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Paper short abstract:

The interests of the state on the natural environment in rural areas has shaped the ways that the state is imagined. As the interests of the state are driven by serving capital and urban elites with the political power, people in rural communities are increasingly distrusting the state.

Paper long abstract:

Climate change, as well as increased urbanisation, have often led to water shortages in Malawian cities. This has necessitated the launch of mega water projects. These mostly abstract water from rural into urban areas where there are also intense conversation activities that the state promotes. This has reconfigured the ways through which the communities imagine and conceptualise the state. In 2021, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Malawi (Mulanje and Blantyre districts) exploring the ways that communities relate with mega water projects. This paper is informed by the data collected from the fieldwork. In this, I highlight that communities – particularly in rural Malawi – imagine and conceptualise the state from a position of resentment and distrust. Communities often regard the state as existing for elites in urban areas and, in the rural areas, it is to protect capital interests. The latter point I make having analysed the ways that communities relate with tea estates. In advancing the arguments, I also seek to comment on future and other re-imaginations of the state in Malawi. Specifically, I focus on the ways that climate change is shaping relationships that people have with the state. This is mostly driven by the projects of abstraction as well as state interests on conservation. In concluding, I look at the impacts that this distrust that local communities have on meaningful engagement between the state and the communities. I look at this distrust as having broader impacts than only within the environment.