walsh development as buen vivir

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Upfront

Development as Buen Vivir

: Institutionalarrangements and (de)colonial entanglements

CATHERINE WALSH ABSTRACT Catherine Walsh looks at how we can understand theemergence in the Andes Region and Ecuador of buen vivir, living wellor collective well being, as the guiding principle for a new regimenof development. She asks if this really is a shift to new social and

sustainable forms of development and what the experiment in the

Andes suggests for todays rethinking of development institutions.

KEYWORDS human development; freedom; colonial power;modernity; capitalism; paradogma

Introduction

In a world long organized around the western capitalist principle of living better and itscorrelate: having moredevelopment is a term and concept with a historically weightedsignificance. For many, it is, in essence, theparadogmatic (not just paradigmatic) frameagainst which the Global South in general and Latin America in particular have bothmeasured themselves and been measured. It is the developed West against and, at thesame time, the model for the rest.

Such a framework has served not only to envelop humanityand the humanconditionin the lineal ideas of civilization and progress, but also to entangle modernity furtherwith its underside: coloniality. That is, with a matrix of global power that has hier-archically classified populations, their knowledge, and cosmologic life systems accord-ing to a Eurocentric standard. This matrix of power has legitimized relations ofdomination, superiority/inferiority, and established a historical structural dependencerelated to capital and the world market (Quijano, 2000). In this sense,development hasalways signalled more than just material progress and economic growth; it has markeda western model of judgement and control over life itself.

The central question I would like to pose is whether and to what extent this modelandits institutional arrangements are in a process of transformation. Does the shift towardsnew social and sustainable forms of development break with and shrug off the past?How can we understand the emergence in the Andes Region and Ecuador in particularofbuen vivir, living well or collective well being, as the guiding principle for a newregimen of development? In the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, this new regimen isdefined as the organized, sustainable, and dynamic ensemble of economic, political,socio-cultural, and environmental systems that guarantee the realization ofbuen vivir.

Development, 2010, 53(1), (1521)r 2010 Society for International Development 1011-6370/10www.sidint.org/development/

Development(2010) 53(1), 1521. doi:10.1057/dev.2009.93


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What does such regimen suggest and afford fordevelopments (de)envelopment? These are theguiding questions for what follows.

Integral and sustainable humandevelopment

The last decade in Latin America has seen a shiftin the notion of development from economicprogress towards a more humanistic view focusedon the individual and the quality of life. This newframework, most often referred to as integral andsustainable human development, finds groundin the perspectives of Manfred Max-Neef andAmartya Sen. It focuses on the interconnec-tedness of economics with the political, socio-cultural, and environmental spheres, as well as

in the necessities, capacities, and potentialitiesof human beings. Human development ^ on boththe individual and social scale ^ is seen as neces-sarily oriented towards satisfying these necessi-ties, improving these capacities, and enhancingthese potentialities in the present. Human devel-opment permits the increase in capacities andcontinuance or sustainability in the future. Incontrast to previous lineal models, the focus hereis systemic, subject rather than object based.It is concerned with recuperating the moleculardimension of the social and deepening democracyand citizenship from below. Equity, democracy,participation, protection of bio-diversity and nat-ural resources, and respect for ethnic-culturaldiversity serve as key elements of the framework.

At first glance, such shift in focus, frame, andperspective appears innovative and positive. Itoffers perhaps the possibility to challenge thedevelopment paradogmas of the past and theircolonial, imperial, and dependence-based designsand aspirations. However, a closer look at thecriteria and suppositions of this framework, and

its ambitions and use on the national and transna-tional scale, need further scrutiny.1

Let us take, for example, the notion of thequality of life. Quality of life is understood in thesense of the possibility of satisfying basic needs.It refers to the well being of the individual accord-ing to ontological (being, having, doing) andaxiological categories (subsistence, protection,

affect, understanding, participation, creation, andleisure). Reaching this well being is the responsi-bility of the individual. The possibility of develop-ment therefore, does not rest on societyper senoris it reliant on or related to the transformationof social institutions and structures; it depends on

individuals. Social development depends on themanner in which people ^ particularly the poor ^assume their life. When individuals take controlof their lives, acting on their life conditions, thensocial development and progress occur.

These two principles ^ the individual and thequality of life ^ are sustained by four key criteria:liberty, autonomy, coexistence, and social inclu-sion. The first two encourage individual agency,willpower, and determination; the capacity of theindividual to exercise control over her or his own

life as central to both human development andthe expansion of human liberties. As Sverdlick(2002) notes, these human liberties, understoodas politics, the existence of opportunities for all toparticipate in the production, distributions, andconsumption of goods, access to quality educationand healthcare, among others, are central to theliberty or freedom of the market. They are thegoals of development as well as the means thatmake development possible.

The strategic value of liberty and autonomy canbe most clearly observed in Latin America in thepresent re-forming of education, from primaryschool to the university. Here education is beingtransformed into an individual and personalproject, a consumer good in which competition ^between students and among teachers ^ is themotor in the search for quality and excellence.Objective and quantifiable indicators of qualityand control, including exams, standards, andaccreditation benchmarks, are converting educa-tional institutions into enterprises where publicspace and social responsibility operate under

a privatized logic. Social gaps, social injustices,and educational failure are seen as personaland family problems that can be individuallyovercome. In a world that once valued solidarity,fraternity, reciprocity, and collective community-based relations, individual stamina and initiativeare quickly becoming the guiding principle andforce.

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Social inclusion and coexistence are comple-mentary criteria that permit the linking ofindividual autonomy and liberty to the social.These criteria, present in national educationalpolicies and reforms as well as in the humanisticperspectives, proposals, and policies of inter-

transnational organisms such as UNESCO, theInternational Development Bank ^ (IDP) and theUnited Nations Development Programme (UNDP),purport to anchor individual welfare and assureconformity within a social system that increas-ingly works to control cultural diversityand makeit functional to the system. For UNDP, for example,it is the sensation of social cohesion based in cul-ture and in the values and beliefs shared thatmolds individual human development. If the peo-ple live together, cooperate in a way that enables

them to reciprocally prosper, they amplify theirindividual options (Guinazu, 2008, digital copy).Similarly for the IDP,integral inclusionary devel-opment could be the foundation of a new socialcontract for a more equitable and cohesionarysociety.3

Of course, in a region characterized by socialmovement resistance, insurgence, and demands,social inclusion and coexistence are considereduseful tools in preventing ethnic balkanizationand controlling and managing ethnic opposition,the latter considered an increasing threat to(trans)national security. The application of thesetools can be clearly witnessed in the emergentpolicies and programmes of public social institu-tions that recognize and include indigenous andafro-descendents peoples, their cultural practices,and even their knowledges without changing thedominant nature or structure of these institu-tions, what can be understood as functional inter-culturality.2

But they can also be observed in the projectsand initiatives of multilateral and transnational

institutions, which endeavour to maintain diver-sity in check in order not to threaten political andeconomic interests and stability. This was evidentin the UNDP initiatives in 2007^2008 in Bolivia.Through published texts, a documentary film,and a television series that involved Left white-mestizo academics and interviews with indigen-ous intellectuals and leaders, the UNDP put forth

the urgency of a new sentido comun (commonsentiment) grounded in social inclusion andcohesion. It was presented as a common senti-ment as a nation that could surpass indigenousnationalisms and the apparent aims of the Consti-tuent Assembly with the goal of keeping Bolivia

under the dominion of the world market (Walsh,2009).

As such, the new paradigm ^ paradogma? ^ ofhuman development seems to envelop onlyfurther the human condition. On the one hand,it suggests the continued operation in LatinAmerica of the multicultural logic of neo-liberalcapitalism and its ability to condition modes ofthought and conform to a common sense thatlegitimates the machines of power, making itincreasingly difficult to search for alternatives

(Torres, cited in Sverdlick, 2002). In this sense anddespite its holistic and integral language, it isbound to the continuance of western modern-colonial imposition. The very idea of developmentitself is a concept and word that does not existin the cosmovisions, conceptual categories, andlanguages of indigenous communities.

But while human development continues toreflect and reproduce a multicultural logic, thislogic is not quite the same as that of the early1990s. Then it was the (neo)liberal multicultural-ism of the United States with its guarantee of thefreedom to difference, its emphasis on tolerance,and its marketing of diversity that dominated thescene. Today, neo-liberalization and globalizationare experiencing a process of European humani-zation in which the European model of functionalinterculturalism and development is on the wayto replace the multicultural hegemony of USneo-liberal development policy. The manifestationof this shift is clearly evidenced in the recentlyformed EUROsociAL, an alliance among theEuropean Union, IDP, UNDP, and the Economic

Commission of Latin America (CEPAL), with thesupport of the World Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund. EUROsociAL describes itself as:

y A plan of development for the European Unionthat seeks to make this region the most competitiveand dynamic economy in theWorld, capable of gener-ating a growing sustainable economy, respectfulof the environment, with more employment and

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greater social cohesion.y [It is] the [European] idealof what should be a dignified society y . A possiblehorizon for the politics of development in LatinAmerica y . The incorporation of social cohesionin the agenda of Latin America is a product of thedialogue with Europe, using the academy, interna-tional organisms, and national governments to adapt

the concept to the Latin American reality.

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In this description the envelopment of human de-velopment and its entanglement is clear. Indeedsome warn that the real agenda of such policies isa re-colonization of lands-territories and theirnatural resources by means of new programmesof education, research, and development (Delgado,2006). Yet there is another side to the problemwhich is the positing of integral sustainable hu-man development as a regional, national, andeven revolutionary alternative. This is the pro-blem to which I now turn.

Human social development as(and versus) buen vivir

Buenvivir, roughly translated as living wellor col-lective well being, is the orienting concept of thenew Ecuadorian Constitution passed in popularreferendum in September 2008.5 As the Preamblestates: We decided to construct a new form of citi-zen coexistence, in diversity and harmony withnature, to reach el buen vivir, elsumak kawsay.

In its most general sense, buen vivirdenotes,organizes, and constructs a system of knowledgeand living based on the communion of humansand nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmo-nious totality of existence. That is, on the neces-sary interrelation of beings, knowledges, logics,and rationalities of thought, action, existence,and living. This notion is part and parcel of thecosmovision, cosmology, or philosophy of theindigenous peoples of Abya Yala but also, and in

a somewhat different way, of the descendents ofthe African Diaspora.

In a country that has long exalted its mestizocharacter, favoured whitening and whiteness,and looked to the North for its model of develop-ment, the incorporation ofbuen viviras the guid-ing principle of the Constitution is historicallysignificant. Its new conceptualization as public

policy is a result largely of the social, political,and epistemic agency of the indigenous move-ment over the last two decades. It responds to theurgencyof a radicallydifferent social contract thatpresents alternatives to capitalism and thecultureof deathof its neo-liberal and development project.

But more than a constitutional declaration, buenviviraffords, as AlbertoAcosta (2008) makes clear,an opportunity to collectively construct a newmodel of development. It is based according toEduardo Gudynas (2009) in the generation ofnew equilibriums including quality of life, demo-cratization of the State, and attention to biocentricconcerns.

The grounds for this new model are evidencedin the triangular relationship that the Constitu-tion constructs among the rights of nature, buen

vivir, and what is referred to as the regimen ofdevelopment. As the Political Charter states:Nature or Pacha Mama, where life is reproducedand realized, has the right to the integral respectof its existence and the maintenance and regen-eration of its life cycles, structure, functions, andevolutionary processes (Art.71). It also has theright to reparation or restoration (Art.72).

Buen vivir, in addition to being the transversalaxis, has its ownregimen with more than 75 arti-cles that include water and food, nature, educa-tion, health, labour and social security, housing,culture, social communication, science, technol-ogy, ancestral knowledge, biodiversity, ecologicalsystems, alternative energy, and individual andcollective rights of historically unprotectedgroups, among other areas. What particularlystands out here is the social, economic, and epi-stemic significance given to buen vivir and theintegral relation it constructs among beings,knowledge, and nature. Nature is broadly under-stood as the constitutive conditions and practi-ces ^ sociocultural, territorial, spiritual, ancestral,

ethical, epistemic, and aesthetic ^ of life itself.The third and final point of the triangle is

the Regimen of Development, described in theConstitution as:

The organized, sustainable and dynamic ensemble ofeconomic, political, socio-cultural, and environmen-tal systems that guarantee the realization ofbuen vi-vir, or sumak kawsay. [y] Buen vivirrequires that


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persons, [indigenous] nationalities and peoples, ef-fectively enjoy their rights and exercise responsibil-ities in the frame of interculturality, respect fordiversities, and harmonic co-existence with nature.(Art.275)

Seven objectives organize this Regimen: improve-

ment in the quality of life; a just, democratic, pro-ductive and solidarity-based economic systemwith equal distribution of development benefitsand dignified and stable work; the promotionof participation and social control including equi-table representation of diverse identities in allareas of public power; the recuperation and con-servation of nature and the maintenance of a saneand sustainable environment guaranteeing equalaccess; the guarantee of national sovereignty andLatin American integration; the promotion of an

equitable, balanced, and articulated territorialordering; and the protection and promotion of cul-tural diversity, social memory, and cultural patri-mony.

The vision put forth in this Charter with regardto development is that of a new society based inequality, fraternity, solidarity, complementarity,equal access, participation, social control andresponsibility. Its projection is towards a newsocial, political, economic, and nature-basedmode of development that takes distance fromcapitalism and requires a major re-orienting from

within.The design for the realization and application of

this project is detailed in the new National Planof Development referred to also as the NationalPlan forel BuenVivir2009^2013 developed by theNational Secretariat of Planning and Develop-ment (SENPLADES) and recently approved inNovember 2009 by President Rafael Correa.According to the director of SENPLADES, thisPlan is the first step in constructing a NationalDescentralized System of Participatory Planning

that has as its goal the decentralization anddeconcentration of power and the constructionof the Plurinational and Intercultural State.6 HereBuenViviris described as:

A wager for change from the demands for equalityand social justice; from the recognition, validation,and dialogue of peoples and their cultures, knowl-edges, and modes of life. Buen vivirseeks to achieve

the satisfaction of necessities, the attainment of thequality of life and a dignified death, to love andbe loved, the healthy flourishing of all, in peace andharmony with nature and the indefinite prolonga-tion of human cultures. [y] It recognizes the needfor free time for contemplation and emancipation,and that real liberties, opportunities, capacities, and

potentialities of individuals grow and flourish in themanner that they permit a simultaneous achieve-ment of that which society, territories, diverse collec-tive identities and each one ^seen as both anindividual and UNIVERSAL HUMAN BEING ^ valueas the objective of a desirable life. It obliges us toreconstruct the public in order to recognize, under-stand, and value one another ^ as diverse but equals ^with the goal of making possible reciprocity andmutual recognition, and with this, the self-realiza-tion and construction of a social and shared future.7

In the Plan and its 12 strategies of change and 12

national specific objectives, buen vivir anddevelopment are understood as interchangeable.Development is the realization ofbuen vivir, andthe construction and realization ofbuen vivir iswhat enables this new vision of human and socialdevelopment. It is precisely this signification thatraises a number of critical questions and concern.For reasons of space, I will take into account onlytwo here.

The first question and concern has to do withthe very origins ofbuen vivir. Its inspiration, asmentioned, finds ground in ancestral philosophiesand cosmologies of life and living where develop-mentas a term and concept is nonexistent (ViteriGualinga, 2004). By makingbuen vivircentral inthe reconstituting of the Ecuadorian State andnation, both the Constitution and Plan provokean interculturalizing unprecedented in thecountry as well as the Latin-American region. Itrequires the general populace to think and actwith ancestral principles, knowledges, andcommunities, assuming these principles andknowledges are valid for all.Yet this inspiration, it

seems, is not the only one in operation. A closeranalysis of the new Plan and its predecessor(2007^2009) makes evident that living well also^ and possibly to an even greater scale ^ takesmeaning from the alternative visions of develop-ment emerging in theWestern world. More specifi-cally they come from the notions of integralsustainable human development we discussed

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above. In this adaptation and hybridization of theconcept and term, the conceptual rupture and in-tercultural potential appears to lose at least someof its radical force. The crucial question is whetherbuen vivir is becoming another discursive tooland co-opted term, functional to the State and its

structures and with little significance for real in-tercultural, interepistemic, and plurinationaltransformation. Certainly such question and con-cern are warranted when we take into accountgovernment actions in the last months, includingthe approval of a mining law and the proposal ofa water law that clearly contradict the tenets ofbuen vivir.

The second question and concern has to dowith the meaning and orientationof development.In both the previous Plan and this most recent

one, development is conceived in the context ofthe State; that is to say, development is the strategyby which state reform will occur, permittingthe State to recuperate its capacities of manage-ment, planning, regulation, and redistribution(SENPLADES, 2009). In this sense buen vivirasdevelopmentisthe State. And it is the State thatsignifies in technocratic, economistic, and huma-nistic terms what is development and buen vivir.Two of the strategies for change make particularlyclear the technocratic and economistic orienta-tion: Transform the model of specialization ofthe economy through the selective substitution ofimportations for el buen vivir and inversion forel buen vivir, through the connecting of savingsand inversion in a sustainable macroeconomy.

In the humanistic sense, the Plan takes muchof its language and focus from the model of Inte-gral Sustainable Human Development. Liberty,autonomy, inclusion, and social cohesion are keyelements. Bettering the capacities and potential-ities of the citizenry ^ understood as individualsand universal beings ^, improving their quality

of life, strengthening democracy and participa-tion, promoting the conservation and sustainabil-ity of bio-diversity and natural resources, and theaffirmation and respect for diversity appear ascriteria thought and signified from a westernmodernist framework. The possibility of thinkingwith other philosophies, cosmovisions, andcollective relational modes of life not centred in

the individual and in capacities and potential-ities is noticeably absent.8 Missing as well is anunderstanding and positioning of the problemthat goes beyond individual responsibility and astrong State, a problem that rests in the legacies,reproductions, and reconstructions of coloniality

and of the modern-colonial-world system withparticular manifestations in Latin America, theAndes, and Ecuador.

As such, we might critically ask: To what extentdoes this new binary buen vivir-developmentenable a de-envelopment of the developmentismspresent and past? And, to what measure doesthe new paradigm (paradogma?) in Ecuador sug-gest a disentanglement of the colonial matrix ofpower? Or does all this rather suggest a new morecomplicated envelopment and entanglement?

In closing

What I have endeavoured to show here is thatthe new institutional arrangements of humancentred development in the America of the South,and particularly in Ecuador, are not withoutproblems, inconsistencies, and contradictions.While the rest of the world may consider this casehopefully, as the dismantling of neo-liberal poli-cies and the construction of endogenous develop-ment under a radically different life philosophy,the policies and practice emerging in the day-to-day indicate that the so-called citizen revolu-tion ^ if we can really call it that ^ has still someway to go.

But what I want to bring to the fore are evendeeper concerns with regards to the new para-digm ^ or paradogma ^ of integral sustainable hu-man development. The universalizing of thismodel, enabling it to travel without question ^ orvisa ^ to the Souths of the world, recalls the geo-

politics of development in the past. Such recollec-tion, however, is easily shrouded by this newhumanistic face and agenda.

It seems that the European push to humanizecapitalism and its neo-liberal project is havingeffect. In this new scenario, we must be evermorevigilant of the institutional arrangements andthe colonial entanglements.


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Notes

1 My interestas such is not with a critique of theauthors associated with thisnew paradigm or their work, but ratherwith the paradigms interpretation and application.

2 Functional interculturality can be understood as part of an institutional strategy that seeks to promote dialogue,tolerance, coexistence, and inclusion without necessarily addressing the causes of inequality; it makes diversityfunctional to the system (Tubino, 2005). This contrasts with what I have referred to as critical interculturality,which initiates with a profound questioning of this system and seeks its major transformation in social, political,

epistemic, and existential terms. That is, a new ordering of structures, institutions, and relations (Walsh, 2002,2009).

3 http//:www.iadb.org/news/detail.cfm?language=Spanish$id=2214.4 http//:www.programaeurosocial.eu.5 It is also a central component of the Bolivian Constitution, passed in popular referendum in January 2009.6 See http//:www.senplades.gov.ec/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=596.7 See http//:www.senplades.gov.ec/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=596.8 See Escobar (2009) for a similar critique.

References

Acosta, Alberto (2008) El BuenVivir, una oportunidad por construir,Ecuador debate75:33^48.Delgado, Freddy (2006) Presentacion, in Freddy Delgado and Juan Carlos Mariscal (eds.)Educacion intra e intercultur-

al. Alternativas a la reforma educativa neocolonizadora, pp 9^16, La Paz: Plural.Escobar, Arturo (2009) Una minga para el desarrollo,America Latina en movimiento, No.445, pp 26^30, June Quito:

ALAI.Gudynas, Eduardo (2009) Elmandatoecologico. Drecehos de la naturalezay pol|ticas ambientales en la nueva Constitucion,

Quito: AbyaYala.Guinazu, Maria Cecilia (2008) Ciudadan|a y desarrollo humano en America Latina, inRevista Latinoamericana de

Desarrollo Humano,No. 46, UNDP, July. http://www.revistadesarrollohumano.org.Quijano, An|bal (2000) Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America, Nepantla.Views from South1(3):

533^580.SENPLADES (2009)Recuperacion del Estado nacional para alcanzar el buen vivir. Memoria Bienal 2007^2009, Quito:

SENPLADES.Sverdlick, Ingrid (2002) Resena de Educacion en tiempos de neoliberalismode Jurjo Torres (Madrid, Morata, 2001),

Education Reviewdigital copy, http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/revs18.htm.

Tubino, Fidel (2005) La interculturalidad cr|tica como proyecto etico-pol|tico, Encuentro continental de educadoresagustinos, Lima, pp 24^28, http://oala.vil lanova.edu/congresos/educacion/lima-ponen-02.html.Viteri Gualinga, Carlos (2004) Vision ind|gena del desarrollo en la Amazon|a, http://colombia.indymedia.org/

mail.php?id14295.Walsh, Catherine (2002) (De)Construir la interculturalidad. Consideraciones cr|ticas desde la pol|tica, la coloniali-

dad y los movimientos ind|genas y negros en el Ecuador, in Norma Fuller (ed.)Interculturalidad y Pol|tica, Lima:Red de Apoyo de las Ciencias Sociales.

Walsh, Catherine (2009)Interculturalidad, Estado, Sociedad. Luchas (de)coloniales de nuestra epoca, Quito: UniversidadAndina Simon Bol|var/AbyaYala.

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