Reluctant State Agents: Schoolteachers and Governing Authorities in Post‐Coup Honduras

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines how teachers in post‐coup Honduras reluctantly complied with legislation with which they disagreed. New laws passed after the June 2009 military coup decentralized and privatized government funding by requiring that teachers solicit money for school infrastructure projects from municipal governments and private companies instead of from the Ministry of Education. This article demonstrates how teachers drew on their situated knowledge of state procedures and reluctantly engaged in clientelist relations with coup‐supporting politicians, who most teachers despised given their own involvement in the anti‐coup resistance movement. Anthropologists and others often emphasize the “top‐down” nature of how neoliberalism gets imposed and how state policies get implemented. In the case of public education policies in post‐coup Honduras, however, the same individuals responsible for implementing neoliberal legislation also actively protested against neoliberalism and the patronage of rich politicians in general. The analysis of teachers’ simultaneous critique of and engagement with clientelism is illuminative of how state agents in other contexts may end up implementing legislation with which they disagree. While not denying the global scope of neoliberal policies, this article advances scholarly knowledge of how frontline state agents implement state policies.