The Government of Beans

The Government of Beans is an exhilarating read. Kregg Hetherington offers a brilliant theorization of agripolitics built up from the ground up through close observation of how dreams, schemes, laws and a host of small things (beans, trucks, measuring sticks, hedges, insects, traffic jams) transform lives and create new worlds. Anyone tempted by the idea that governing the Anthropocene means finding the right policy, or the right technology, or even the right kind of state should read this book. -- Tania Murray Li, author of * Lands End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier * Stimulating, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, The Government of Beans explores what may be politically possible in the face of the overwhelming power of agribusiness and an ineffective and frequently corrupt government. This important and creative book brings histories, dreams, hopes, horrors, ambivalences, and practices to light. -- John Law, author of * After Method: Mess in Social Science Research * This well-written and important book is simultaneously a political and economic history of Paraguay, particularly its eastern part, and a depiction of a short historical period of radical politics on the part of the state. -- Annika Rabo * Anthropology Book Forum * Hetheringtons book The Government of Beans offers a riveting (yes, riveting) account of the expansion of agroindustry and soy production in [Paraguay].... [His] book offers a particularly timely cautionary tale about the possibilities and limits of government.... -- Mara Elena Garca * Public Books * The Government of Beans offers a cautionary tale about the risks of using the regulatory instruments of the state to limit the violence of the state.... [It] offer[s] a refined interdisciplinary lens to study the intricate workings of soy and power in South America. -- Daniela A. Marini * AAG Review of Books * Recent state-society research in rural Argentina has produced important works on the politics of the GM soy boom.... Profoundly ethnographic and conceptually sophisticated, The Government of Beans is an excellent contribution to this literature from a Paraguayan perspective. This fine study deserves a wide interdisciplinary readership. -- Ezquerro-Caete * Journal of Peasant Studies *

Kregg Hetherington is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University. He is the editor of Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene and author of Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay, both also published by Duke University Press.

Acknowledgments vii Introduction. Governing the Anthropocene 1 Part I. A Cast of Characters 19 1. The Accidental Monocrop 23 2. Killer Soy 32 3. The Absent State 43 4. The Living Barrier 53 5. The Plant Health Service 62 6. The Vast Tofu Conspiracy 70 Part II. An Experiment in Government 81 7. Capturing the Civil Service 85 8. Citizen Participation 96 9. Regulation by Denunciation 106 10. Citation, Sample, and Parallel States 120 11. Measurement as Tactical Sovereignty 130 12. A Massacre Where the Army Used to Be 144 Part III. Agribiopolitics 157 13. Plant Health and Human Health 163 14. A Philosophy of Life 174 15. Cotton, Welfare, and Genocide 184 16. Immunizing Welfare 194 17. Dummy Huts and the Labor of Killing 203 Conclusion. Remains of Experiments Past 216 Notes 223 Bibliography 257 Index 277