This paper looks at reconfigurations of statehood and development in southern rural Jordan, focusing on two sub-districts that have recently been designated as poverty pockets and thus as special areas of intervention. It maps the agencies that engage in different improvement schemes, including government departments, the Jordanian military, royal NGOs, donors, the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority, and local cooperatives. All of these seek to activate, empower or provide for the local population in different ways. The paper explores the fragmented character of the new institutional ensemble that has emerged, which overlays rather than replaces previous forms of governing the social. Looking at the ambivalent practices of a number of the agencies listed above, it argues that two contradictory tendencies are at work. On the one hand there is a continuous attempt to create an image of the state as a coherent, encompassing entity, and to frame local concerns as individual grievances that do not undermine the broader validity of the respective interventions. On the other, numerous frictions arise within and between the different agencies involved, providing entry points for policy-shapers from the area to negotiate the terms and actual forms of intervention in the name of social welfare and development.