LAUSR

This paper analyzes rural women's work in the 2012 agrarian census in Ayacucho, Peru to demonstrate the effects of gendered labor on political subjectivities and processes of statecraft. Census work is an example of the temporary, low-income jobs increasingly the mainstay of poor and landless women in semirural areas. Alongside short-term jobs for NGOs or municipalities, however, such work provided its employees—in this case, low-income, mestiza women—with channels for limited influence over local politics and development. At the same time, census work highlighted gendered attitudes toward the state and tensions over shifting patterns of gendered labor and political engagement. As both formal and illicit economies expand in Ayacucho, along with government interest in controlling the region, an analysis of the intersection of gendered labor trends and political attitudes provides a unique understanding of sovereignty and alterity that foregrounds local influence. Using the example of the census, I examine how women enacted governmental procedures through the limited, precarious work available to them, demonstrating both that the production of data used in policy is a negotiated process and that gendered relationships with the state reflect and are affected by local divisions of labor.