Rural governance and power relations: theorizing the complexity of state–citizen interactions

Throughout the world, governments have played – and continue to play – a significant role in the organization of rural social life. Legislative rules and regulations have shaped the forms and dynamics of social interaction, and state agencies have intervened in rural economies in an effort to secure, inter alia, higher levels of production, improved industry efficiencies, increased employment, lower levels of poverty and, more generally, to improve the life chances of farm and regional populations. The typical means of directing such activity within liberal democracies has been through a broad set of agencies, comprising elected representatives and authorised bureaucracies, that are known collectively as ‘the government’ (see Dean and Hindess 1998). One key aspect of this liberal view of government has been a clear demarcation between the spheres of ‘state’ and ‘civil society’, and a desire to set limits upon the state’s capacity to intervene in the workings of the ‘non-governmental’ realm.