Governing the Excluded

Alex Diamond's Governing the Excluded draws on deep ethnographic fieldwork in Briceño to trace how Colombia's peace process and coca-substitution programs reshaped rural livelihoods and local authority.

The book links the collapse of legal agricultural markets, the rise and substitution of coca cultivation, and the arrival of state-backed megaprojects (like a hydroelectric dam) to show how villagers became dependent on the state for roads, jobs, and subsidies.

Diamond argues that state authority in formerly contested territories is precarious when it cannot sustain livelihoods, producing outcomes like replanting coca, migration, or joining rearmed guerrillas.

The study centers on detailed life histories of several families and uses photography and a documentary film project to complement the ethnography.

Ultimately, the book contends that economic transformation and dispossession determine the limits of post-conflict state-making in rural Colombia.