Abstract
The concept of sumak kawsay, buen vivir or “good life”—in Bolivia, suma qamaña, or vivir bien—has been widely diffused on an international level since the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly in 2007–2008 and the Bolivian one in 2006–2009. Good life has been understood as an alternative to capitalist modernizing development that is based on the indigenous ideal of harmony between individual, society, and nature. Nevertheless, in the usage of the indigenous movement, which initiated the diffusion of this concept, good life is a local and territorial conception of a lifestyle. While this notion of locality is largely ignored or invisibilized by the Ecuadorian government and by nonindigenous intellectuals, and to some degree even by national indigenous organizations, local indigenous organizations integrated good life into their discourse of territorial autonomy in a pluralist state. Good life allows for local decolonialization, a concrete and local fight against the structures of “the coloniality of power” framed within a discursive panorama that includes concepts of plurality and autonomy. This text analyzes sumak kawsay as a key concept of local decolonialization, emphasizing its relation to similar concepts and the differences in its usage by different actors.
Highlights
El concepto de sumak kawsay, o buen vivir —igual que su versión boliviana suma qamaña— ha experimentado desde la Constituyente ecuatoriana en 2007–2008 y la boliviana en 2006–2009 una amplia difusión a nivel internacional
Since the constituent assemblies in Ecuador (2007–2008) and Bolivia (2006–2009), the concept of buen vivir or sumak kawsay, good life, entered the global discourse on ecology and alternatives to development
This article wants to give a decolonial reading of the buzzword good life, stripping it of attempts to integrate it into Western discourses and accepting it as a political concept emerging out of one of the best-organized social movements worldwide
Summary
The concept of sumak kawsay, buen vivir or “good life”—in Bolivia, suma qamaña, or vivir bien— has been widely diffused on an international level since the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly in 2007–2008 and the Bolivian one in 2006–2009. The central argument here is that the decolonial character of this discourse in general and the concept of sumak kawsay in particular resides in its radically local nature—it is about a place-based everyday reality that is opposed to abstract and universalizing Western ideas of state, society, or public sphere This is precisely the definition of territorial autonomy that will be discussed later in this article. Decolonial thought refers here to a wide field of academic debate that can be resumed in a few points that most decolonial thinkers share: the focus on modernity and its constitution from colonialism, imperialism, and the oppression of the Other as global and Eurocentric, which leads to the constitution of a colonial difference and coloniality of power as articulation of racism, capitalism, and other modes of marginalization and discrimination to the benefit of white Europeans that rises out of it (Escobar 2004, 217–218) Those decolonial thinkers will be highlighted that engaged at some point with the concept of good life as proposed by the indigenous movement in Ecuador, namely, Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Arturo Escobar, and Catherine Walsh. This section serves as preparation for the fourth and final section and conclusion, where the relationship of decolonial thought, praxis, and locality is explored
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