In this paper, I consider the analytical purchase of a focus on ‘failure’ for
the analysis of globalising processes in Petén, Guatemala. I locate my
interest in ‘failure’ at the point of intersection between theoretical
reflection and ethnographic experience, and propose to frame my
interrogation of the nexus between globalisation and failure specifically
in terms of governmentality. The emphasis on governmentality unsettles
simplistic assumptions concerning the meanings of ‘globalisation’ to
suggest the importance of a link between globalising processes and
specific ‘projects of governance’. A consideration of the relation between
globalising processes, governmentality and failure through the ‘local
prism’ of Petén focuses the analysis on situated understandings of
contemporary processes of social transformation, a point which is
illustrated with reference to declarations of failure of the large
conservation project Maya Biosphere Reserve. In turn, failure through
this global/local prism brings into focus the knowledge practices,
analytical operations, scalar assumptions and imaginative figurations
inherent in thinking through global/local ‘contexts’. The paper concludes
that 'failure' constitutes a concept-metaphor linked to a plurality of
local/global interpretative strategies through which people make sense of
globalising processes and their histories. This suggests a broader point
concerning the role of concept-metaphors for ethnography
