Everyday experiences of post-politicising processes in rural freshwater management

Abstract

There has been a burgeoning of geography literature that draws on post-politics to make sense of trends in Western liberal democracies. This body of literature argues that consensus is constructed around capitalism, and spaces for dissensus are closed off. However, critiques have focused on the state-centric and totalising nature of some of this literature. This article adds nuance and depth to explorations of post-politicising processes. I do this through an empirical case study that demonstrates how dissensus is disavowed through the construction of community, and highlights gendered and classed experiences of this disavowal. In exploring a rural community in Aotearoa New Zealand engaged in catchment-based decision making, I draw on Nancian critical community scholarship to analyse how neoliberal and rural discourses defined belonging. Boundaries, and who could access the catchment committee, were shaped by expectations of economic consumption, spatial membership, gendered behavioural norms and class. The policing of these boundaries became increasingly antagonistic to the point of threats of violence. Accounts by those who experienced this policing demonstrate the embodied and largely banal nature of post-politicising processes. And yet, this case study illustrates how efforts to depoliticise are entangled with politicisation and raises questions about how change unfolds.