future tourist economy draw on notions of communal authenticity while simultaneously transforming culturally rooted notions of morality. Similarly, profound social transformations produced by emergent tourist economies in Ecuador (Lyall, Colloredo-Mansfeld, and Quick 2020), negotiations over the meaning of community in the Peruvian Andes (Rasmussen 2020) and responses to capitalist integration in rural India (Jakobsen and Nielsen 2020) all entail contests over authenticity and morality.…”

“…Many of our collaborators in the field engage in a continuous assessment of transforming and uncertain rural landscapes, an active "looking at the situation" (Vigh 2009), with a view to acting on the future in the present. At the edge of capitalist integration, the anticipation of future booms shapes contemporary aspirations and real-life choices (Bennike 2020); busts are followed by the nostalgic reappropriation of ruined infrastructures in the pursuit of new aspirations (Dorondel and Şerban 2020;Lyall, Colloredo-Mansfeld, and Quick 2020); industrial agriculture expands (Jakobsen and Nielsen 2020); and rural aspirations take non-agrarian paths (Bennike 2020;Dorondel and Şerban 2020;Rasmussen 2020). All the while, migration and abandonment remain perennial options (Aguilar-Støen 2020).…”

Resistencia en retrospectiva: la multitemporalidad del extractivismo en la Amazonía

“…Los precios del cacao y el café se dispararon y luego se derrumbaron. A su vez, el trabajo asalariado para las compañías petroleras y las agencias de turismo se hizo accesible a los hombres y a algunas mujeres, transformando efectivamente el acceso al trabajo no agrícola en otro marcador simbólico de dignidad (Lyall, Colloredo-Mansfeld y Quick 2019). Un joven miembro de la junta parroquial de Playas explica, "si no eres capaz de trabajar en un trabajo real, entonces la finca está ahí esperándote" (entrevista a Sixto, febrero de 2017).…”