Buen Vivir: An Alternative to Development?

Buen Vivir, or ‘good living’, emerged in Ecuador as a discourse in the late 1990s, as part of an indigenous movement which mobilised nationally against neo-liberalism and Western understandings of development (Vanhulst and Beling, 2014). As a concept, it encapsulates the broad theme of living in harmony with nature, the cosmos, and community. It is built from a number of different indigenous concepts, including the “Quechua concept ‘Sumak Kawsay’, the Aymara ‘Suma Qamana’, the

Guarani ‘Nandereko’, the Ashuar ‘Shiir Waras’ and the Mapuche ‘Kume Mongen’”

(Vanhulst and Beling, 2014: 56). These origins result in Buen Vivir constructing an alternative way of knowing about – and living in – the world, which contrasts with the Western-centric understandings that have been dominant since colonialism and the rise of development institutions. As Escobar (1995: 13) observes:

“Development has relied exclusively on one knowledge system, namely, the modern Western one. The dominance of this knowledge system has dictated the marginalisation and disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems.”

Buen Vivir represents a complete epistemological and ontological break with the Western neo-liberal capitalist system. Its significance is difficult to over-emphasise, as it represents not only an alternative to neo-liberalism, but also provides a means for channelling an indigenous knowledge system into the practices of a modern state. Furthermore, it gained ascendancy in a region in which state policies and discourses previously focused on the assimilation of indigenous people (Jackson and Warren, 2005), in which indigenous knowledge systems have been suppressed, leading to

marginalisation and discrimination of indigenous development actors (Andolina et al., 2009). The contradiction and tension within this political reality is unpacked and analysed throughout this thesis. Table 1, below, distils the main difference between

39 Table 1. Comparison between Western notions of development and Buen Vivir

Western Development Buen Vivir

Nature is considered as a resource

external to humans

(Anthropocentric).

Based on harmonious human-nature relationships, with the rights of nature being recognised (Biocentric).

Development is considered a linear process with a beginning, a desired destination, and constant progress.

There is no beginning or end in time, and so no preliminary state of under- development.

Based on living better through capitalism, based on consumerism, competition, opulence and profiteering.

Based on ‘living well’, involving solidarity, equality, harmony, complementarity and reciprocity.

Encourages Western-style liberal democratic political systems, based on individual representation, aggregated and expressed in votes and majorities.

Based on radical democratisation and direct participation in public and collective affairs.

Work is based on capital accumulation.

Work is happiness linked to the soil and community, and is creative, recreational, and satisfactory from infancy to old age. Based on rationality and materiality. There is a search for harmony between the

material world and the spiritual world, from which no one is excluded. This also implies acceptance of the importance of emotions and their relational nature, affectivity and ‘all that is beyond-the- rational’.

(Based on Villalba-Eguiluz and Etxano, 2017; Calisto and Langmore, 2014)

Table 1 indicates how Buen Vivir rejects the basic assumptions that have dominated development discourse to date, such as the search for continuous growth, living better, and the separation of humans from nature (Kothari et al., 2014). It therefore represents a complete break from modernisation theory, and the view that ‘”Europe shows the world its common future” (Crush, 1995: 8). Buen Vivir answers the call from post-development scholars for alternatives to development, rather than simply an alternative development (Escobar, 1992).

The basic principles underpinning Buen Vivir, outlined in Table 1, are important, as there is currently no formal definition of this concept. Fatheuer (2011) proposes that this is inevitable, as its complexity and depth make the formulation of a clear definition elusive. This is both a strength, in allowing Buen Vivir to be continually under construction and adaptable to different social contexts (Villalba, 2013), but also

conversely a weakness. The lack of definition provides space for Buen Vivir’s co- optation and ultimately the curtailment of its radical transformational potential, with the risk that it can become nothing more than a “empty signifier” (Teijlingen and

Hogenboom 2016: 409).

Two different strands of research on Buen Vivir have emerged, relating to its conceptual positioning. The first interprets it as a purely indigenous concept, based on ancestral philosophies and cosmologies of life and living, in which there is no notion of development (Walsh, 2010). Thompson (2011: 450) describes pre-colonial indigenous societies as being based on “relationships of reciprocity”, “complementary”, “respect for pluarality”, “coexistence and equality”, which should be learnt from in contrast with “racist Western ideas” of development. This indigenous conceptualisation proposes recreating the harmonious living conditions of the past and recreating an ancestral identity outside of modernity. Hidalgo-Capitán

et al., (2017) note that this quasi-fundamentalist position is a radical reaction to the existing neo-colonial political and knowledge systems, which prioritise the non- indigenous elite in Ecuador. There is limited scholarly work in English which relates to this purely indigenous Buen Vivir, though Villalba-Eguiluz and Extano (2017) do situate the work of Choquehuanca (2010) and Huanacuni (2010) as two such examples. This conceptualisation is not drawn from within this thesis, as it positions

Buen Vivir as part of a romanticised imagined geography, frozen in space and time, which has little relevance beyond – or likely even within – present-day indigenous communities. This interpretation is an important influence on political discourse, however, being frequently utilised to characterise any critic of government policy as the “infantile left” (Rosales, 2013: 1451), desiring a utopian past which has no relevance for today’s society.

The second interpretation of Buen Vivir recognises its roots in Andean Cosmovisions, but positions it as evolving through the incorporation of knowledge by both indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, practitioners, and activists (Fatheuer, 2011; Giovannini, 2015). Critical discourses of Western development, as provided by deep ecology, biocentrism, and feminism, therefore complement rather than dilute Buen Vivir in this interpretation (Gudynas, 2011). Acosta (2013) sees this fusing of ancestral knowledge with universal thought as a vital process in the decolonisation

41 of society. Gudynas (2011), further, highlights how Western critical thought advances Buen Vivir in a progressive way, an example being the use of feminist critiques to challenge gender roles and social hierarchy embedded within indigenous traditions. It is this interpretation of Buen Vivir as a fluid concept, embracing critical thought from post-development positions, which underpins this thesis. This understanding is line with the description provided by Calisto-Fraint and Langmore (2014: 65) who argue:

“Buen Vivir is an inherently pluralistic concept. While its roots emanate from Andean cosmovision, it has evolved beyond native cosmology by incorporating alternative ideologies from the Western world. Mixing with ecological, poststructuralist, socialist and radical democratic voices, Buen Vivir is built on a rich diversity of ontologies and teleologies united in the creation of an alternative to hegemonic visions of development.”

The radical nature of this conceptualisation therefore breaks with neo-liberal development models, in order to embrace reciprocity and harmonious living. This interpretation attracted considerable acclaim within scholarly work, following its inclusion in the Ecuadorian Constitution in 2008 (Kothari et al., 2014; Calisto-Fraint and Langmore, 2014).

The initial excitement regarding the inclusion of Buen Vivir in the Ecuadorian constitution in the academic community has now given way to a somewhat more sober analysis. The initial hope was that, by helping to create “possibly the world’s most progressive Constitution” (Kothari et al, 2014: 372), a radical new post- neoliberal, post-capitalist era would be born. For example, Fatheuer (2011) quotes Beau Breslin – the South African writer – in stating that “Constitutions matter”, drawing the distinction between the EU, with its focus on growth and stability, with the focus of Ecuador’s constitution on satisfying the basic needs of life. There have been concerns, however, that there a significant gap between the “rhetoric and delivery” of Buen Vivir (Radcliffe, 2012: 245). Merino (2016), for example, notes a distinction between Buen Vivir in the political sphere, which he associates with Neo- Marxism, and the intellectual sphere, which is more in line with post-development

and deep ecology. This neo-Marxist approach prioritises the role of the state, excluding even those indigenous movements that first conceptualised Buen Vivir

(Hidalgo-Capitán, 2017). A body of scholarly work now exists critiquing the enactment of Buen Vivir in terms of its actual political implementation. This focuses almost exclusively on Ecuador’s continued reliance on extractive industries (Rosales, 2013; Villalba-Eguiluz, and Extano, 2017; Merino, 2016; Teijlingen and Hogenboom, 2016). The compatibility of Ecuador’s other productive sectors in relation to Buen Vivir have not been critically analysed, however; rather, the positive association between activities such as ecotourism and Buen Vivir (Calisto-Fraint and Langmore, 2014) remain to be problematised. There is a clear shift within the literature from the optimism surrounding Buen Vivir to a predominantly critical discourse. Arguments put forward by Radcliffe (2012) are part of this trend, although she does provide optimism beyond the national level by highlighting ancestral knowledge being incorporated in a provinces educational curriculum, women’s needs being incorporated into indigenous judicial systems, and indigenous knowledges being incorporated into intercultural education at the university level. Radcliffe’s contribution points to the importance of taking a scalar approach to work investigating Buen Vivir, in order to unearth its emerging forms, and this thesis aims to follow this lead.

This section has situated Buen Vivir as offering a radical alternative to neo-liberal capitalist developmental model. Similarly, volunteer tourism is positioned as rejecting Western modernity and the traditional offerings of the tourism industry (Brown, 2005). The extent to which volunteer tourism simply offers a reprieve from Western modernity (Vrsati, 2013), however, or can in fact go further and instigate a new form of citizenship, challenging the capitalist economic system, is analysed in the next section.