Logo degrowth
Scientific paper

Text

Good Life between Buen Vivir and Sumak Kawsay – Indicators of a political concept in Ecuador

Author:
Philipp Altmann

Entry type:
Scientific paper

Year of publication:
2014

Publishers:
Degrowth Conference Leipzig 2014

Language:
English

Abstract: Sumak Kawsay, Buen Vivir or Good Live has experienced much attention since its integration as a leading principle of the State into the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 and -as Suma Qamaña- into the Bolivian one of 2009. In this context it was understood as an alternative to the capitalist understandings of development as growth. By this, it acquired a role as a semi-utopian alternative within the discourse of an ecologist left that is more interested in looking for connections and local tradition of this concept in order to diffuse it that to try a concrete description of the concept of Good Life. Still, the Good Life counts with a series of more or less concrete indicators, both in the definition of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement -the actor that introduced this concept in Ecuador- and the one of the government, that can allow an impression of how the construction of a society or a State of Good Live could work.

Share on the corporate technosphere