Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory

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Alex Diamond

Governing the Excluded

Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory

Alex Diamond

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English

University of Chicago Press
06 January 2026

Development studies; Ethnic studies; Social & cultural anthropology; Development economics

An on-the-ground description of Colombia's peace process as lived by the rural populations most affected by it.

The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed hydroelectric dam threatens traditional livelihoods. Yet after decades where Briceño suffered from a bloody conflict, the village has more recently become central to the nation's hopes for peace. In Governing the Excluded, sociologist Alex Diamond shares a closer look at Briceño and offers unique insight not only into the contemporary Colombian state but to how people across the Global South are struggling to maintain rural livelihoods amid economic dispossession.

Governing the Excluded describes a landmark peace process between the Colombian government and the radical FARC guerrillas from the perspective of Colombian farmers, drawing links between economic transformation, drug economies, and armed conflict. Exclusion from global markets for traditional crops like coffee first pushed farmers to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine. This ushered in an era of violent conflict for control of the illicit economy, while farmers continued to be priced out of legal markets. In exchange for peace and state protection, farmers ultimately agreed to sacrifice profitable coca. But with its disappearance, they now find themselves dependent on the state: for machinery to maintain the roads they need to get legal harvests to market, municipal jobs that are the only decent work available, and for public resources to subsidize food crops with razor-thin profit margins. Ongoing economic struggles in the legal sector make the state's newfound authority tenuous, as some villagers replant coca, abandon the village for uncertain urban futures, or join a rearmed guerrilla group.

Informed by deep ethnographic research and firsthand stories from Briceño residents, Governing the Excluded shows that when it comes to the forces driving dispossession—be they international corporate megaprojects, global food prices, or national initiatives to replace coca cultivation—state authority goes only so far as its ability to sustain local livelihoods.

By: Alex Diamond
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 367g
ISBN: 9780226846200
ISBN 10: 0226846202
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 06 January 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alex Diamond is assistant professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University.

Reviews for Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory

“Diamond traces Colombia's imperfect transition from war to not-quite peace, offering the reader a richly textured look at how changing structures of control shape the lives and livelihoods of rural peasants precariously located at the rough edges of exclusionary markets and politics.” -- Kimberly Theidon, author of 'Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin' “Governing the Excluded tells an interesting and original empirical story: the establishment of state authority in the town of Briceño in the wake of the Colombian peace process. The story is enhanced by deep ethnographic research and clear, eminently readable prose.” -- Marco Z. Garrido, author of 'The Patchwork City: Class, Space, and Politics in Metro Manila'