Obras politics: elements of material populism in Ecuador

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Date
2025
Authors
Rumé, Sam
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John Wiley and Sons Inc
Published Version
10.1111/amet.13402
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Abstract
Materiality tends to play only a marginal role in mainstream theorizations of populism. In Ecuador, however, where populism has been described as the norm rather than the exception, obras (public works) are a crucial element of politics. They are framed as the gifts of leaders to the people, shaping people's lifeworlds and embedding leaders in physical landscapes. Populism thereby becomes inherently material, as obras enact the categories of “the leader” and “the people” and create personalistic-charismatic links between them. At the same time, obras politics is highly risky, given the populist Manicheanism entangled with construction projects. Any flaw encountered in the implementation of obras risks delegitimizing their initiator as incapable or corrupt. Meanwhile, “the people” of any obra materialize in divergent, competitive ways. Obras thus become infrastructural to populism, both in their variously spectacular forms and in their unpredictable mediations of everyday lives and citizen-state relations.
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Keywords
Ecuador , infrastructure , Latin America , Materiality , Populism , Public works , State
Citation
Rumé, S. (2025) 'Obras politics: elements of material populism in Ecuador', American Ethnologist, 52(2), 183-194. DOI: 10.1111/amet.13402
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/17457
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Sociology - Journal Articles
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© 2025, the Author. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided theoriginal work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.