From polygons to politics: Everyday practice and environmental governance in Veracruz, Mexico

This article argues that everyday practices can matter as much as organized social movements or outright resistance in environmental governance outcomes. While governance has become an important analytical category for understanding the institutional and epistemological systems through which resources are accessed and managed, existing characterizations of environmental governance are based on organized social movements and/or institutional re-scalings. This research reveals how state strategies to govern resources and reorder space were thwarted by the everyday practices of both farmers and state actors. Using a case study from a historic coffee-producing region in Veracruz, Mexico, this article presents ethnographic data to demonstrate how government attempts to control the environment are bound together in mutually constitutive processes of transformation with the actual places, peoples, and practices that make up the landscape.

► I examine the practices of farmers and officials following economic restructuring. ► Farmers converted portions of parcels to lime and sugarcane production. ► State actors developed mapping strategies to implement federal support programs. ► I demonstrate how everyday practices combine to shape environmental governance.