The politics of the purifier: State and economic subject-making through Mexican clientelist practice

- Examines clientelism in Mexico as a sui generis political-economic form.
- Uses the story of a “gift” of a water purifier for a migrant-serving collective in order to narrate attempts to create both state and economic subjectivities.
- Argues that clientelist social relations exceed any transactional dyad and clientelist subjection may precede any exchange.
- Argues that forms of subjectification can occur through appeals to the recognition a shared social context, rather than through an avowal.