Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies

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Buen Vivir: Praise, instrumentalization, and

reproductive pathways of good living in Ecuador

Rafael Domnguez, Sara Caria & Mauricio Len

To cite this article: Rafael Domnguez, Sara Caria & Mauricio Len (2017) Buen Vivir: Praise,
instrumentalization, and reproductive pathways of good living in Ecuador, Latin American and
Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 12:2, 133-154, DOI: 10.1080/17442222.2017.1325099

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2017.1325099

Published online: 26 Jun 2017.

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LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES, 2017
VOL. 12, NO. 2, 133154
https://doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2017.1325099

Buen Vivir: Praise, instrumentalization, and reproductive

pathways of good living in Ecuador
Rafael Domngueza, Sara Cariab and Mauricio Lenc
a
Department of Economics, University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain; bDepartment of International
Relations, Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, Quito, Ecuador; cFacultad de Ciencias Econmicas,
Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In this article, we trace the avatars of the ocial concept of Buen Buen Vivir; alternative
Vivir (Good Living), and its understanding and translation as development; Citizens
Sumak Kausay in the new Constitution of Ecuador, where it was Revolution; invented
tradition; empty signier;
converted from a subaltern concept that emerged in the 1990s to
Ecuador
the countrys trademark. Our main hypothesis is that although
Buen Vivir may be described as a social phenomenon in some
specic social contexts (such as among Amazonian Sarayaku indi-
genous communities), it mostly represents an invented tradition.
As a subordinate hypothesis, we argue that Buen Vivir, which
originally appeared at the margins of the State and political
power, later became an empty signier, allowing for its instrumen-
talization and co-optation by the Citizens Revolution and gener-
ating an opening for future prospects in the way of
operationalization and internationalization that converged with
eorts to promote alternative measures and notions of develop-
ment to the GDP.

Introduction
In this article, we trace the avatars of the ocial term Buen Vivir (Good Living), and its
understanding and translation as Sumak Kausay in the new Constitution of Ecuador,
where it was converted from a subaltern concept that emerged in 1990s to the countrys
trademark under the presidency of Rafel Correa and the government-sponsored Citizens
Revolution. In June 2013, the Secretara Nacional del Buen Vivir (National Secretariat for
Good Living)1 was created specically to manage its promotion. Our main hypothesis is
that, although Buen Vivir may be described as a social phenomenon in some specic
social contexts (such as the Amazonian Sarayaku indigenous communities) (Cubillo-
Guevara and Hidalgo-Capitn 2015, 3), it mostly represents an invented tradition
(Hobsbawm 1983). Following Hobsbawm (1983), an Invented tradition is taken to
mean a set of practices . . . which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior
by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past that needs not to be
precisely in terms of time or content (12). Moreover, the use of ancient materials to

CONTACT Rafael Domnguez domingur@unican.es University of Cantabria, Department of Economics, Avda. de

los Castros s/n, Santander 39005, Spain
2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
134 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

construct invented traditions . . . is accumulated in the past of any society, and an

elaborate language of symbolic practice and communication is always available (9),
thereafter all invented traditions . . . use history as a legitimator of action and cement of
group cohesion (12).
As a subordinate hypothesis, we argue that Buen Vivir, which originally appeared at the
margins of the State and political power (Radclie 2012, 245) as a simbolic insurgency
(Ortiz-T 2005, 33), later became an empty signier (Lacau 2005; Lacau 2006), allowing for
its instrumentalization and co-optation by the Citizens Revolution.2 Following Jacques
Lacans interpretation of Freud, which states that fullness is unachievable, we suggest that
Buen Vivir has been replaced by partial objects that embody its retrospective illusion or
impossible totality (Lacau 2006, 651). These partial objects are the empty signiers. An
empty signier is a pure name that does not belong to the conceptual order or, more
precisely, a gural term that is catachrestical [rhetorical] because it names and, thus, gives
discursive presence to an essential void within the signifying structure (Lacau 2006, 653).
Empty signiers act as objects of political identication through a constitutive exclusion,
which totalizes a system of dierences (Lacau 2006, 652, 656). Specically, the social
production of empty signiers is a hegemonic operation3 that arises from the need to
name an object which is both impossible and necessary (Lacau 2005, 72, 98), and whose
purpose is to construct the people as a collective actor starting o a contingent
aggregation of heterogeneous elements (Lacau 2006, 664, 667).
From this pluralist theorethical framework, we adopt a methodology based on the
critical revision of the emerging and unceasing literature on Buen Vivir/Sumak
Kawsay (Table 1). Both terms, rarely used until 2007, became well known after they
appeared in the new Ecuadorean Constitution in 2008 (preamble, title II, second chapter
entitled Rights of Good Living, title IV, Development Regime, and title V Good Living
Regime),4 reaching a peak in 2011 and again in 2014, after a short decline.5
Through examination of the substantial number of publications on the topic, we can
distinguish three moments of Buen Vivir, which will be used to organize this essay. The
rst moment (analyzed in section one) describes the phase in which it appeared in the
title of four texts (Santi (2003 2014); UIAW (Universidad Intercultural Amawtay Wasi)
2004; Vacacela 2007; Viteri 2003) and received signicant praise. Subsequently, during
the constitutional debate (20062008), the term Buen Vivir and its common sense

Table 1. References published in Spanish, Italian, English, and German on Buen Vivir
/Sumak Kawsay by title.
Number of references % of total Accumulated
2007 4 1.3 1.3
2008 14 4.7 6.1
2009 24 8.1 14.1
2010 36 12.1 26.3
2011 61 21.5 46.8
2012 50 16.8 63.6
2013 36 12.1 75.8
2014 72 24.2 100.0
Total 297 100.0
Source: prepared from searches following recursive literature method, ngram Google and Google
(combining Buen Vivir pdf Ecuador, Sumak Kawsay Ecuador pdf, Good Living Ecuador pdf, Gut
Leben Ecuador pdf).
 LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES 135

translation into Sumak Kawsay spread widely and resulted in a hybrid of the three
meanings that were then attributed to it: (i) the pluralist (the utopian Buen Vivir of the
ecologist movement or post-developmental stream); (ii) the particularist (the Sumak
Kawsay of the indigenous movement or pachamamista/cultural stream); (iii) and the
universalist (the ocial Buen Vivir of the socialist government, or state-centric/ecomarx-
ist stream) (Le Quang and Vercoutre 2013, 1948; Hidalgo-Capitn and Cubillo-Guevara
2014; Cubillo-Guevara, Hidalgo-Capitn, and Domnguez 2014, 3237; Vanhulst 2015).
The second moment (section two) accounts for Buen Vivirs instrumentalization and
co-optation by the government, expressed with particular clarity in the second National
Development Plan/National Plan for Good Living (201317). Both processes (instrumen-
talization and co-optation) were strengthened by the decision to suspend the morator-
ium on oil extraction in the Yasuni National Park in 2013, which was accompanied by an
outpouring of critique from epistemic, political economy, and feminist perspectives.
The third moment (section three) analyzes the three evolutionary pathways followed
by Buen Vivir over time: (i) the historization of the concept for academic purposes
(genealogical strategy); (ii) its operationalization for public policies (ocial strategy of
Buen Vivirs measurement in the GDP-and-beyond style); and (iii) its internationalization,
through two forked strategies, namely a utopian one (in dialogue with other alternative
views) and a governmental one (through the use of the emerging concept, once
operationalized, as a country trademark).
In the last section, we conclude by suggesting that, due to its vagueness, the
constitutional meaning of Buen Vivir (and its translation as Sumak Kawsay) has failed
to become a feasible alternative to the concept of development. Nevertheless, it has
been pretty successful in challenging and inspiring many Westerners to reconsider their
unsustainable and consumptionist lifestyle, as well as their understanding of quality of
life and happiness.

The moment of praise, dazzle, and hybridization

The hypothesis that Buen Vivir is an invented tradition (Hobsbawm 1983) appears in the
emerging literature on the concept. For some anthropologists, Buen Vivir represents a
strategy for political mobilization that seeks legitimacy through an imagined continuity
with a ctional mythical past (Bretn 2013, 87; Snchez-Parga 2011, 37; Viola 2011, 259;
Viola 2014, 64). This argument rests on the fact that the phrase doesnt appear in
anthropological literature before 2000. Nevertheless, a recent inquiry into the origins
of the term carried out by Cubillo-Guevara and Hidalgo-Capitn (2015, 3) found a
mention of Buen Vivir in a book by Descola written in 1986 on the Achuar people
(jivaroan). Specically, Hidalgo-Capitn, Arias, and vila (2014, 35), as well as Cubillo-
Guevara and Hidalgo-Capitn (2015, 11), suggest that Sumak Kawsay was enacted as a
concept by the leaders of Sarayaku community (Amazonian kichwas) in the 1990s. In
particular, indigenous intellectual Carlos Viteri Gualinga (Viteri 2005; Viteri 2003) was
responsible for the dissemination of the term that had previously appeared as ground
for indigenous organization claims since de 1940s (Iuca in this issue).
The conception of Buen Vivir as social practice of the good life lacks consistency for at
least three reasons, which reconrm the invented tradition hypothesis. First, Achuars
Buen or Bien Vivir (Shiir Waras) in Descolas writings (Descola 1986), far from referring to
136 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

an idyllic society, describes the individual equilibrium between the external environ-
ment constantly traversed by very serious social tensions . . . a society where relationship
with the other is mainly mediated by war and domestic peace, reached through the
poligamic prescription of marrying women who are sisters to one another, as the best
means of obtaining peace at home; the aection between the co-wives prevents them
to compete for the favors of thier husband (415). Descola argues that Buen Vivir is a
kind of normative horizon of domestic life, an optimal goal that is neither desired nor
reached by all Achuars, because in certain houses . . . wives are regularly beaten by their
husbands, sometimes to death, and female suicide is not exceptional and is a weapon
of dramatic protest against repeated abuse (416). Of course, this praxis is inconsistent
with the harmonius life (Viteri 1993, 148) and with the three harmonies with oneself,
with others, and with/in nature that Acosta (2008, 38, 47; 2010c, 100), Coraggio (2011,
330), Correa and Falcon (2012, 267), Santi ([2003] 2014, 34), and Unceta (2013,
204205; 2014a, 131133; 2014b, 7275); characterize as the foundation of constitutional
Buen Vivir, unless we accept that harmony with others and with/in nature can be
achieved through positive malthusian checks (female suicide and war to maintain
sustainable population density).
Buen Vivir is often linked to the Kichwa terms Ally Kausay and Sumak Kawsay in reference to
Sarayakurunas (people of Sarayaku) struggles to defend their territory against the oil com-
pany Texaco in the Amazonian region. Although the terms were popularized by local
intellectual Carlos Viteri (1993),6 they are at the same time a product of an intense process
of his own acculturation in the international cooperation industry. This is the second reason
why the term of Buen Vivir as social practice fails, which also conrms the invented tradition
argument. Indeed, Viteri is the key gure in the creation of the myth of Buen Vivir (and its later
instrumentalization by the government). Born in Sarayaku community in 1962, Viteri is the
self-appointed transalator of Buen Vivir as Sumak Kawsay and its equivalence of a harmonius
life (Viteri 1993, 148), dened as living in abundance, wisdom and dignity.7 But, like any other
intellectual, Viteris knowledge is situated: He worked as a consultant at UNICEF (19972001),
ILDIS-Friedrich Ebert Foundation8 (19972002) and was the rst indigenous person appointed
as an Inter-American Devolopment Bank (IDB) ocial in Washington (200209).9 Lastly, Viteri
was the director of ECORAE, the Amazonic Institute of Ecodevelopment (20092013), and in
2013 became deputy of PAIS Alliance (Patria Altiva y Soberana, Proud and Sovereign
Homeland, the political party-movement of Citizens Revolution).10 As President of the
Biodiversity Commission at the National Assembly, Viteri led the Assembly debate to suspend
the moratorium on oil drilling at Yasun National Park in 2014.11
Finally, there is a third institutional factor that conrms the invented tradition argu-
ment. While among the Sarayaku Kichwas, the communitarian aspect of Sumak Kawsay
is highly emphasized (Viteri [2002] 2005, 26), Descola (1986, 440) describes the Achuar as
deeply horried by the idea of collective life in village communities.12 An example is
the absence of communal work, or minga, common in the Andes, in their organizational
structure.13 Also, while it can be armed that the Achuar have a very intimate relation-
ship with nature dierent from the Western conception that doesnt mean their
practices of natural resources management are sustainable. On the contrary, now that
population increase is no longer constrained by continuous war and high infant mor-
tality, the demand for scarce resources is causing an accelerated deterioration of the
forest around community establishments. Therefore, the notion is a collage of traditions
 LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES 137

that includes what ts within the utopia (the three harmonies) and leaves aside those
that dont (patriarchal structures and natural resource depredation). Alberto Acosta
himself, one of the main representatives of an utopian Buen Vivir, admits that, at the
beginning of the discussion about possible alternatives to neoliberalism at ILDIS, We
began to investigate whether these alternatives to neoliberalism could be found in the
indigenous world (interview whith Acosta, in Fernndez, Pardo, and Salamanca 2014,
103). The Otavalo communities were ruled out, given their propensity toward capitalism,
and Acosta and his collaborators turned their attention to the Kichwas of the Pastaza
Amazonic Province.14
Extracted from its origins in subaltern thought (Iuca in this issue; Radclie 2012,
245), in the defense of territory and culture laid out by Carlos Viteri (1993; [2002] 2005;
2003), and in the proposals of the indigenous movement (Leonardo Viteri 2005; Santi
(2003 2014), Buen Vivir evolved to become the motto of the Alianza PAIS program in the
constitutional debate, and nally emerged as one of the pillars of the new Constitution
of Montecristi in 2008. The common understanding of Buen Vivir (and its ocial
transaltion as Sumak Kawasy) in the Constitution, could be dened as folllows: the
eective enjoyment of the rights of individuals, communities, peoples and nationalities,
and the exercise of their responsibilities within a framework of peaceful coexistence which
includes interculturalism, respect for diversities, and respect for personal and collecitve
dignity and harmonious coexistence with nature that promotes democracy and puts
the common good and public interest over private interests. After the Constitutions
approval and further academic celebration, a new phase began, that of hybridization
among the three approaches or meanings of the term (Le Quang and Vercoutre 2013,
1948; Hidalgo-Capitn and Cubillo-Guevara 2014; Vanhulst 2015).
The rst approach was pluralist (the utopian Buen Vivir of the ecologist movement or
post-developmental stream), whose best known defenders are Acosta and Gudynas (see
below for comments on their works). The second consisted of a particularist view (the
Sumak Kawsay of the indigenous movement or pachamamista/cultural stream), repre-
sented by the organic intellectual of Pachakutik Mouvement, Dvalos (2008b) 2014,
Dvalos (2008b) 2014, Dvalos (2011 2014), a mestizo economist and Associate
Professor of PUCE (Pontician Catholic University of Ecuador) in Quito. The third approach
was universalist (the ocial Buen Vivir of the socialist government or state-centric/eco-
Marxist stream), widely espoused by organic intellectual and government ocial Ramrez
(2008; 2010a; 2010b; 2012a; 2012b) and by the Minister of Culture and Heritage Guillaume
Long (2015) in an acrimonious public debate with Immanuel Wallerstein (2015). These
three understandings share consensus about the multidimensional harmonies contained
in Buen Vivir: with oneself, with others, and with/in nature. They also share the theoretical
possibility of a convergence, which is very unlikely in real terms due to the strong
opposition of utopian and indigenous streams to the government of Rafael Correa.
Finally, they also agree on the principles of sustainability (ecologists), identity (pachama-
mistas), and equity (pro-governmental) (Hidalgo-Capitn and Cubillo-Guevara 2015).
Nevertheless, each approach maintains its own specicities with regards to its organizing
principles, the denition of means/ends, and the conception of individual/social life: The
utopian approach prioritizes the ecological dimension; the indigenous approach, the
identity dimension; and the ocial approach, the social dimension (Table 2).
138 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

Table 2. Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay) approaches.

Approaches Pluralist: utopian BV Particularist: indigenous BV Universalist: ocial BV
Political/ Ecologist/ Pachamamista/ Statist/
epistemic liation post-developmental cultural ecomarxist
Organizing principle Ecosystem integrality Plurinationality Human needs
Ends Human dignity Spirituality Happiness
Means Quality of life Interculturality Capabilities
Individual/social life Equality Dierence Equity
collective community public (State)
Source: see text.

The constitutional originality and the proliferation of local publications on Buen Vivir,
which reached a peak in 2011 both terms were included into the Glossary of Social
Sciences and Indigenous Peoples (see Cid 2010, 239245) were the cause of the
astonishing success of the concept among European and North American academics,
the orphans of inspiring utopias.15 Who could reject Good Living when it is dened as a
world in which everyone goes together, no one is left behind, there is enough for
everyone, and no one lacks anything?16

The moment of instrumentalization, co-optation, and criticism

Buen Vivir unites the overlapping types of invented tradition described by Hobsbawm
(1983): those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of groups,
real or articial communities; those establishing or legitimizing institutions, status or
relations of authority; and those whose main purpose was socialization, the inculcation
of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behavior. All these overlapping functions
indicate that the concept undetermined, vague, and elusive was a perfect candidate
for the instrumentalization and co-optation strategy of the government, which was the
opposite of the very ethos of Buen Vivir/Sumak Kausay (Acosta 2011a, 52; Beling and
Vanhulst 2014, 35; Peters 2014, 147; Vanhulst and Beling 2014, 60; Waldmller 2014, 24;
Walsh 2010, 20). Indeed, the rst denitions of Buen Vivir by indigenous peoples and
ecologists met the description of Laclaus empty signiers as an ideological artifact for
social mobilization (our subordinated hypothesis).
From this perspective, Buen Vivir is an empty signier that unies and gives coher-
ence to diverse social movements demands confronting neoliberalism (the term for
constitutive exclusion). Because of this, it is not surprising that a term, which functioned
as an invented tradition to support the political mobilization of a heterogeneous
coalition of groups, was later co-opted by the government and given the function of
an empty signier to link the opposition to neoliberal policies (Caria and Domnguez
2014, 148, 154; Manosalvas 2014, 102, 115, 117; Viola 2014, 68;). In that role, the
conceptual weakness of Buen Vivir, so persistently pointed out by the literature,17
facilitated the governments task. For the chief of Sarayaku, Sumak Kawsay joins har-
mony with oneself and with nature, and serves a conception of hard sustainability for
the life of fullness (Santi (2003 2014), 7980, 87), or a limpid and abundant life, in the
words of Leonardo Viteri (2005), leader of Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador (CONAIE). These thoughts can constantly be found in indigenous thinking on
 LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES 139

Sumak Kawsay and such self-referential and metaphorical expressions reect the claim
for territorial autonomy and cultural respect (Altmann 2013, 285; Altmann 2014a, 11).18
Before these incantations, the denition of Buen Vivir allowed it to serve as an
umbrella for very heterogeneus demands, thus serving to eectively mobilize disparate
political forces. Thus, in the 1940s, the term of alli causai [sic], translated as good life,
was used to articulate indigenous claims by CONACNIE (Ecudorian National Coordination
Council for Indigenous Peoples) and other indigenous organizations connected to the
Communist Party of Ecuador (Iuca in this issue). Later, in 2003, for Development
Council of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador (CODENPE)19 Buen Vivir corresponded
to personal, family, communitarian an collective wellbeing (cited in Maldonado 2006,
14), a denition coherent with pnker pujustin or Good Living as well-being or good
life (in the sense everything is secured) to Achuar and Shuar peoples (Mader 1999, 166,
169, 185). The Alianza PAIS electoral program of 2006 promoted Buen vivir in harmony
with nature, under a unrestricted respect of human rights (cited in Altmann 2013, 209;
Altmann 2014a, 88), and by 2007, Buen Vivir became equivalent to well-being in
CONAIEs proposal for the new Constitution (Altmann 2013, 294).
This represents a succession of paradoxes, taking into account that Viteri (2002 2005),
26) had already highlighted the mistake of identifying Sumak Kauwsay with welfare, and
that it was probably Alberto Acosta, very inuential in Alianza PAIS at the time, who
introduced Buen Vivir in the constitutional debate and proposed its ocial translation to
Sumak Kawsay. He knew and cited Viteris orginal work circulated in 2000 (Viteri (2002
2005)) as early as 2001 (Acosta 2001, 321). After Acosta resigned as the Assembly
President in 2008, he undertook the task of the construction and reconstruction of an
utopian Buen Vivir, understood from Viteris point of view, as critical of the welfarist
approach to development. For Acosta, the concept cannot be simplistically associated
with Western welfare (Acosta 2008, 34); rather it is an opportunity to collectively build a
new development regime (38), and a proposal edge underlining the concept of devel-
opment as a post-developmental option to be built (Acosta 2010a, 6; see also; Acosta
2008, 43; Acosta 2010b; Acosta 2011b, 193; Acosta 2011c, 2526; Gudynas and Acosta
2011a, 80; Gudynas and Acosta 2011b, 7273; and similarly; Unceta 2014b, 7172).
However, while Buen Vivir was still unfolding as an utopian alternative to capitalism
with increasingly blurred proles (Acosta 2015, 309310), the Citizens Revolution was
already reshaping the concept from its initial love and be loved dream of biosocialism
(Ramrez 2010a, 61; Ramrez 2010b, 134135). This became particularly evident in 2013
with the governments suspension of the moratorium on oil explotation at Yasun
National Park, which had hitherto been emblematic of Buen Vivir and the possibility
for a convergence of the three approaches to the concept.
By that time, the potential contestatory power of t Buen Vivir had been neutralized
through its incorporation into processes of neoliberal multiculturalism (Bretn 2013,
77), which started the moment that the term reemerged as an alternative to sustainable
development promoted by most international cooperation agencies. Indeed, Ecuador
was the pilot for World Bank ethno-development programs. The most important of such
programs was PRODEPINE (Development Project for the Ingenous and Black Peoples of
Ecuador), which was implemented between 1998 and 2004 and was the main instru-
ment for the epistemological, organizational, and leadership co-optation of social move-
ments (Ortiz-T 2005, 39, 4148; Bretn 2013, 90). In fact, by 2005, the canonical work of
140 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

Viteri (2002 2005) was already included in a publication on indigenous peoples and
education sponsored by GTZ (Altmann 2013, 290), a technical development cooperation
agency that played an early role in supporting intercultural education projects, including
the promotion of sumac causai [sic] during the 1980s (Iuca in these issue). It was in this
context that leaders of the government-sponsored Citizens Revolution proposed a
moratorium on the incorporation of the word into the discussion of Buen Vivir and
issued a National Development Plan (Plan Nacinal para Buen Vivir 20092013), in which
the word development (in the sense of economic and social model or paradigm)
appears three times more than Buen Vivir. Important to note is that the plan was
formulated by the National Secretariat for Planning and Development (Secretara
Nacional de Planicacin y Desarrollo, or SENPLADES) (Domnguez and Caria 2014,
4243), which partly explains why usage of notions of development (such as growth
and structural change or activity) triple, once again, mentions of Buen Vivir in the
renewed Plan (Plan Nacinal para Buen Vivir 20132017). In his own words, Viteri
(2002 2005), 26) acknowledged that the concept was a category in permanent con-
struction, thus facilitating its reformulation by Ramrez (2010a, 61; 2010b, 139); who, as
minister of SENPLADES, also noted that it was a complex concept historically con-
structed, and therefore is in constant resignication. While serving as Minister of
Culture and Heritage in 2015, Guillaume Long provided one of the most recent ocial
denitions of Buen Vivir as a cornerstone of our policies reecting our capacity to think
in terms of both non-orthodox indicators of development . . . at the same time, meeting
the basic material necessities of human beings (the reduction of poverty, inequality, and
the prevision of service for the guaranteeing of rights).
The inconsistencies between utopian and ocial versions of the concept, together
with its epistemic fragilities, have generated two main fronts of criticism. The rst is
partially based on epistemological critiques of the elusive and ideological character of
the concept (lvarez 2011, 109112; Snchez-Parga 2011) and incoherence between the
rhetoric and public policies of the Citizens Revolution. A main focus of this literature is
the inherent contradiction in the government between its environmentalist, pachama-
mista discourse, on the one hand, and its expansion of neoextractivist policies20 on the
other, which makes Ecuador one of the most paradoxical scenarios of the Commodities
Consensus in Latin American (Svampa 2013, 38). The second front stems from feminist
criticism of ocial and indigenous conceptions of Buen Vivir, which argues that ocial
concept reects a liberal approach to equal opportunity that is blind to gender bias. In
particular, they suggest that indigenous Sumak Kawsay is a mystication of community
organization, which is based on a patriarchal tradition of sexual divisions of labor and
that denies nonheterosexual identities and processes of individuation (Vega 2014b, 357,
359360; Prez Prieto and Domnguez 2015, 4647).
Thus, after 2013 the crisis of legitimacy generated by criticism subjected Buen Vivir to
a dialectical process. On the one hand, the internal discourse shifted toward a statist or
Rostownian orientation: Buen Vivir as utopian, performative horizon to be achieved
through the replacement of sustainable development for structural change (Caria and
Domnguez 2014, 152, 158, 160; Cori and Monni 2014, 3; Domnguez and Caria 2014a,
33, Domnguez and Caria 2014b, 19; Manosalvas 2014, 108; Viola 2014, 68).21 On the
other hand, the operationalization of the concept in public policies was increasingly
technocratic. Buen Vivir in this sense can be understood as a mechanism of Foucaldian
 LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES 141

governmentality, pastoral power, power dispositive or political dispositive of govern-

ment (Radclie 2012, 243, 248; Bretn 2013, 73; Viola 2014; Cortez 2014, 342).

The moment of reproductive pathways

This conceptual evolution leads us to the nal moment in the trajectory of the concept.
As its utopian horizon changed over time, Buen Vivir evolved across three dierent
reproductive pathways: historization, operationalization, and internationalization.
Historization refers to the genealogical approach of academics to reconstruct the history
of the concept, in some cases also examining its lost foundations, which was initiated by
Cortez (2010) and later pursued by a plethora of scholars, including Cortez (2014)
himself (see also Altmann 2013; Altmann 2014a; Altmann 2014b; Hidalgo-Capitn,
Arias, and vila 2014; Bretn 2013; Fernndez Dvila and Huertas 2013; Hidalgo-
Capitn, Cubillo-Guevara and Hidalgo-Capitn 2015; Marras 2013; Ramn 2014). This
body of literature recties the rhetorical excesses of some early works, which are a
consequence of understanding the concept as an invented tradition. The point here is
not to disregard the oral traditions of ancient cultures, a counter argument of some
defenders of the postmodern Buen Vivir (Gudynas 2013, 186189). Rather, it is an
exhortation to retrieve a cultural heritage (Yachay Tinkuy, or wisdom, thoughts, and
dialogue of the senses) that might otherwise be irreparably lost, and that also has deep
roots in the political mobilization and claims of indigenous peoples since at least the
1940s (Iuca in this issues).
The second pathway is operationalization. Although such strategy has been criticized
as a form of domesticating Buen Vivir (Gudynas 2013, 195), it can also be considered an
attempt to address other critiques that stem from the challenge of implementing Buen
Vivir-oriented public policies (De La Cuadra 2015, 3) and a consistent monitoring and
evaluation mechanism (Arias 2011, 55; Guevara 2014; Friant and Longmore 2015; Ynez
2013). For Gudynas (2013), being operationalized like human development, would be
the worst that could happen to Buen Vivir . . . ending its days as a new buen vivir
development index calculated by UNDP.22 It is worth mentioning that UNDP supported
the Conceptual Framework of Social Indicators for Indigenous Peoples designed by
Carlos Viteri for the Integrated Social Indicators System of Ecuador (SIISE) from
20002001, also publishing the book Democracia, Pobreza y exclusin social en
Ecuador, which includes a chapter by Viteri (2000).23 Following a 2004 seminar in New
York on the collection and disaggregation of data on indigenous peoples, sponsored by
the initiative of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (where Viteri participated as
an expert representative of the IDB), UNDP initiated a research project to measure and
then generalize data (from indigenous people to all populations of the country) in Buen
Vivir terms (Cabrero 2015).24 Furthermore, it is important to remember that the oper-
ationalization process (measurement of Buen Vivir) is the cornerstone of Ecuadorian
public policy (Long 2015).
Attempts to measure Buen Vivir can largely be divided into two approaches: a
subjective approach (Alominos 2012; Guardiola 2011; Guardiola and Garca Quero
2014; Phlan and Guilln 2012); and an objective one, which can be based on
existing indicators (Friant and Longmore 2015), or focused on the building of new
ones, basically, although not exclusively, objective (Arroyo 2014; Len 2015; Phlan
142 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

and Guilln 2011; Ramrez 2012a; Ramrez 2012b). The UNDP adopted the objective
in its latest regional report of human development (PNUD 2016, 115116). Overall,
these proposals dier with regards to their outreach, dimensional approach, and
the indicators considered, which highlights a need for a greater public deliberation
on this subject.
It could be argued that the third reproductive pathway of Buen Vivir, internatio-
nalization, was an attempt to catalyze a deeper public discussion on the issues the
concept evokes. However, it was actually a strategy to build political alliances. From
this perspective, internationalization represents a twofold pathway of political strug-
gle, which places the utopian approach of Buen Vivir in confrontation with the ocial
version. On the one hand, internationalization can be seen as the result of eorts
establish dialogue with other systemic alternatives to capitalist development: ranging
from Zapatista to Mapuche movements in Latin America; from the South African
Ubuntu to Indian ecological Swaraj; or from European sustainable degrowth move-
ments to global ecologist feminism (Kothari, Demaria, and Acosta 2015; Unceta
2014b). On the other hand, ocial approaches to Buen Vivir have undeniably been
successful in international arenas with statements such as Por un nuevo Orden
Mundial para Vivir Bien (A New World Order for Good Living), which came out of
the 50th anniversary of the G77 (currently conformed by 133 countries) in June 2014
in Santa Cruz Bolivia, and with the October 2015 Declaracin de La Conferencia
Mundial de los Pueblos sobre Cambio Climtico y Defensa de La Vida (Ocial
Statement of the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and Life Defence).
In both documents, a rhetoric of rights for Pachamama (Mother Earth) is integrated
with the right to development: in the rst text, Buen Vivir (referred to as Vivir Bien in
Bolivia) is described as a form of comprehensive development which aims at meet-
ing the material, cultural, and spiritual needs of societies, within the context of
Harmony with Nature (Group of 77 2014, 31); in the second text, Buen Vivir is
dened as complementarity between the rights of peoples and the rights of Mother
Earth, which implies building a relationship of equilibrium among human beings and
nature to re-establish harmony with Mother Earth (CMPCC 2015, 2).25
This process of ocial internationalization generated dialogue among research
programs that focused on operationalizing Buen Vivir and other eorts to promote
alternative denitions of development beyond GDP (Gross National Happiness,
OECDs Better Life, The Economist Intelligence Units quality-of-life Index, UNDPs
Multidimensional Progress, FOESSA Index of Social Welfare in Spain). From this
point of view, some authors argue that Buen Vivir can oer fertile insights that
help to build a renewed understanding of the theory and practice of development,
including the public policy of international development cooperation (Monni and
Pallottino 2015, 50, 55). This, together with the use of Buen Vivir and its ocial
motto Discover it: Its inside of you as Ecuadors trademark to promote a
national culture that values quality over quantity, speak to the success of this last
strategy. Furthermore, similar concepts are now being applied in some European
countries, such as Spain and Germany, and in several UN System documents (PNUD
(Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo) 2016, 115116, 165169;
UNESCO 2015, 3132).
 LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES 143

Conclusions
Sutton (1989), who dened development as a major ideology of our times, spoke of its
capacity to inspire and frustrate aspirations for a better life, particularly through the
vagueness, imprecision, utopian exaggeration, and the many contradictions that useful
ideologies commonly show (35). Ocial versions of Buen Vivir, born as an invented
tradition with the vocation to be an alternative to development, ended up sharing with
development much of the characteristics described by Sutton.
In this article, we have traced the avatars of the ocial term of Buen Vivir and its
understanding and translation as Sumak Kausay in the new Constitution of Ecuador. The
expansion of Buen Vivir from its emergence in subaltern thought in the 1990s to a
trademark of the Correa government-sponsored Citizens Revolution in Ecuador conrms
our main and subordinated research hypothesis. Regarding our main hypothesis, Buen
Vivir and its ocial equivalent Sumak Kawsay turned out to be an invented tradition:
available studies on indigenous peoples show no evidence of Buen Vivir as social
practice of communities; the term itself is historically associated with the work of
development practitioners; and the fundamentals of Buen Vivir cannot be assumed to
represent universally shared values among Andean and Amazonian nationalities.
As a subordinate hypothesis, we have argued that Buen Vivir, which originally
appeared at the margins of the State and political power, later became an empty
signier, allowing for its instrumentalization and co-optation by the Citizens
Revolution and opening up future prospects in the way of operationalization and
internationalization that converged with eorts to promote alternative measurements
and notions of development to the GDP. While Rafael Correas electoral triumph per-
mitted the inclusion of Buen Vivir in the Constitution and in Ecuadors public policies, its
social construction as an empty signier also facilitated its instrumentalization and co-
optation by the government, independently of the potential convergence among the
three rival conceptions in the battle on the meanings of Buen Vivir: a pluralist position
(based on utopian visions that draw from the ecologist or post-developmental move-
ments), a particularist position (largely represented by the Sumak Kawsay of the indi-
genous movement or pachamamista/cultural lineage), and the universalist approach
(espoused by the socialist governments of Correa and Morales as an ocial version of
Buen Vivir based on state-centric or eco-Marxist approaches). If during the early stages of
the Citizens Revolution (20072009), it seemed feasible for those three positions to
converge, with the renewal of the National Development Plan for 20132017 and the
suspension of the moratorium on oil drilling at Yasun National Park in 2014, any
possible agreement between them was broken.
From that moment on, alternative denitions of Buen Vivir proliferated in dierent
reproductive pathways. If with the historization pathway, the concept achieved con-
siderable academic acknowledgement, with operationalization it gained a high level of
legitimacy, and became successful as a means to question unsustainable lifestyles of
Western consumption as well as predominant understandings of quality of life and
happiness. However, this came at the cost of losing its character as an alternative to
development to become just another buzzword of alternative development (sustainable,
human, participatory, or inclusive), thus converting it into mainstream thinking.
144 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

This reconstruction of the Buen Vivirs conceptual and political uses allows a better
understanding of its role as a guiding principle of public policy in Ecuador in the last
decade, a period during which the country has undergone deep institutional and
economic transformations. From this point of view, Buen Vivir accomplished its mission
at home, whether or not it has fullled the social expectations of its diverse proponents.
This explains why the term is currently disappearing from governmental and social
movement discourses. Conversely, the term is increasingly used externally; it became
one of the pillars of the new agenda for international cooperation, and has become the
new empty signier complementing and/or replacing sustainable development. Thus,
Buen Vivir has just begun its mission abroad and has a long life moving forward.

Notes
1. Executive Decree no. 30 sets out the functions of the new Secretara, which include to
promote the construction of a way of ethical, responsible, sustainable, and conscious
living, working with all State institutions and the dierent actors in society, so that Good
Living becomes citizen practice for the life pattern at the State, national and international
level; see http://www.secretariabuenvivir.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Decreto30_
low-2.pdf.
2. The Citizens Revolution was ocially a project to gradually achieve a socialist society in
Ecuador in the twenty-rst century, under the democratic leadership of President Rafael
Correa beginning in 2008 (see Errejn and Guijarro 2015, 4-11; Sousa 2014). However, some
authors describe it to the contrary as a project of capitalist modernization through the
domestication of civil society under Correas authoritarian regime (Acosta 2014a; Acosta
2014b; Acosta y Cajas 2015; Muoz Jaramillo 2014; Ortiz Lemos 2014, 2015; Ospina et al.
2015; Unda 2013).
3. While Laclau avoids the classical use of the term ideology, his explanation resembles a mix
between Marxs false consciousness and Gramscis oensive weapon.
4. For the analysis of Buen Vivir in the Ecuadorean Constitution, see Bari (2014), Carpio (2009),
Gudynas (2011a), Larrea (2011), Ortiz-T (2009), Quintero (2009), Silva (2008), Wray (2009),
Vega (2014a).
5. Our results partially coincide with the revision of the literature by Vanhulst (2015, 40) from
the Google Scholar database extracted with Publish or Perish software.
6. This community was very active against the new exploration and exploitation of oil elds as
a result of the tremendous spills during the previous years caused by Texaco in the rain
forest region. These struggles, lead by Alfredo Viteri (2004), Carlos Viteris brother, were the
breeding ground from which Sumak Kawsay theorizing reemerged, from its very spiritual
origins as the defense of a land without evil: without multinational incursions (a model of
death) on the territory; considered not a resource to be exploited but a space of life and
source of knowledges and wisdom, culture, identity, traditions, and entitlements. See also
Fontaine (2003), Lara (2009), Ortiz-T (2012, 335-344), Santi (2008), Tassi (personal commu-
nication, 5 November 2015, Quito), Yanza (2003).
7. See his ocial webpage at: https://carlosviterigualinga.wordpress.com/biograa/.
8. ILDIS is the Latin American Institute of Social Research, a local counterpart of Friedrich-
Ebert-Stiftung (the foundation of the German Social Democratic Party), which is nanced
regularly by the GTZ (now GIZ), the German Agency of Technical Cooperation.
9. Viteri was Descolas pupil at Salesian Politechnic University and nished his BA dissertation
as a prerequisite to be appointed as an IDB ocial. Importantly, Viteri was paired with
Italian anthropologist Giovanna Tassi, who was the editor of the 1992 book Nufragos del
mar verde: La resistencia de los Huaorani a una integracin impuesta (Castaway of the green
sea: the resistance of the Huaorani to an imposed integration). On his role, Tassi stated, I
 LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ETHNIC STUDIES 145

provide Carlos the aid for systematizing [Buen Vivir] inside the western concepts . . . follow-
ing books with lectures that question the concept of western development (personal
communication, 5 November 2015, Quito).
10. See the ocial webpage at: http://www.desarrolloamazonico.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/
downloads/2012/10/hoja_de_vida.pdf; https://carlosviterigualinga. wordpress.com/tag/
hoja-de-vida/.
11. For the rise and fall of the Yasun initiative, see Bravo (2005), Caria and Domnguez (2014,
140, 150-151), Garca (2014), and Vallejo et al. (2015, 181).
12. Similarly, Tassi (1992) argues that community organization is an organizational concept
assimilated by Kichwa and Shuar, but not by the Huaorani.
13. This very Andean concept has also been idealized. Martnez (2002, 42) argues that the
minga, as institution of collective free work, has been used by traditional rural power
structure in its own benet, extracting labor surplus in exchange for land for pasture.
14. And there we had some very interesting workshops, where old people, adults, some
elderly indigenous communities had been conveying how life was in communities before
the arrival of mestizos and capitalism; this is an area of permanent expansion, conquest,
and colonization. They still had some memories that were collected in a few pages
document written by Carlos Viteri Gualinga. He worked on this issue on behalf of the
Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (OPIP) . . . Sarayaku worked out a Life Plan,
which is fundamental. So from there comes another proposal, one could say that it is
another vigorous policy proposal for discussion of Buen Vivir, in addition to the ocial
view of the indigenous movement, i.e. CONAIE. In it [the Life Plan], indigenous experi-
ences are partly synthesized, and it is also a mixture of political and academic discussion,
which would later nourish directly Alianza PAIS discussion (Fernndez, Pardo, and
Salamanca 2014, 103). Alberto Acosta, a white economist trained in Germany and with
a long-standing and very closed relation to the German International Cooperation System
(specically FES-ILDIS), is an Associate Professor of Latin American Faculty of Social
Sciences (FLACSO) in Quito.
15. In Portugal (Sousa 2010a; Sousa 2010b), Spain (Hernndez 2009; Moreno 2011; Sempere et al.
2009; Tortosa 2009; 2011; Unceta 2011), France (dArcier-Flores 2010), Belgium (Houtart 2009;
Houtart 2010; Houtart 2011a; Houtart 2011b), Italy (De Marzo 2009; 2010), Germany (Helfrich
2011; Willer 2011), Austria (Hrtner 2010; 2011), and Canada (Thomson 2011).
16. Such is the motto of Buen Vivir reected in the promotional video of the Secretara Nacional
del Buen Vivir, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNaM2mVqJgI& feature=youtu.be.
17. See, among others, Beling and Vanhulst (2014, 35), De La Cuadra (2015), Domnguez and
Caria (2014a, 38), Peters (2014), Snchez-Parga (2011), Vanhulst and Behling (2014, 55, 60),
139), and Viola (2014, 60, 64, 68).
18. See also, among others, Chancosa (2010), Chuji (2009 2014), 157; Chuji (2010 2014), 231-233),
Dvalos (Dvalos (2011 2014), Dvalos 2014a), Flores (2006), Kowii (2009 2014), 168), Macas
(2010 2014), Ortiz-T (2012, 227, 249, 268), and Viteri (2002 2005), 24; Viteri 2003, 46).
19. CODENPE is an organization that gathers the main social movements of Ecuador: FENOCIN
(National Confederation of Indigenous and Afro-ecuadorian Peasants Organizations,
Indigenous and Black Organizations), FEINE (Council of People and Evangelic Indigenous
Organizations of Ecuador) and Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
(CONAIE); see: http://www.codenpe.gob.ec/.
20. Early arguments in Acosta (2009, 148; 2010a, 38; 2010b, 72); Escobar (2009; 2010, 21-23);
Fatheuer (2011, 29), Gudynas (2009, 214; 2010, 80; 2011b, 268); and Walsh (2010); for more
recent literature, see, Acosta (2014b), Acosta and Cajas (2015), Acosta, Martnez, and Sacher
(2013, 314-317), Beling and Vanhulst (2014, 36), Caria and Domnguez (2014, 151-152),
Dvalos (2014b, 26-28, 61), Deneulin (2012, 2, 7-8), Domnguez and Caria (2014a, 31-32),
Gudynas (2013, 209), Huertas and Urquidi (2015, 4-5), Lalander (2014, 167-168), Lo Brutto
and Vzquez (2015, 64-65), Manosalvas (2014), Monni and Pallotino (2013, 18), Peters (2014,
139-140, 147), Radclie (2012, 346, 248), Unceta (2013, 140; 2014a, 136); Vanhulst and
Behling (2014, 60), and Vega (2014a, 190-191).
146 R. DOMNGUEZ ET AL.

21. The most representative author in this regard is Larrea (2014, 237-238), who argues that
Buen Vivir is a mobilizing idea, that is, a dream, a utopia that allows joint wills toward a new
horizon of meaning, or, in Eduardo Galeanos style, a long-term horizon showing which
way to walk.
22. These comments contrast to Acosta considerations about the necessity to build Buen Vivirs
own indicators (Acosta 2011d, 44-45): These new indicators will provide a great opportu-
nity not only to denounce the limitations and fallacies of the dominant systems of
indicators . . . while discussing methodologies to calculate dierently and with renewed
contents other indexes of development, it will be advance in the design of new tools to try
and measure how far or how close we are to building sustainable and democratic societies.
23. See the ocial webpages at: http://www.desarrolloamazonico.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/
downloads/2012/10/hoja_de_vida.pdf; https://carlosviterigualinga. wordpress.com/tag/
hoja-de-vida/.
24. See: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/236/94/PDF/N0423694. pdf?
OpenElement. In the last report of human development for Latina America and the
Caribbean, the UNDP uses the Buen Vivir concept and measurement as intrinsically related
to development (PNUD (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo) 2016, vii).
25. In spite of its title alluding to social movements, the presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Venezuela participated in the CMPCC (Conferencia Mundial de Pueblos Sobre Cambio
Climtico y Defensa de la Vida) (2015); this undoubtedly inuenced the nal statement,
where, among the Peoples actions to strengthen the Vivir Bien ways, alternative to
capitalism can be read: to build and encourage the egalitarian harmonious productive
economic model for Vivir Bien, with the horizon toward eco-socialism, based on a harmo-
nious relationship between man and nature, that guarantees a rational, optimal, and
sustainable exploitation of natural resources respectful of natures processes and cycles
(CMPCC (Conferencia Mundial de Pueblos Sobre Cambio Climtico y Defensa de la Vida)
2015, 12). The UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon and more than 4,800 delegates of 54
countries participated in this second Summit; see: http://www.miradasalsur.com.ar/2015/
10/13/latinoamerica/declaracion-de-la-conferencia-mundial-de-los-pueblos-sobre-cambio-
climatico-y-defensa-de-la-vida/.

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