How is state legitimacy established in areas where it has long been lacking? While scholars have generally explained the construction of legitimacy as a consequence of state actions and used survey research or experiments to describe local evaluations of the state, in this article I describe the microprocesses that link the two: how communities experience the state, collectively make sense of it, and behave in ways that consent to or challenge state power. Based on 3 years of ethnographic fieldwork in a rural Colombian village experiencing growing state presence after decades of armed group control, I theorize the emergence of state legitimacy or illegitimacy as a process of narrative construction. Locals facing a landmark peace process and a coca substitution program that has destroyed the local economy make sense of the state by constructing narratives about it that spread throughout the community. These narratives combine with material need to influence forms of social action that demonstrate assent to or defiance of state power—behavior that communities also understand through public narratives. Fine‐grained ethnographic description of the narrative construction of legitimacy demonstrates the importance of collective meaning‐making processes to political beliefs and behavior.

En este ensayo visual, basado en 24 meses de investigación etnográfica en Briceño, uso imágenes para describir cómo la población local ha vivido e influenciado una transformación sistemática del territorio. Me enfoco en tres temas: la inversión estatal, especialmente el programa de sustitución de cultivos ilícitos, asociado al proceso de paz; la lucha campesina por desarrollar nuevas actividades económicas tras la desaparición de la coca; y la amenaza de los megaproyectos, particularmente la represa Hidroituango y una posible mina multinacional de oro, apoyadas por el poder estatal. Muestro que en Briceño hay una tensión fundamental en el proceso de paz entre dos visiones para el futuro del campo colombiano: como sitio de producción campesina o extracción capitalista. Dicha tensión se resolverá en el plano territorial, donde convergen políticas económicas, proyectos capitalistas y economías campesinas.

How do states achieve popular recognition and symbolic power as “The State,” a collectively recognized entity that serves the common good? While classic work has described the state idea as produced by the actions of state officials, it is ultimately ordinary citizens who must recognize the state as such and consent to its rule. This article, based on 20 months of ethnographic research in a village that, after decades of armed group control, is a key site for the implementation of Colombia’s landmark peace deal, describes how the formation of the state’s symbolic power occurs (or not) through local emotions. I focus on a coca substitution program that has both stoked pre-existing local desires for the promise of the state as carrier of peace and progress and that has, largely because of its outsourcing to different contractors, failed to live up to its commitments, causing economic collapse and generating feelings of betrayal, mistrust, confusion, and impotence. I show how local feelings respond to the regional transformation state formation has caused, popular representations of the state, and their direct interactions with substitution program officials, including non-state actors. I argue that more than simply byproducts of state formation, these emotions are constitutive of the local imaginations of “The State” that are key to the state’s development of symbolic power. It is in the realm of everyday life and emotions, the interplay between local desires for state presence and the frustrations generated by their actual encounters with state power, that state rule is achieved—or not.

Why, in the context of a rural Colombian mayoral election, do poor clients donate goods and services to political campaigns? The literature on clientelism describes it as a political order in which politicians exchange resources or favors for political support. In this article, I describe the clientelist relationships and exchanges in a 2019 rural Colombian mayoral election, including what I call pork belly politics, where poor clients also donate scarce resources—most notably crispy fried pork belly—to patrons. Based on eleven months of ethnographic and interview data from before, during, and after the campaign, I show that elections are a crucial time for the rural poor to position themselves vis-à-vis the future mayor. Further, I show that the practices I describe are simultaneously instrumental, calculated to guarantee their access to needed public resources for the four-year term, and moral, rooted in a broader political culture based on norms of reciprocity. I explain the three levels of clientelist relationships that emerge during campaigns, and the practices and expectations at play in each. These findings add new depth to our understanding of rural politics and poverty, client agency, and the moral and instrumental dimensions of clientelist exchanges.

Ana Arjona’s ambitious book, Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War, starts with a simple insight: rather than the chaos most often associated with civil war, combat zones usually exh...