Negotiating agricultural development: Entanglements of bureaucrats and rural producers in Western Mexico Alberto Arce Agricultural University Wageningen 993 To Manuel and Adriana, my parents, and to Andrés, Daniel and Cecilia CIP-GEGEVENS KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Arce, Alberto Negotiating agricultural development : entanglements of bureaucrats and rural producers in Western Mexico / Alberto Arce. - Wageningen : Agricultural University. - (Wageningen studies in sociology, ISSN 0923-4365; 34) ISBN 90-6754-283-0 Trefw.: regionale economie ; West-Mexico I landbouwbeleid ; West-Mexico. © Agricultural University Wageningen, the Netherlands 1993 No part of this publication apart from bibliographic data and brief quotations embodied in critical reviews, may be reproduced, re-recorded or published in any form including print, photocopy, microfilm, electronic or electromagnetic record without written permission from the publisher Agricultural University, P.O. Box 9101, 6700 HB Wageningen, The Netherlands. Printed in the Netherlands CONTENTS Foreword by Norman Long ix Acknowledgements xi Maps xiii 1. PROBLEMATIZING RURAL STATE INTERVENTION 1 Two realms: science and power 2 Social science and knowledge 3 Local knowledge and rural intervention 6 Local knowledge and external forces 7 Is the concept of local knowledge enough? 8 The meaning of the concept of state 9 The nature of the approach 10 Policy implementation and administrative practices 10 Praxeology and everyday practices 11 Social rules and conventions 12 Interface and evidence 13 Anthropology and development 15 From an approach to a case in action 17 The outline of the book 19 2. BUREAUCRATIC CONFLICT AND PUBLIC POLICY: RAINFED AGRICULTURE IN MEXICO 22 Administrative reform and government agricultural services 25 Sr. López and the institutional change 30 Sr. Lopez's official career before the administrative reform 30 Sr. López as an actor in the administrative transformation drama 33 Sr. López's last comments on the administrative reform 38 A general overview of the administrative reform in the Ministry of Agriculture 38 The origins of the mission and the missionaries 39 The agronomic approach to rainfed agriculture 43 Conclusion 46 3. ADMINISTRATIVE REALITY AND BUREAUCRATIC CULTURE: A GAZE INTO THE ART OF MANAGEMENT 49 Characteristics of district No.l, Zapopan 50 Agricultural modernisation in the district 50 Government agencies in the district 51 District operations of the SARH 52 Socio-economic characteristics of the district 53 Bureaucratic culture: the routine in the district 54 v Documents and information 57 Visits 58 Convivencias 59 The life-world of bureaucratic actors: an encounter with a state official 60 The officer in charge of programme operation: his life and the contextualisation of his practices 61 The connections between the actor and administrative practice 65 Conclusion 66 4. AT THE BASE OF THE BUREAUCRACY: FIELDWORKERS, SOCIAL BACKGROUND, PRACTICES AND CAREERS 69 The study and the source of information 70 The institutional process 71 The recruitment patterns 71 The administrative ritual 74 Tecnicos' initiation into the Ministry 74 The professional role of the tecnico 77 Fieldworkers' professional frustrations 79 Fieldworkers and bureaucratic politics 80 The case of Tomas 80 Fieldworkers' speech-acts 83 The authoritarian speech-act 85 The paternalistic speech-act 87 The egalitarian speech-act 94 Conclusion 96 5. THE PROCESS OF IMPLEMENTING AN AGRICULTURAL POLICY 98 The formulation of a 'new agricultural policy' 98 Initial responses to the policy 99 The social significance of maize in the formulation of SAM 100 Barriers in the path of implementing self-sufficiency 102 The SAM policy, the producers and the fieldworker 108 A routine encounter 108 Everyday experiences of a technocrat 112 Everyday experiences, policy and reality 114 Conclusion 116 6. THE EJIDO OF NEXTIPAC: A STUDY OF THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SAM POLICY IMPLEMENTATION 119 The spectacle of everyday life in Nextipac 120 Tying up the images to the structure of production 124 The farming system of cultivation 126 The machinations of forces: the soil, rain, state agencies vi and producers 127 What is local history made of? 129 The displaced actor 130 The indispensable actor 130 The non-indispensable actor 132 Is state intervention part of local history too? 133 Credit 134 Actors' ties with corruptive practices 136 The district's official representation of Zapopan 137 The tecnicos' views of Zapopan 138 Producers' perceptions of the tecnicos' performance 140 Producers' view about SARH institutional performance 141 Conclusion 143 7. THE EJ1DO LOMAS DE TEJEDA: PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION (SAM) AND LOCALISED SOCIAL NETWORKS 146 Images 146 Social construction of a project 147 The social life of a project 147 The project assumptions 148 From project origins to project arrangements 150 The other side of the coin 152 A reconsideration of the inducement phase 153 The process of transformation 153 Conflicts over agricultural practices 154 The project as a social field: climate, social networks, and struggles 156 The final year of the project and producers' reactions 157 Producer networks and the process of project internalisation 159 Conclusion 162 8. MAKING SENSE OF ENTANGLEMENTS OF BUREAUCRATS AND RURAL PRODUCERS IN AGRICULTURAL INTERVENTION 164 The relation between state and society 165 State as a social carrier of rural development 166 Actors in rural development 167 Concepts and methodology 168 Explaining the methapor of entanglements in the title of the book 170 Internalisation and translation 171 Power and knowledge revisited 172 Actors, social processes and contingencies 173 An emerging new agenda for research 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 INDEX OF AUTHORS 187 vii viii FOREWORD From its inception, social anthropology has struggled theoretically and politically with questions concerning the encounter between contrasting and often opposing life- worlds. This concern arose in part from the fact that anthropology was born out of the moral dilemmas and inherent social contradictions of colonial expansion and the westernization of non-European societies. It also reflected the tension between the idea of 'science' as an organised system of thought in search of universal laws or principles of organisation, and the equally meaningful 'practical' ways in which people of diverse cultures gave meaning to their own life experiences. This fascination with cultural and social difference and how to deal with it analytically has remained a central theme in anthropological work. Yet only recently have anthropologists turned their ethnographic spotlight on the critical interfaces where life-worlds in fact intersect and accommodate to each other. The neglect of this obvious, though complex, issue is due, it seems, to two factors: the prevalence of structuralist and culturalist explanations of social phenomena which tend to underscore the separation and coherence, rather than the interpénétration and heterogeneity, of cultural and social worlds; and the methodological difficulties of studying such multiplex and dynamic situations. In the present book, Dr. Alberto Arce makes an audacious attempt to break through this theoretical and methodological impasse. He does so by turning away from the well-trod paths of anthropological enquiry - the peasant community, ethnic group and urban neighbourhood - by focusing upon an area of social life that has been the preoccupation of other social scientists such as political scientists, public administrators and rural development specialists. His focus of attention is state intervention in the peasant sector and what he calls 'the social life of development projects'. This enables him to explore the intricacies of the workings of the Mexican agricultural bureaucracy and the encounters of frontline government personnel with local peasant actors. But, unlike most studies of state-sponsored agricultural intervention, he avoids the rather crass judgements of 'who benefits' and whether the project has 'failed' or 'succeeded', and replaces them instead with an analysis of the ongoing socially-contested and socially-negotiated nature of the intervention process. This involves a detailed ethnographic account of the perceptions, expectations and strategies of the main participants in the drama and an actor- oriented interpretation of the social construction of the project as it unfolds over time. This facilitates an empirically-based critique of existing models of planned intervention and theories of the state. It also places in centre stage the agency, discourses and social practices of the various participants, and documents how the institutional, personal and political life-experiences of the intervenors shape frontline strategies and outcomes. Throughout the account Dr. Arce takes great care to build his analysis on the everyday life conditions and subjectivities of the particular social ix actors rather than on an aggregated picture of their assumed structural locations and dispositions. This enables him to demonstrate the diversity of social responses, manoeuvres and skills that exist among bureaucrats and peasants alike, and to reveal the ways in which they accommodate to, challenge, and subvert each others' interests and understandings. In this manner he constructs a picture of the struggles and interfaces embedded in and generated by the Mexican Food System (SAM) and the transformations it undergoes during its so-called policy formulation and implementation phases. The result is a rich and sensitive