Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:09:51.641Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Indigenous Concept of Vivir Bien in the Bolivian Legal Field: A Decolonial Proposal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2017

María Itatí Dolhare  and
Sol Rojas-Lizana
María Itatí Dolhare*
Affiliation:
TC Beirne Law School, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
Sol Rojas-Lizana
Affiliation:
School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
*
address for correspondence: María Itatí Dolhare, TC Beirne Law School, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This article discusses the concept of Vivir Bien (Living Well) (VB) and its role as a decolonising project in connection with the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009) (BC) and subordinated legislation. This subordinated legislation was enacted to implement in a more specific manner the general legal principles contained within the BC. The paper uses these legal texts within the framework of decolonial thinking to prove that the adoption of the concept of VB represents a legal and an epistemological shift that radically contests the dominant Western paradigm of modernity/coloniality. This shift has many facets; however, this article concentrates on two of them in order to characterise its radicalism: (a) the constitutional acknowledgment of the colonial difference, which is understood here as the pervading and living legacy of European colonialism in social organisations and the production of knowledge, and (b) the constitutional and legislative requirement of engaging in an ongoing intercultural dialogue as a vehicle for the achievement of a society based on the concept of VB. This article concludes that the confluence of these two facets marks the epistemological shift and is important in the advancement of the intercultural and decolonising project represented by the concept of VB.

Keywords

Vivir BienBoliviacolonial differenceintercultural dialogueMother Earthmodern liberal constitution
Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 47 , Special Issue 1: South-South Dialogues: Global Approaches to Decolonial Pedagogies , August 2018 , pp. 19 - 29
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acosta, A. (2013). El Buen Vivir: Sumak Kawsay, una oportunidad para imaginar otros mundos [The Buen Vivir: Sumak Kawsay, an opportunity to imagine another world]. Barcelona, Spain: Icaria & Antrazyt.Google Scholar
Albo, X. (2011). Suma Qamana = convivir bien. ¿Como medirlo? [Suma Qamana = coexisting well. How to measure it?] In Farah, I. & Vasapollo, L. (Eds.), Vivir Bien: ¿Paradigma no capitalista? [Living well: Non-capitalist paradigm?] (pp. 133–44). La Paz, Bolivia: CIMES-USMA.Google Scholar
Aman, R. (2014). Impossible Interculturality? Education and the colonial difference in a multicultural world, vol. 182. Linkoping, Sweden: Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning.Google Scholar
Avila Santamaria, R. (2011). El neoconstitucionalismo transformador: El estado y el derecho en la Constitución de 2008 [The transformative neo constitutionalism: The State and the law in the 2008 Constitution]. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala. Universidad Andina Simon Bolívar.Google Scholar
Baldin, S. (2015). The concept of harmony in the Andean transformative constitutionalism: A subversive narrative and its interpretations. Revista General de Derecho Público Comparado, 17, 1–25.Google Scholar
Bateson, N. (Writer). (2011). An ecology of mind: A daughter's portrait of Gregory Bateson [DVD]. N. Bateson & D. Sieburg (Producers). Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films.Google Scholar
Bolivia (2009). (Plurinational state of)’s constitution of 2009 [Constitución Política del Estado Plurinationacional de Bolivia (2009)]. Translated by Max Planck Institute. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bresling, B. (2009). From words to worlds: Exploring constitutional functionality. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Friant, M.C., & Langmore, J. (2015). The Buen Vivir: A policy to survive the Anthropocene? Global Policy, 6 (1), 64–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capra, F, & Mattei, U. (2015). The Ecology of Law: Toward a legal system in tune with nature and community. CA, USA: Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc.Google Scholar
Castro Gómez, S., & Grosfoguel, R. (Eds.). (2007). El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global [The decolonial turn: Thinking epistemic diversity beyond global capitalism]. Bogotá, Colombia: Siglo del Hombre Editores.Google Scholar
Ceceña, A. E. (2008). Derivas del mundo en el que caben todos los mundos. México, DF: CLACSO Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Clavero, B. (2009). Bolivia entre el constitucionalismo colonial y el constitucionalismo emancipatorio [Between colonial constitutionalism and emancipatory constitutionalism]. Paper presented at the Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, Sucre, Bolivia.Google Scholar
Clavero, B. (2010). Original Latin American Constitutionalism. Rechtsgeschichte, 16, 25–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cordero Carraffa, C. (2010). Nueva Constitucion, nuevo gobierno, nuevo Estado. [New Constitution, new government, new State]. In Instituto Internacional de Integracion del Convenio Andres Bello. (Ed.), Miradas – Nuevo Texto Constitucional. La Paz-Bolivia: International IDEA-Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia. Universidad Mayor de San Andres.Google Scholar
DRAE. (2017). Diccionario de la Real Academia Española de la Lengua [Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language]. Online version: Retrieved from September 11, 2016. http://dle.rae.es/?id=QBmDD68Google Scholar
Dussel, E. (1993). Eurocentrism and modernity [Introduction to the Frankfurt lectures]. The postmodernism debate in Latin America. Boundary 2, 20 (3), 65–76.Google Scholar
Dussel, E. (1994). 1492: El encubrimiento del otro: Hacia el origen del mito de la modernidad [1492: The invention of the Americas: Eclipse of the “other” and the myth of modernity]. La Paz, Bolivia: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación-UMSA.Google Scholar
Grosfoguel, R. (2006). La descolonización de la economía política y los estudios postcoloniales: Transmodernidad, pensamiento fronterizo y colonialidad global [Decolonizing political-economy and post-colonial studies: Transmodernity, border thinking, and global coloniality]. Tabula Rasa, 4, 17–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosfoguel, R. (2011). Decolonizing post-colonial studies and paradigms of political economy: Transmodernity, decolonial thinking and global coloniality. Transmodernity, 1 (1), 1–36.Google Scholar
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in Westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11 (1), 1–8.Google Scholar
Mamani, F.H. (2010). Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien: Filosofía, políticas, estrategias y experiencias regionales andinas [Good living/living well: Philosophies, strategies and Andean experiences]. Lima, Peru: Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indigenas.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (2012). Bolivia: Características de población y vivienda. Censo nacional de población y vivienda 2012 [Bolivian National Census 2012]. Sucre, Bolivia: Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lovelock, J. (1987). Gaia: A model for planetary and cellular dynamics. In Thompson, W. (Ed.), Gaia, a way of knowing: Political implications of the new biology (pp. 83–97). Great Barrington, Mass: Lindisfarne Press.Google Scholar
Medici, A.M. (2010). El nuevo constitucionalismo latinoamericano y el giro decolonial: Bolivia y Ecuador [The new Latin American constitutionalism and the decolonial turn: Bolivia and Ecuador]. Revista Derecho y Ciencias Sociales, 3, 3–23.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W. (2012). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W.D. (2007a). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3), 155–167.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W.D. (2007b). El pensamiento decolonial: Desprendimiento y apertura. Un manifiesto [Decolonial thought: Delinking and opening. A manifest]. In Gómez, S. Castro & Grosfoguel, R. (Eds.), El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo (pp. 25–46). Bogotá, Colombia: Siglo del Hombre.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W.D. (2007c). Delinking. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3), 449–514.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W.D. (2011). Geopolitics of sensing and knowing: On (de) coloniality, border thinking and epistemic disobedience. Postcolonial Studies, 14 (3), 273–283.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W. (2013). On pluriversality. Retrieved September 14, 2016 from http://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/Google Scholar
Mignolo, W.D., & Tlostanova, M.V. (2006). Theorizing from the borders: Shifting the geo- and body-politics of knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2), 205–221.Google Scholar
Oviedo Freire, A. (2013). Buen Vivir vs Sumak Kawsay: Una reforma capitalista y revolución alter-nativa (2da ed.) [Good Living vs Sumak Kawsay: A capitalist reform and alternative revolution (2nd ed.)]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Ciccus.Google Scholar
Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina. [Coloniality of power, eurocentrism and Latin America]. Nepantla: Views from the South, 1 (3), 533–580.Google Scholar
Santos, B.d.S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers, London, United Kingdom.Google Scholar
Soto, D.P. (2007). Modernidad, eurocentrismo y colonialidad del saber [Modernity, eurocentrism and coloniality of knowledge]. Paper presented at the Seminario sobre el debate Modernidad y Posmodernidad y su incidencia en Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.Google Scholar
Tully, J. (2007). Strange multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an age of diversity, 8th ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tully, J. (2008). Modern constitutional democracy and imperialism. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 46 (3), 461–493.Google Scholar
Valle Velasco, L.F. (2013). The rights of mother earth in Bolivia, 1st ed. La Paz, Bolivia: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.Google Scholar
Vanhulst, J., & Beling, A.E. (2013). El Buen Vivir: Una utopía latinoamericana en el campo discursivo global de la sustentabilidad [Good Living: A Latin American utopia within the discursive field of global sustainability]. Polis Revista Latinoamericana, 36, 1–18.Google Scholar
Walsh, C. (2006). Interculturalidad y (de)colonialidad: Diferencia y nación de otro modo [Interculturality and (de)coloniality: Difference and another type of nation]. Paper presented at the 14th Conferencia Internacional Desarrollo e Interculturalidad, Imaginario y Diferencia: la nacion en el mundo andino, Quito, Ecuador.Google Scholar
Walsh, C. (2008). Interculturalidad, plurinacionalidad y decolonialidad: Las insurgencias politico-epistemicas de refundar el estado. [Interculturality, plurinationality and decoloniality: The political-epistemic insurgency of refunding the state]. Tabula Rasa, 9, 131– 152.Google Scholar
Walsh, C. (2010). Interculturalidad crítica y pedagogía de-colonial: In-surgir, re-existir y re-vivir. Entre Palabras. Revista de Educación en el Lenguaje, la Literatura y la Oralidad 3(4), 1–29.Google Scholar
Huarachi, S.Y. (2011). Cosmovivencia andina. Vivir y convivir en armonía integral—Suma Qamana [Andean Cosmo-coexistence. To live and to coexist in holistic harmony—Suma Qamana]. Bolivian Studies Journal, 18, 1–22.Google Scholar