Globalization, governmentality and failure through the prism of Petén, Guatemala

Posocco, Silvia (2008) Globalization, governmentality and failure through the prism of Petén, Guatemala. Working Paper. London School of Economics, London, UK.

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the analytical purchase of a focus on ‘failure’ for the analysis of globalising processes in Petén, Guatemala. I locate my interest in ‘failure’ at the point of intersection between theoretical reflection and ethnographic experience, and propose to frame my interrogation of the nexus between globalisation and failure specifically in terms of governmentality. The emphasis on governmentality unsettles simplistic assumptions concerning the meanings of ‘globalisation’ to suggest the importance of a link between globalising processes and specific ‘projects of governance’. A consideration of the relation between globalising processes, governmentality and failure through the ‘local prism’ of Petén focuses the analysis on situated understandings of contemporary processes of social transformation, a point which is illustrated with reference to declarations of failure of the large conservation project Maya Biosphere Reserve. In turn, failure through this global/local prism brings into focus the knowledge practices, analytical operations, scalar assumptions and imaginative figurations inherent in thinking through global/local ‘contexts’. The paper concludes that 'failure' constitutes a concept-metaphor linked to a plurality of local/global interpretative strategies through which people make sense of globalising processes and their histories. This suggests a broader point concerning the role of concept-metaphors for ethnography.

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