6 THE MATERIALITY OF STATE-EF FECT S:

AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF A ROAD IN THE

PERUVIAN ANDES
Penelope Harvey

THE ROAD FROM CUSCO TO PUERTO MAWONADO

The 484 km of road that connects Cusco to Puerto Maldonado is traversed

by the huge Volvo trucks that provision the mining towns of Peru's gold- and
timber-rich Amazonian region. 1 Every day migrant workers enter and leave
the 'selva' (lowland forest) perched on top of heavy loads of wood, gasoline
or foodstuffs. crouched under huge. smelly tarpaulins, sometimes carrying
no more than a tiny bag, sometimes moving numerous sacks of produce.
commercial goods. or personal possessions sewn into white flour sacks to
protect thc contents from damage or theft. These heavy vchicles carve deep
ruts in the road, which the smaller lorries negotiate as best they can as they
move passengers and goods between Cusco and the outlying arcas of this
region of southern Peru provisioning small businesses and households along
the route. Doing fieldwork in Ocongate. a small town sorne 120 km from Cusco.
I got to know this road and the people who travellcd along it: the migrant
workers from the city as well as the selva, people working in construction or
domestic service. those on leavc from salaried employment. from university,
from the army or those who needed to travel to the city to deal with financia!.
legal or medica! matters. to visit family, to buy and sell goods.
Travelling rcquíred patience and stamina. There were often hours of
waiting involved as the trucks pilcd up with people and goods. Wc frequently
drove around the cdges of the city for hours gctting ready to dcpart. visiting
workshops, wholesalcrs. gas stations or simply waiting for passcngers. Drivers
would not leave until their trucks were ful!. The contours of the passenger
accommodation changed as beer erates. car batteries. kerosene drums. sacks
of clothing. rice or vegetables were pilcd in and travellers adjustcd themselves,
trying to lind a spot where thcy could achicve a modicum of comfort fór the
5-1 O hour journey. Sometimes I got a seat in the cab and could sit alongside
the driver. The cab was warmer, drier and less dusty; cw11bía. salsa and lwayno
tapes would be played over and over again lilling the gaps in conversation
and províding a soundtrack to the journey. Drivers charged extra for this
more comfortable accommodation, but ability to pay could not secure thc

12 3
124 Sta/i' fürmation
seats which were often reservcd for personal friends. family or compadres,
and respected members of the driver's community. Up on top there was often
a more raucous sociabilíty as passengers teased each other. entcrtaining
themselves as they reacted to incidents along the way. But such scenes
depended on who was travelling, on the weather and tbe state of the road,
and the mood could equally be quiet and sombre, with individuals crouched
under ponchos or plastic sheeting.
During the 1980s and l 990s when r travelled this road with somc
frequency, the lorries were stopped at the checkpoints that surrounded the
cíty. Here police and sometimes army pcrsonnel would scrutinise passengers
and their baggage. They looked for goods that should not be moved witbout
state licence coca ancl hard woods particularly - and for people who were
travelling without proper proof of citizenship - perhaps avoiding military
service. perhaps a subversive, most likely somebody who had simply not
managed to complete the bureaucratic procedures which result in legal status
and who was thus liable to be fined or open to veiled requests for money. As
the lorries slowed clown at these checkpoints passengcrs were accosted by
people selling fruit. bread and cooked food - urban luxuries to carry to the
countryside, sustenance for the journey itself. In contrast to the slow rhythm
of the dcparture, stops at the checkpoints would be hurried and tense - the
exchange of goods frantic ami urgen!.
Ureos. a town sorne 40 km from Cusco was a turning point in the journey.
The lorries often made a final provisioning stop here. Passcngcrs grabbed a
quick mea! or made a few tina! purchases before the lorries turned left off thc
tarmac piste, and began the long slow ascent up the hillside to the pass high
above the Cusco valley. Now the lorries only stopped if they needed water to
prevent over-heating, or if a passenger whistled to dimb on or off. In the dry
scason the roads are dusty and passengers riding on top are soon coated in
a greyish-white powder. The climate is harsh, very cold or very burning. The
tiny bridges that carry the road over the many small streams and gullies in
the mountainside are rickcty. The deep ruts made by the heavicr lorries can
easily upset a smaller vehicle. The journey is dangerous, particularly in the
rainy season when landslidcs often occur. The ruts are deeper and the road
more slippery a!l(I there are many accidents and fatalities. Small wooden
crosses by the side of the road mark places where people have died, creating
a macabre reminder of how precarious it is to travel.
At the pass there is a srnall shrine. Peoplc crossed themselves as they
reached that point. lf gíven a chance they climb down to offcr a prayer at the
chapel or pile a stone on the cairns that surrouml t he shrine. I once travellcd
with a dance troupe returning from a pilgrimage; they climbcd down and
offered dance and music at this point. More usually people offer coca and quict
contemplation. The lorries then begin the iirst descent. looking for short-cuts,
veering off the road to avoid the long mcandering loops that closely follow
the contours of the mountain, purportedly the result of greedy engineers,
paid by the metre. Finally. anothcr police post. papers checkcd again. loads
Tlie Materiality o/ State-E[jccts
inspected and fines exacted for anything not in ordcr. From this point onward
there are more frequent stops to !et pcople off. as there are more numcrous
small settlements alongside the roads.
This short stretch of road from Cusco to Ocongatc provides far more than a
means of moving between two places. The connectivity afforded by this road
is complex and its impact diffcrentially experienced. The advent of motoriscd
transport drew prevíously distant places experientíally closer as journey times
became shorter (Schivclbusch 1977). But the Peruvian road reminds us that
such tíme/space comprcssion (Harvey 1990) is discontinuous and uneven.
Indeed, for sorne parts of this route the trucks move between points more
slowly tban those on foot. who can follow the precipitous but more direct
pathways up and down thc steep mountainsides. Some modcs of transport
are intinitely more 'eflicient' than others. The NGO workers who travel in
small four-wheel drive jeeps can usually get from Cusco to Ocongatc in 3-5
hours. By lorry the journey time was more usually 5-l O hours. and if the
road was blocked in any way the journey times became indeterminate, with
passengers often spending the night huddled in the freezing cold waiting
for a spare part to he delivered, or a landslide to be deared. Even mi a single
vehicle somc will travel 'faster' than others. Sorne passengers are forced to
wait for hours while others are able to coordinate arrival and departure times
more precisely.
Nor should we assume that the technological developments behind
contemporary transport systems in Pcru have produced the kinds of modern
subjectivity that are sometimes attributed to them. As we have seen, road travel
in Peru only partially separates the travcller from the environment through
which they are passíng, and even the most commítted local entreprencur
stays deeply in touch with the animate powers of the landscapes through
which they movc (Harvey 2001, 2003). This continual awarcness of the road
itself is inevitable when they are in such a poor state of repair and demand
the attentive engagement of drivers ami passengcrs in ways tbat smooth
tarmac highways do not. Furthermore. the vehicles themselves necd constant
attention ami manifest the signs of fatigue ami exhaustion that historians
of transport have assumed disappeared with the demise of horse-drawn
carriages (Schivelbusch J 977: 12). Thus while sorne can lind a modicum of
travelling comfort and pass a jounwy relativcly passivcly in relation to their
mobility, others feel every pot-hole. note every cross by the roadside and cven
climb on and off al frequent intcrvals to mend the road, fill the radiator with
water and activcly coax the vehicle towards its destination.
In what ways thcn does a focus on thís road allow me to approach the
Peruvian state cthnographically? Does the singularity ami specificity of this
road cxemplify the scalar difference that has made ethnographic approaches
seem limited and inappropriatc in relation to the study of extcnsive. translocal
forms of modern power? Or might the road in some way encapsulatc thc
challenges that ali ethnographcrs of 'the state' have to address and thercby
provide a concrete manifestation of the kinds of 'statc cffects' (Mitchell
126 State Formation
1991) that ethnographers can realistically expect to describe anc! analyse.
My suggestion is that roads inevitably lead us to 'the state·, but indirectly. The
circuitous and somewhat tangcntial approach is importan! because it !caves
space for disruption of the etlmographer's prior assumptions about the form
and the location in which 'the statc' might appear.
My argument in this chapter is that Andean roads give us a particularly
intercsting window on the Peruvian state as thcy manifest state presence
yct also revea! the weakness of the national communications infrastructure
and the very limited possibilities for the exercise of political control by a
centralised administration. And whilc it is clear that roads channel people
and their possessions along particular routes and encourage particular forms
of economic practice that are not always beneficia! to local people (Wilson
2004), state control of the roads is far from absolute. After ali, when cvcn the
f
lorries don't slick to the roads we should be wary of exaggcrating the efccts
of these particular tedrnologies of statc.
ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE STATE?
Recen! anthropological approachcs to the state havc articulated the dilcmmas
involved in turning 'the state' into the objcct of ethnographic study. lt is the
kind of object that dissolves on close inspection and affords the cthnographer
no tangible vantage point: 'therc is obviously no Archimedcan point from
which to visualise "the state", only numerous situated knowledges' (Haraway
1988). Bureaucrats, for examplc, imagine it through statistics (Hacking
l 982), ollicial reports and tours. whcreas citizens do so through ncwspapcr
stories, dealings with particular government agencies, the pronouncements
of politicians, and so forth (Cupta 1995: 392). The state, in similar ways
to many of our previously treasured modernist categories (society, culture,
nation. identity, etc.) has been revealed as complex. in the sense that it is
compriscd of 'things that relate but don't add up' (Mol and Law 2002: I J.
Subsequent attempts to 'add things up· are quickly recognised as ideological,
imaginary. illusory or at least partía! and provisional .2
Howevcr, complexity and attempts at standardisation can be studied
cthnographically. One useful approach has bcen to focus on processes of
scaling (sce Strathern 1991. 1995: Fermc, 2001 ). As Nustad argues in Chapter
4. agency frequently entails a scaling process whercby the state agent comes
to occupy a position at the centre of a given population, thereby imposing a
hierarchical structure of control through which populations are known and
acted upon in specific ways. How state actors achieve thc appcarancc of size
is an important aspect in the production of statc-effects. Fermc's intercst in
the languagc ami practices of scaling, and the processcs of magnilication
or scaling np within dialectical relations of large a11d small provide an
exccllcnt cxample of ethnographic thinking about thcse issues (Ferme
200 l ). Another more common approach to complexity and standarclisation
has bcen to step back from tine-grained ethnography to focus instead on
Tl1e Materialitu of State-Ef]ects
discursive forms, and some feel that this is the most viable way forward for
anthropological approaches to thc state. Gupta ( l 995), for cxample, argues
that anthropological commitment to ·a physics of presence' has hampercd
ethnographic work on the state. Whilc accepting bis arguments on the
importancc of using various discursive forms as sources for an anthropology
of the state, it is equally importan! to stress that such sources can only be
deployed ethnograplzically if reconnected to particular lives in particular places.
Thus, far from abandoning or watering down the importance of co-presence.
I argue to the contrary, that a renewed conunitment to spatial proximily is
necessary for a truly dynamic ethnography of the state, despite the obvious
dilliculties. Indecd, 1 would go further and argue that in many ways il is the
inherent problems of 'location' in relation to the state that give cthnographic
methods their critica! purchase. By approaching the state through the study
of particular concrete material effects, ethnographic methods can generate a
critica! position by standing outside the state's own vcrsion of itself. revealing
the concrete cffects of its supposedly ephemeral power and challcnging
claims to ideological singularity. This approach appears to be counter to thc
importan! theoretical trends (discussed in the introduction to this book) that
have worked to disarticulate 'the state' from privileged places and to focus
f
instead on dispersed disciplinary powcr and specitic state-ef ects.
Navaro-Yashin (2002), following Zizek, has drawn attention to the fact
that increased theoretical awareness of the ephemerality of 'the state' does
not seem to have diminished the pervasive sense of located singularity that
f
surrounds the notion of state agency. She looks to the material ef ects of
statecrafl to explain this situation.
Thc signílicr statc can remain intact. in spile or public consciousncss. because a
material ami tangible world has bcen organi¼ed around il.... Even whcn we have
come intellectually to discntangle the state. wc necd to kecp on treating il as a rcality.
because thcre exists a reality that has becn activatcd through this symbol. ( Nm·aro­
Yashin 2002: 171)
In a somewhat different vein Mitchell ( 1991) has argued that thc
ephemerality of the state is also central to what are recognised as state-effects.
Thus in addition to the problems of an enduring self-evident state, despitc
widespread recognition of translocality, distributed agency and expcricntial
multíplicity, wc must add an integral dynamic of absence, externality or
concealment. for the statc is a conceptual entity that is also systematically
elusive and indirect. Location is thus not a problem simply because of
dispersa!, but because as 'social elTect' the state is generated from beyond the
space that it claims to inhabit. 1 n this context, the promise of etlmography is
to relocatc an elusive conceptual entity that thrivcs on collapse into a gencric
absent force and on notions of scalar discontinuity.
This dynarnic relationship between presence and absence characterised
my initial understandings of 'the state' in the southcrn Pcruvian Andes. Thc
mechanisms of the bureaucratic state reachcd into the town of Ocongate
128 St.ate Formation
where I did tieldwork. most noticeably in the presence of the town hall, with
its elected and nominated ofücials. the local judiciary. and the employees of
various government rninístries education, transport, communications,
agriculture and health. There was also a police post in the town and the very
occasional appearance of military personnel. Ocongate is a District Capital
( of the Province of Quispicanchis, Department of Cuse o). 1 t is the location for
state ritual ami for the delivery of state services. lt was here that people eame to
vote. to receive 'aid' and to begin the bureaucratic trails required for any more
sustained engagement with government agencies (Lund 200 l ). This was a
place where people performed the state into being in their daily lives. exploring
possibilities, striving to inhabit clear bureaucratic categories hui often
struggling to do so convincingly. Such practice was visible in tbe lndependence
Day celebrations, l and the numerous occasions when people eitber rnade or
were made to listen to patriotic speeches, sing the national anthem ami salute
the Peruvian llag, as they queued patielltly to exercise the right to vote. ami
as thcy turned up to register births. marriages and deaths.
In Peru more generally the contemporary state had been made visible in a
particular way in the 1980s ami l 990s, through the war wíth Shining Path.
This war was explicitly waged by Maoist guerrillas against the state. althougb
in practice it revolved around the violeut control of people·s daily lives and
11011-negotiable clemands for collaboration. to which the army responded by
tbe olí.en brutal suppression of peoplc assumed to be aiding their enemies.
The war revealed a crisis in 'legibility' (Scott 1998). The state did not know
who the enemy were, they did not know how to locate or suppress them.
Shining Path did not care about whethcr the people they killed and tortured
were their enemies or not. Thcy simply needed to show tbat thc slate was
not able to protect peoplc. State Jegitimacy was undcr threat. lt could offer
no effective protection. Agents of state were particularly subject to al.tack
but so too were the so-callcd revisionist forces, thc political parties, trade
unions, indeed anybody who tried to imagi11e forms of governance that left
the modern state intact. The war with Shining l'ath was not the only problem
that the Peruvian state faced. l'eru's sovereign territories were under threat
from neighbouring Ecuador. ami from the various regions of the rainforest
where the combined forces of drug traders ami corrupt military ollicials made
it impossible to enforce the law. Subject to the interests of capital and to the
demands of the international linancial comrnunity. it is clear that the state
had little autonomy in linancial matters eitber. The atlempts in the 1980s
to nationalise the banks and to reject the tenns and conditions of the lMF
brought rapid tinancial ruin and deep political instability to tbe country. Deep­
seated political corruption and the collapse of the traditional political parties
strcngthened thc image of a tinancially and morally bankrupt state. When
Presiden! Fujimori suspended the Constitution in 1992, for most people. it
was business as usual!
This visibly absent state characterised public lile in Ocongate. 1 lere overt
corruption (although certainly visible) was less relevant to people than the
Tlze Materialitu of State-Eflects 129
sense of abandonment, and the obvious poverty and unreliability of the
state. When I lived there in the l 980s the school was bare, the telephone
didn't work. there was no electricity and the road was in an appalling state
of disrepair. Teachers were often absent and the police drunk. isolated all(I
paranoid. By the end of the 1990s there was electricity ami the school had
bad some refurbishment. even the town hall had been moved into a new
building - but it was still an all-but empty building. The road bad got worse
than ever and pcople still lived with a sense of marginality. Even the war
hadn't really come their way.
Yet this was no stateless society (Clastres 1987). On the contrary, one
f
of the key axes of dif erentiation within Latín Americanist anthropology is
precisely between those regions such as the Peruvian Andes where the state
is tangible. even in its absence and those. such as large parts of Amazonia,
wbere the state scerns irrelevant. despite its traceable effects (Cow 1991). In
the Peruvian Andes the state has survived scandal and disruption. incapacity
and weakness. Yet the notion of a potentially effective externa! power is kept
alive. This raises furtber questions. How is it possible that a modcrn nation­
state that has existed constitutionally for over 500 years can still be secn as
an externa! power? How is this form of power produced ami rcproduced in
the mundane activities of people's everyday lives? Ami how do these interna!
and externa! dimensions of state power coexist and relate to each other?
People in Ocongate sustain their sense of the state despite its obvious
shortcomings. There is no paradox here as. while state power is dcarly
constitutive of people's contemporary environrnents. this locus of agency is
also understood as externa! to them. Those people who I identitied as agents
of the state in Ocongate do not really embody tbe state for local people. They
are seen variously as compadres. relatives, neighbours. friends Uámiliarcs.
conocidos or vecinos).4 Occasionally these people were referred to as 'the
authorities' (las autoridades), usually by those who do not know them well
ami have to engage via them in bureaucratic practice or state ritual. Such
engagernents are always embarrassing and slightly humiliating. and express
a social distance aud sense of strangeness. Nevertheless, local people who
becorne state employees or otlicials are generally thought to havc done well
- taken an opportunity, perhaps managed to get a salaricd job. pcrhaps takcn
advantage of connections. But thcir prcsence does1ú exactly bring the state
into the town. The effect is almost the opposite: such locals become more
distant. more like outsidcrs. Outsiders thcmselves sometimes become friends.
but often they rernain externa! to local conccn1s.
As anthropologists we commonly appeal to the state in two quite different
ways. On the one hand the state appears as an umnarked and self-evidcnt
reference to the apparatus of government and to regulatory regimes which
creatc lasting effocts on the particular localitíes whcre we come to study. Here
the state is invoked as part of the basic context. which frames the particular
etbnographic realities we are focused on. The state can be attributed powerful
agency but remains an abstrae! shadowy prcsence. somehow out of view

130 Stale Formation
and therefore not available for analysis. Where the state <loes appear within
the etlmographic frame, it is either in a particular institutional guise, or as
an idea. In my own work I have explored both these dirnensions within the
particular locality of Ocongate looking at the school. the judge's office, the
town hall and Spanish language as sites of state practice, but also discussing
the state as externa! power, a source of local fascination and/or disdain,
capricious, dangerous but nevertheless with a promise of transfonnational
possibility, efficacious should it want to be ( Harvey 1997, 2001. 200 3 ). My
current interest is to look in a more focused way at the materiality of the state
in an attempt to produce a site for the ethnographic study of state power that
will revea! the varied 'faces of the statc' ( Navaro-Yashin 2002), its intrinsic
externality ( and thc conscquent experience of absence), and its simultaneous
pervasive prescnce in pcople's daily lives.
St udying the state in this way throws up the question of what it means to
know sornething ethnographically. An ephemeral and complex object such as
the state clearly presents variousproblems for ethnography. How do particular
ideas about the state relate to the more ge11eralised contextual notions that
are often invoked to historicise or contextualisc ethnographic accounts? How
can the sell�evident partiality of ethnographíc knowledge relate to wider
regional or theoretical debates about politics and public lile? Strathern has
written that 'the apparent dilemrna of etlmography is that it generates too
much specilicity'. The issue then is how such specificity is handled. Here we
need to address issues of scale. If we think of the specific (often translated
as the local) in terms of a scaled relationship of encompassment, then there
can be no ethnography of the state, as that which we could describe (the
local) would always be 'less than' the object we are trying to focus on (thc
state). Furthermore, this model buys into the story that the bureaucratic
state tells about itself. namely that local administrative units are small and
lcsser versions of national administration (which is more because it is the
sum of the parts). To reproduce this story is to study the letish on its own
terms. Such idioms of scale place the state elsewhere and thus produce the
ethnographic dilernma of how to locate the object of study.
In this chapter I argue, following Navaro-Yashin ( 2002) ami Ferme ( 200 l ),
that the materiality of state-effects is crucial to anthropologists. because such
materiality provides a focus that allows us to exercise the kind of critica!
awarcness that ethnography affords. I approach ethnography as a particular
mode of attenliveness that entails, but is not delincd by, spatial proximity to
the object of study. Discursive forms such as media rcports, everyday talk,
ollicial language and the whole panoply of transnational symbolic 'languages'
and branded commodities are crucial components in such an approach, but
the challenge for the ethnographer is to force these entitics to appear in an
embedded rather than abstracted fonn - to recover the impurities ami revea!
the collaborations that counter the illusion of abstraction without dismissing
the reality that such illusion can acquire in people 's evcryday lives. Crucially,
I argue that ethnography. even of a multi-sited kind, has to work th rough
The Materialilu of State-Bjfects l 31
the dvnamics of spatial proximity. 5 The challenge for an ethnography of any
state is thus to identify material traces which can be engaged etlmographically
and which open out, rather than close down, further perspcctives on the
structures and practices through which this particular mode of power is
effected and reproduced.
With these ideas in mind l relurn to the road, and to thc idea of carrying
out an ethnography of the state by looking 'clsewhere' and suggest that the
state of the roads offers an interesting perspective on the state. This approach
!caves open how 'the state' appears as sclf-evident to the people I was living
with. It also allows incompatible notions of 'the state' to appcar alongside
each other as there is no need to hold the state togcther analytically as a
coherent objcct. Roads can invoke both thc presence and the absence of
the state. They are concrete material entities that revea! multiple agencies,
produced th rough particular circumstances and relationships, and used
and claimcd in ways that planners and politicians never envisagcd. They are
immobile material entities yet they draw attention to mobility; they have lixed
geographical coordinates yet they extend beyond and exceed named place�
and thus have an air of the translocal about them; they are the outcome ol
modern technological practice yet people in the Andean town of Ocongate,
011 whom I base this analysis, also talked of them in relation to the !ami ami
alternative understandings of knowledge and power.
Wilson (2004) has pointed out how roads can operate as technologies of
standardisation and control, offering single, institutionalised routcs through
the landscape, often explicitly created by governrnents to enable the neoliberal
economy to the detriment of alternative possibilities. Roads providc tangible
evidence of bolh technical and political capacity. They materialise state ami
corporate ambition. ami transform particular territorial spaces into sites
of fantasy ami projection for politicians, planners and local people. Thc
social. political and economic implications for those connected and for thosc
bypassed by such singular routes are considerable, and most road-building
projects are bitterly fought over as people compete for the benetits ami struggle
simultaneously to avoid the effects of the tcrritorialising projects of the statc
and/or prívate capital that road-building entails.
As a concrete space of ethnographic focus roads also have the advantage
of holding together the imaginativc and thc concrete in a quite explicit
way. Not only do they operate as powcrful discursive tropes of conncctivity
alongside their existe11ce as concrete located material forms. Thcy also
conjoin technological and territorial forms. The acknowledged trauslocality
of the modern state is evidenced by the continua! movement of people ami
things, but such movement has also drawn forth a more explicit concern by
governments with control of technological spaces alongside the traditional
concerns with territorial spaces (Barry 2001 ) . Following Callon and Latour
( l 981) Barry recognises that. 'The macro order of the statc is built up frnm a
complex network of localised technical practices and devices. To umlerstand
132 Sta/e Formation
how modern government is possible we need to understand the spatial
connectedness of technical devices (Barry 20( l1: 12).
To approach the state by way of an ethnographic analysis of a road thus
requires some historical work to uncover the ways in which successive
governments have tried to display technological and political capacity
through the control of particular territorial spaces. Within this framing of
the modern state. communications systems take on a crucial role. apparently
holding a state togetber. by reassembling multiple versions of reality and
creating a11d maintaining clear-cut distinctions between inside and outside
(Slater 1998). Modern politics cannot be recluced to spatial politics, but a
spatially constituted state remains eme of its most self-evident forrns (Slater
1998; Radcliffe 200 l ). Once again roads offer an interesting perspective
on tbese practices as they both engage ancl transgress territoriality. linking
'transnational flows and penetrations of different kinds of power·. to 'the
territoriality of politícs within national boundaries' (Slater 1998: 381). In
this respect it is not surprising that roads become key sites of political struggle
appropriated alternately by the military. by revolutionary groups, by popular
protesters and by social outcasts who lay claim to marginal spaces through
assault and theft.6
In the following section I will use the road from Cusco to Ocongate to
look historically and ethnographically at how political connections have
been made ancl maintained over time. Clearly the road network in and of
itself doesn't deliver national integration (Thévenot 2002) so we need to
look with more precision at what connections roads do bring into being. and
how these connections are made and maintained. What are the state-effects
of the Cusco/Ocongate road?
BUIWING THE ROAD FROM CllSCO TO OCONGATE:
HISTORIES OF CO-PRODUCTION
'In the post-colonial period. thc project or Latin American nation building has
been a profoundly spatial project. in which a lack of physical integration has
been compounded by regional contlicts over thc nature of the state project'
f
(Radclife 2001: 124).
The major road-building projects in Peru bcgan in the 1920s. Massive
investments were macle in an attempt to integrate the national economy
and expand state bureaucracy. lt was a time when central governmcnt was
making a conccrted effort to 'promote citizenship, individual rights and
equality before the law. as the only legitimate basis of national life' (Nugent
200 l; 26 7). lf ntil tbis time the Peruvian state had been unable to exercise
any direct control over its territories. Since the founding of the modern state
in 1824. government had been forced to make alliances with aristocratic
families ami with the lanclowners. who. in arcas such as the Ocongate region,
controlled ali aspects of the state apparatus ami used these institutions quite
openly to support their own ends. The Leguia government dealing with the
Tlic Matcriality o/ State-Ef.lects lB
post-First World War world. the opening of tbe Panama Canal. diminishing
British ínlluence and the rise of l!S investment in Latin America. sought
explicitly to create 'a tranquil economic and political climate for US investors'
(Stein 1980; 5 3). By the l 920s there was a veneer of popular participation in
Peruvian state politics. but most people were systematically blocked from the
opportunity to participate as citizens. They were kept illiterate. not allowed
to spcak Spanish and not allowed to display any of the symbolic apparel of
modern life. In the large hacienda which borders on the town of Ocongatc
the peasants were not allowed to wear long trousers, or to ride horses as such
acts were taken by the landowners as c!airns to equal status. By the 19 rns
local traders were in a position to take advantage of changing markcts ami
the rule of the landlords was challenged. In Ocongate local mcstízo traders.
in armed struggle. managed to move the market place away from the main
bouse of the hacienda and clown to Ocongate itself. These struggles. facilitated
indirectly by the commercial opportunities that the road networks afforded,
meant that people felt that their rights to citizenship and participation in
the nation bad been won. rt was sornething they valued, even though it took
severa! decades for the Agrarian Reform of 1969 to deliver hacienda !ami
fór local use.
The state initiative was seen as a collaborativc project in other ways. As
the road comes into Ocongate it crosses the river. There are two bridges.
The original stone bridge is no longer wide enough for today's lorries and is
now only used by pedestrians, animals and bicydes. But it is this bridge that
captures the local imagination and there are various stories associated with
it. Many peoplc told me that an old man ami an old woman had been buried
alive in the foundations. as an offering to thc Earth. to appease thc sense of
aggravation and violent intrusion that the road-building process cntailed
and to prevent the bridge from collapsing. Building roads in the Andes is
akin to rnining.7 Dynamite is used to blast through the rock to create thc
high passes, to widen the valley floors and to carve tlat surfaces along the
steep mountainsides. The sense of both disturbing Hnd eating away al thc
core of the land requires sacrificial recompense. to ensure the safety of future
travellers. Those who told me the stories of human sacritice explained that
the bridge would not stay up without this payment. The engineers had been
unable to complete the roacl, unable to make the link betwecn Ocongate and
the city of Cusco. without the active cooperation of the Earth forces.
The road from Cusco to Ocongate was completed in 1 9 36. Men from today's
older generation provided their labour via a much resented conscripted labour
road-building programme. 8 To this narrative of state co-option of local
people's labour further sinister motives for the expansion of the road systcm
could be added; a means by which the state is engineered into the landscape.
with the possible consequences of being able to control local populations more
readily, particularly in relation to taxation and control of labour (Fairhead
1992). The ease and speed with which pcople and goods can be channelled
134 State rím11atíon
constitute a scrious threat to more fragile alternative modes of livelihood
(Wilson 2004).
The 1920s ami 19 30s were times of struggle prirnarily betwecn the state
ancl regional oligarchies over land and labour, struggles in which local people
were not necessarily supportive of the ultimate goals of either of these more
powerful intercst groups. Modernising elites were pushing for a transition from
!ami to communications as the central organising principie of the modern
state. 9 Such a move was generally supported by local people. Thc road offered
new opportunitics and acccss to markets that allowed them to circumvent
the landowner's control of the local economy, ami the road also gave them
access to symbols ancl practices of the more autonomous mo<lern liberal
subject. The fact that the road <lid not always delíver bencfüs to local people
<lid not diminish these gains. In many ways, 'modernisation' was achieved
via state conscription of local labour. for cnds that were not necessarily in the
interests of local people. For example, the army was brought in to put down
the assault on the hacienda. so pcople knew that the road delivered ontside
interference as well as opening up options for them. Nevertheless, the road
was primarily seen as liberating. Furthermore. the conscripted labour had
the effect of making the road 'local' in ways that rnight not othcrwise have
been fclt so strongly. People had thc sense that t/1ey had worked to bring the
road into the local landscape. the rock was blasted to makc the connections
possible. and those who paid with their labour, and with thcir lives in many
cases. were also local people. Those who wanted roads so fervently certainly
deeply rcsented the ways in which they were compelled to buíld thcm. but
this did not dampen their enthusiasm for the road itsclf.
The road thus providcs a complex site through which pcople negotiate
their relationships with power. The road connects centres ol' political and
economic power but takcs people through a sacred ami powerl'ul landscape
on the way. This relationship between state ami landscape is objectitied in the
contrasting points of hiatus that punctuate journeys, as pcople respect both
ecological and bureaucratic checkpoints: showing papers to the poi ice ami
making small offerings to the landscape deities ami Catholic saints at the high
passes. The road is of the !ami ami wrcsted from the land. lt is contested spacc.
the site of violent confrontation both by politically motivated actors in past
and recent times, and by the voracious agency of the lancl itself. as it claims
a return for the existencc ami the use of the road. Many die on these roads.
lt is also the source of great anxiety for other reasons. Local people know
that while in onc respect thc road connects Ocongate both to the current
extractive domains of the rainforest arnl the Andean ami coastal cities of
Cusco, Arequipa and Lima, Ocongate is not in fact a necessary link on this
widcr route. The town itself is no longcr a source of wealth. nor a significan!
locus of consumption. lt is a focal point for trading activity. but as such it is
also in many ways marginal to the regions on which it depends for survival:
the hinterland where wool and meat is produced, thc lowlands from which
gold and timber are extracted and the urban capitalist enterprises which
The Materiality o/ State-Effects 135
finance local trade. The road could take a different route, ancl the fear is that
the decision to re-route the road could be taken at any time by bureaucrals
and officials who care nothing for the fortunes of one small place in the
mountains. After ali. Ocongate's loss would be another's gain. IO
This discussion of the road shows how people in Ocongate, from various
walks of life. lookcd for thc state to take a more active role in their area. They
fought for enhanced connection to centres of powcr and the state apparently
responded. providing the infrastructure and Lhe desired connection. The
effects of these collaborations are complex. Prakash ( 1999) argues that
technical projects such as these are central to thc ways in which modern
states display thcir eflicacy. Covernments can manifest si ate power through
technical projects. But in Ocongate people were clear that while this was
indeed the case. the road was also produced in collabomlíon wit/1 them. Road­
building required a combination of expertise. Once built, the road itsclf does
leave people open to state control. These projects do render people more legible.
they mn be monitored and controlled more easily. But this is not ali it does. lt
also affords other more horizontal less ccntralising effects. ln this respect we
have to acknowledge that many people are prepared to accept this compromise
with power. Demonslrable connection to externa! sources of power affords
recognition and rneets certain desires for legitimation. In this framework the
state appears in yet another guise. as object of desire and fantasy and people's
fears are as likely to focus on abandonment as on control.
THE STA'm AS OBfECT OF DESIRE
In 199 7 Ocongate was visited by Fujimori. thcn presiden! of thc Repuhlic. His
visit was unannounced and totally unexpected. The mayor had not even been
in town. Many of the villagers were up on the sports tield beside the school.
waiting for groups of dancers to return from a pilgrimage to an important
local shrine. This religious festival had grown enorrnously sincc the 1980s.
I was told that local rcligious sponsors now compete openly in the feas! that
they offer the returning pilgrims. Fujimori was in luck, for it would only be
at such times that such an array of local specialitíes would be available. The
ritual sponsors were persuaded to give over portions of food to the presiden!
and his entourage. Once fed, ami apparently in fine spirits. Fujimori then set
off on a bicycle down thc main street from the school to the central square.
I was told that he was quite horrified that the town had such a small and
inadequate school and promised that he would provide the funds for a new
building. Before leaving in his helicopter he was also told that the road
from Cusco to Ocongatc was in a terrible state of disrepair. One of the local
notables had a broken arm at the time from a recent roaci accident ami again
Fujimori had apparently responded to thesc very personal circumstances with
a promise of immediate repairs. People were impressed by the fact that he
refused to sign any record of these agreernents: they were required to accept
and trust his word. And he had indeed delivered. This visit was a sourcc of
l36 Swte Hwmatíon
tremendous local pride. The president had conferred somet hing very special
on them and, while some other towns in the region had also been visited
in subsequent years, the priic of the school was seen as a quite exceptional
one. The scnse that thcir festival preparations had enabled them to respond
f
to a surprise visit to such good ef ect had obviously added to their sense of
local achievement.
I found this story extraordinarily significant for it brought togcther severa!
things that had preoccupied my thoughts 011 earlier research visits. The
presence of the president in the community was about the most tangible
evidence of a connection between the village ami thc statc apparatus
imaginable. This connection was one that had always preoccupied people:
it was tenuous, problematic. Despite the pridc and excitcment. the president's
visit could not of course overcome that feeling. He carne ami left very quickly.
They had talked to him. he had smiled at them, responded to their most
immediate nceds, and ridden a bicycle down thcir main road. but he had then
gone off in a hdicopter without even leaving the vital trace of their agreement
in bis signature. The school is there of course. but there always was a school
of sorts. They would have preferred to have had the agreement objectified in
writing. People are used to the obsessive literacy of state practice. and it must
havc been somcwhat disturbing for the presiden! to have left without signing
the oflicial record book, the Uhro de Actas. People expcct their relationship
to state power to be hierarchical. unequal. The fact of the president having
been there was as important in its own way as the legacy of his visit, but
he had not left them his signature in bis official capacity. just sorne signed
photographs and calendars.
It was as if the appearance of the president re-scaled the state in ways
that parallel the ethnographer's dilemma. Proximity to Fujimori allowed an
intimate connection, but simultaneously detached Fujimori the man from the
more abstrae! source of state power and revealed how no single individual
can sustain the 'bigness' that the notion of the externa! statc evokes. While
in Ocongate the president was visibly dependent on local peoplc. They fed and
entertained him, lent him a bicycle to visit their main square, engaged him
in talk about tbe problems and deliciencics they experienced in daily lifc. In
tbis context the signed photographs and calendars took on a problenrntic and
ambiguous meaning. ror while treasured as evidence of personal connection
to the presiden!, the suggested intimacy also worked against the processes
of abstraction whercby the power of the state is e11hanced by distance and
scalar difference. In contrast to this treasured, yet problematic intimacy,
the mode of Fujimori's arrival ami departure distanced him from tlie people
of Ocongate. He had not used the road. Air travel alTorded hirn a temporal
connectivity to urban centres and siles of governmental procedure that
was not available to local people. Fujimori's visit to Ocongate thus displayed
how state otlicials and local people en-produce both the intirnate sense of
interdependence and the structures of hierarchical distance through which
the modern state is constituted.
Tlie lv1aterialily of Stal e-Ejfi•cts 137
CONCLllSIONS
Defining 'the political' as 'the antagonistic dimension that is inherent in ali
human society' and 'politics' as 'the ensemble of practices. discourses, and
institutions that seek to establish a certain order anc.1 to organize life' ( 1998:
3 86). Slater explores the dynamic tension that lies at the heart of ali political
process. In ways reminiscent of Kapferer·s ( 1998) interpretation of Deleuze.
Slater stresses how politics is always interrupted by the political and. in turn.
is conti11ually acting on the political to depoliticise it, to control. rationalise
and order. The political. in turn. continually reasserts its presence. as the
'irremovable inner periphery at the heart of politics' ( 1998: 386).
This way of formulating the relationship between politics and the political
helps me to reconnect the road from Cusco to Ocongate to the state as a11
object of ethnographic attention. As 'state-effect' the road was in one sense
produced through a particular territorial politics. But this moment of
state ordering also revealed the fragility of the territorial order. The roads
were built at a time when the Leguia government was explicitly increasing
its dependence on foreign capital and foreign technical expertise, and
simultaneously ncgotiating with emergent regional governments. In this
context and subsequently, the development of effective communications has
assumed great importance as a way in which successive governmcnts have
tried to demonstrate their ordering capacity. stabilise the social environment
and connect the otherwise dispcrsed regional fragments into a coherent
whole. But of course such ordcr can never be fully achieved or tinalised.
And in a region such as the Andes, that tension between politics and the
political is played out through relationships that exceed any simple díchotomv
between state and society, for the ethnography revea Is not simply the fragilit�,
of the spatial order. but the existence of competing spatial orders or ways <;f
creating territorial coherence. 1 1
The road from Cusco to Ocongate connects territories where incompatible
spatial politics are not even recognised or acknowledged. For some travellers.
the anímate landscape, the Christian saints, the state checkpoints, the pot­
holes, the accident spots ami the road-building and maintenancc programmes
are experientially continuous, for others (such as Fujimori) thev are not
experienced at ali! Fujimori's helicopter allowed hím to keep his. distance
from the experience of these people's everydav life, as effectivelv as statistics
llattcn the rcalities that thcy supposcdly depi¡t.
In studying the state. the ethnographer's task is to lind ways to uncover the
workings of the state, and in particular the ways in which this abstrae! ami so­
often absent social agent can appear in such a concrete way in people's lives.
But to focns on the production of 'state-effects' is to address the dy namics of
política! agency of a pre-existing, and thus apparently 11011-political entít \'.
Slater ( 1 998: 38 5). uses Butler's work to make the point:
... agency can he viewcd as hclonging lo a mode of thinldng about persons as
instrumental aciors who conl'ront an externa! political lield. and 'íi' wc agree that
138 Stale formal.ion
politics and power exist already at the levd at which thc subjcct ami its agency are
articulated and madc possible. thcn agcncy can be presumed only at thc cost of rcl'using
to inquire into its construction' (13utlcr 1992: 1 3 ).
My focus 011 the road was intendcd to show that an ctlrnography of the
state can uncover these social processes by assuming u tangential approach.
Indeed a tangcntial approach may wcll be thc only option. given the ways in
which the state is entangled in mundane sociality. We cannot know where the
state will appear from, or in what guise. Fujimori droppcd out of the sky after
ali. I arn suggesting that thc ethnography of thc state requires ethnographcrs
to think across a range of practices - some ordered, somc highly dispersed
and messy. But rather than thinking of ethnography as attention to the local
or small-scale, we should instead look at how attention to detail reveals the
complexity of relationships ami challenges the uni-dimensional plane which
scalar models create ami depend on. Evcn the one brief example of a rclatively
short stretch of road reveals the relational dynamics through which the
'bigness' of Lhe state is constituted and reproduced in people's lives, while
simultaneously affording glimpses of a rnnge of other perspcetives 011 how
states exist through mundanc personal relationships.
Finaliy, I want to suggest that the importance of emphasising ethnography's
detail is tbat it enables an interesting shift to occur in how we perceive the
dilemmas of the contemporary Peruvian si ate.For as long as the local is
seen as 'less than' and ·e11compassed by' wider national or transnational
contexts. there is always going to be the problem that local issues are in the
encl irrelevant to wider concerns. This of course is the fcar of irrelevance
that the model also produces in people in Ocongatc. However. if the focus
is 011 complex relationality ralher than scale - then local dilemmas and
solutions offer models ami ways of understanding how social enlities (such
as states) can cohere withont the necd to posit coherent systerns. In othcr
words. attention to detail obviates the need for cncompassing theory (or sealar
models), which requires ali constitutive clements to be of a kind. compatible
ami coherent. My work on contemporary information technologies in
Manchester has shown the irnportance given to the ideal of commensurabilíty
in modern commnnication systems. fndeed. the key technical challenge for
communications systems is to facilitate the seamless llow of int'ormation
(Harvey and Creen 2002 ). The beauty of an ethnographic attention to detail
lies in the possibilities afforded for the recognition that incompatibilities are
inherent in such systems and continually reassert themsclvcs (Green et al.
200=;). This observation is in many ways an anthropological commonplace.
\Ve knowthat modernity is enduringly incomplete and that modern economies
depend on the continua! need to ·repair'. 'replace' and 'improve', which in
turn requires ongoing teclrnical solutions to the discontinuities that human
relationships produce.
The focus on the road has also made it possible to address the ways in which
pcople think about the statc as simultaneously translocal and as ccntred
elsewhere. State rituals. cpitomised by the visit of Fujimori. can make thc state
Tlie 1\iiateriality o/ Slate-Ej]écts 1 39
appear. revealing concrete relationships. but in so doing they also ernphasise
the tenuous connections that local people have to it. fecding anxieties ami
desires. Por these same people also know, from other contcxts. that the state
is constituted through multiple agencies. organisations. levels, agendas and
centres. and act in the knowledge that state power is both arbitrary and
contingent. potentially transformative yet also intrinsically fragilc. AsFerme
J
reminds us: '\ ltimatcly the key to many of these processes of enlargement is
embedded in details. in clues that are secreted away frorn direct apperception•
(2001: 10). The trick for ethnographcrs ami local people alike is not to be
beguiled for too long by the state's own version of itself and to look inste.id
at the details through which things come to seem as they do.
NOTES
1. l am grateful to the ESRC Centre l'or llescarch mi Socio-Cultural Change who are
currently funding a period of research leave in which I am dcveloping the roads
project.
2. Sce. for example. Andcrson ( 198 3 l. Abrams ( 1988). Taussig \ 199 ,. 1997). ,:upta
( 199 5) ami Hanscn and Stepputat \200 1).
3. Harvey ( 1997) is an essay which illustrates thc inrnmplete 'thraldom· (Navaro­
Yashin 2002 i in statc-orchestratcd ritual. and the rnunterpoint of an alternative state
imaginary which draws together thc indigenous and state powers into rclationships
of active cngagcment for tl1e benefit of local pcoplc.
4. lt could be argued (following Nustad. this volume) that these actors fail to achicw
thc status of state artors. as the scaling proccss rcquircs thcm to be visibly ccntred
elscwhere.
5. lnteresting cthnographic discussions on the location of thc statc include: Harney
(2002) who. drawing on his expcrience of a pcriod in ollke in a short-liwd radical
leflist Cmrndian go\'ernment. locates the statt• beyond particular governments in tlw
specilic intcrcsts that allow particular governmenls to continue or no!: Cupta ( 199 S 1
locales the state in the interface bctwccn local oflicials and discursivc tropes: while
Navaro-Yashin (2002) locates the statc as 'elsewhere·. in daily lifc rather than in
ollkial ollices of state.
h. llnfortunatcly there is insuflicicnt space to elaborate at lcngt h. but it is wort h noling
that roads were also integral to lnka statccralt. although this was not primaril�· a
territorial state but one which operatcd through the control of lahour ami the symbolic
control of space, by which outlying regions were conm'.cted symbolically through sight
lines (Zuidema l 9h4l to the imperial city or Cusco locatcd at the centre of the lnka
world ( llrton l 990). During the period of Spanish colonial rule. spaces and terrifories
were conceived in new ways. but space was still differentiatcd by qualitati\•c means
ami dilTcrent sc!tlcments wcrc secn as difieren! in kind \Orlove l 99 l). S!andardised
measures of population size or geographical location wcre only introduced during
the Republican period. ami it was only at this juncture that ali spaces were rendered
commensurable (Orlm·e 199 3).
7. On rnining. see Nash ( 1979). Taussig ( 1980). Sallnow ( 1989).
8. Leguia's governmcnt introduced a hugely rcsentcd programme or conscriplt'd labour
for road construction. the mnsrri¡,don vial.
9. l'at Jovce\ (200 l) work on the ·cornmunicalion s!ate' lrns bcen vcry usdul to me in
thinking aboul thesc issues.
10. Thcre has indccd been a continua[ discussion ovcr thc pasl fcw decadcs on the
possibility of building what became known as the lntcroceanic 1-lighway to conncct
140 Statc fürmatíon
Brazil with the lucraiive markets of Asia.The various suggested mutes induded more
than onc that would cross through southcrn l'eru thc Cusco--Maldonado road was
under consideration. but had by no rncans secured ddinitive ravour. Any compcting
road would immcdiately divert the majority or the trallic. and affcct thc livclihoods
of people in towns such as Ocongatc. Local fears of burcaucratir dccisions wcre thus
quite well rounded (Llosa 200 l).
L L. 1 am unable to expand on thesc compcting spatial orders within the confines of this
chapter. More detail is given in Harvcy (2001).
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 Anthropology, Culture and Socíety
Series Editors:
ProlessorThomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo
Dr Jon P Mitchell. University of Sussex
STATE FORMATION
Lwul, Luu· ami Em1íro1m1ent:
Myt/1irnl /,mu/, /,e1111I Howularies
Tlw :lid rt/nt:
Gi\'ÍflfJ mu/ Govcrniny in lnt1'nwtímwl l)('\'elopment
Anthropological Perspectives
Editcd by ALu�: ABR.\1\1so;,-¡ .\ND D!M!TRH lS Edilcd by ll 111u Moss1 \\1J ll.11·1D LEw1s
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('ultivating J)c\'elopment:
Tl,e Tmuhle \\'ít/J Commw1ity: A.11 Etluwr¡raphy (!f' Aid Poliq1 ami Pnwtll.'e
:lnthropological füflections 011 ,Vfi1vc111ent. DAUIIMOSSI·
ldentíly arul Colledil'ity
l:tl111(1!Jrapfly ami Prostitution in Pcru
Vrnn) A.\1n· Ar,..1) NH;m. R:\PPl>lrl
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A11tllropolorm arul tl1e H'ill to ,\frani11rr
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Edíted b.v J..1,I: K. CmvA.\
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A11thropolo!]íral Perspectives .Hodcrnitu ami Jdcntity in Conf/ict
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H'lwt is Anthropolorm?
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Eco1101nii· Ubcralisati1J11 ami Sm·ial (.'/1w1gc i11 Nepal
the Post-modcrn Clwlle11yt·
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lkarí11g \ \ 'itness:
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Edited by DH·.11.R ll.\UJR ..v,u Clus S1111RF
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(;crnln Rclations in Tujikistan
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l(wl/1 mul thc State in fl1maaru: Edited by A\llRI\I Srn.1r11rn,, l'AIJELA J. S1EWAIU

4�
( i1pitalísm, Commw1ism arnl (lass "IJ NEII L IVIIITEIW\ll
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Raa.. \'ature mul Culture:
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