The uncertain relationship between social capital and inequality in the fields of corporate food production

© 2021 Bruce Thomas RoseIn advanced liberal democracies, the state seeks to create a distance between the decisions of formal political institutions and those whom they aim to govern. In doing so, the state devolves governance in ways that align with Foucault’s notion of governmentality; organising things such that people self-govern without necessarily being aware that their conduct is being conducted. The most significant characterisation of this phenomenon has been the dismantling of activities previously undertaken by the state, such as the provision of social support, and transferring responsibility for these activities to civil society. For regional communities that are physically remote from political institutions, one consequence of this reconfiguration is a sense of political abandonment. In these circumstances local elites can emerge whose primary objective is to garner from those whom they regard as ‘outsiders’, the resources they believe their community needs and is entitled to. This research contributes to scholarship within anthropology that challenges the way we think about elites. It also provides ethnographic evidence that challenges the stability of Foucault’s notion of governmentality. I explore how a powerful clique of locals, who are emotionally and economically invested in corporate food production in regional Victoria, mediate resources with other elites engaged in neoliberal philanthropy in order to address the kinds of socio-economic inequalities that appear to have divided their community during their region’s transitioning to this neoliberal form of production. Whilst these two groups initially collaborated, their conflicting narratives regarding disadvantage and the resistance they encountered from other elites who did not regard their involvement as essential, caused them to ‘lock horns’, eventually diminishing the impact of their shared endeavour. This ethnography exposes risks that can compromise efforts to address complex social issues such as rising socio-economic inequality by transferring responsibility for their governance to local elites whose interests may be conflicted and who are largely unaccountable