Abstract

RAP, Edwin. Ritual, resources and passion in politics: A situational analysis of an electoral contest in western Mexico. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2012, vol.33, n.130, pp.249-291. ISSN 2448-7554.

This article contributes to the growing body of literature that questions State-centered approaches to analyses of politics, by adopting a more decentered, cultural perspective that consists in presenting a detailed situational and ethnographic examination of a local electoral contest in western Mexico. The analysis of that event as a cultural performance illustrates the dramatic presentation of culturally significant acts as a central part of electoral conduct, while also revealing the part they play in the politics of everyday organizational life, in the flow of resources, in public rituals, and in the passions that are aroused. The fact that such acts are not simply symbolic is shown by what goes on behind the scenes of a political ritual: for example, where a political group appropriates a Water Users' Association to use its staff, installations, resources and power relations for its political campaign. Such practices also illustrate the unanticipated results of recent reforms designed to achieve administrative decentralization. The new producer organizations created by those reforms as a means of more efficiently administering certain tasks -previously handled by government- are used politically, not just in an instrumental way but in a manner that is culturally specific.

Keywords : Political ritual; resource administration; administrative reform; transferring risk management; caciquismo; political culture; performance.

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