Buen vivir: Emergent discourse within or beyond sustainable development?

This paper sets out to review the content of Buen vivir (good living) as an emergent discourse, reflecting on its genesis and contributions to the sustainability debate, as well as on incipient attempts at its institutionalization. First, we briefly revisit criticisms to the development discourse and then engage in deeper exploration of the status of its direct descendant: sustainable development (SD). Next, we consider the Latin-American position in the discursive field of SD and the situation of Buen vivir vis-a-vis SD. Drawing on the traditional repository of the continents indigenous cultures, this discourse has been theorized in the academic sphere and translated into normative principles that have started to permeate the public, but also the political sphere, especially in Ecuador and Bolivia. In this article we refer to Buen vivir as the contemporary discursive reelaboration of the Quechua concept Sumak Kawsay and similar principles from other indigenous peoples. It includes both the idea of interdependence between society and nature and a conception of the universal as a plurality. Lastly, we outline some inbuilt tensions of the Buen vivir discourse, but also its dialogic potential with several variants of the heterogeneous discursive field around the idea of SD. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Información de Publicación

Autores:

Beling, Adrián

Institución: Universidad Alberto Hurtado
Facultad: Ciencias Sociales
Unidad: Sociología

Vanhulst, Julien

Institución: Universidad Católica del Maula
Facultad: Ciencias Sociales y Económicas
Unidad: Sociología

Revista:

Ecological Economics

Año:

2014

Mes:

Diciembre

Páginas:

54-63

Url de Publicación:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000640.