"A Man of the People" is one of four connected short stories in Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...

's Four Ways to Forgiveness

Four Ways to Forgiveness

Four Ways to Forgiveness is a collection of four short stories or novellas by Ursula K. Le Guin. All four stories are set in the future and deal with the planets Yeowe and Werel, both members of the Ekumen, a collective of planets used by Le Guin as part of the background for many novels and short...

.

The four tales all deal with events on the planets Yeowe and Werel

Werel (Voe Deo)

Werel is a fictional planet in the 'Ekumen' science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin. It is the fourth planet of a yellow-white star. It is dominated by the Voe Deo, who independently colonised Yeowe, the previously uninhabited third planet...

, but this story starts on Hain

Hain (planet)

Hain is a fictional planet that plays an important background role in the science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. It is described more closely in some later short stories. It is the oldest culture in both the League of Worlds and later the Ekumen and is about 140 Light Years...

. The history of the Hainish people goes back three million years, and they placed colonies on many planets, including Earth

Terra (Hainish cycle)

Terra or Earth plays a role in the Hainish Cycle of science fiction novels by Ursula K. Le Guin. Humans are supposed to be descendents of colonists from a planet called Hain...

 and Werel. From the older high-tech culture there was some sort of crash and a re-building on a wiser basis, linking with their former colonies as the Ekumen

Ekumen

The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. Most of them are not set on the planet Hain, but have it as a distant background...

.

Evidence of the former high-tech life is all around, along with proof of the current indifference to it:

Stse is an almost-island, separated from the mainland of the great south continent by marshes and tidal bogs, where millions of wading birds gather to mate and nest. Ruins of an enormous bridge are visible on the landward side, and another half-sunk fragment of ruin is the basis of the town's boat pier and breakwater. Vast works of other ages encumber all Hain, and are no more and no less venerable or interesting to the Hainish than the test of the landscape.

The present-day people of Hain have starships but prefer to live simple lives with no more technology than they have to have. Many of them live in a changeless tribal order, resembling that of Earth's Pueblo people

Pueblo people

The Pueblo people are a Native American people in the Southwestern United States. Their traditional economy is based on agriculture and trade. When first encountered by the Spanish in the 16th century, they were living in villages that the Spanish called pueblos, meaning "towns". Of the 21...

.