Ecological Economim

Ecological Economim 101 (2014) 54-63

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Ecological Economics

ESEVIER

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon

Methodological and Ideological Options

Buen vivir: Emergent discourse within or beyond

sustainable development?

® CmssMa.rk

julien Vanhulst a'*, Adrian E. Beling "'c'd

3 Universidad Catolica del Maule, Facultad de Ciencias Sodales y Economicas, Avda San Miguel 3605 - Casilla 617, Talca, Chile

'’ Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Facultad de Ciencias Social$, Cienfuegos 46, Santiago de Chile, Chile

C Global Studies Programme, FLA(30 Argentina, Ayacucho 555 (C1026AAC) Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Air$, Argentina

d Humboldt-Universitdt zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultdt III, Institutfiir Sozialwissenschaften, LB Vergleichende Strukturanalyse, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

/‘Tt1'€1_€ l“'5t0TJ’-' This paper sets out to review the content of Buen vivir (‘good living‘) as an emergent discourse, reflecting

Received 7 August 2013 on its genesis and contributions to the sustainability debate, as well as on incipient attempts at its institu-

Received in revised form 22 February 2014

Accepted 25 February 2014

Available online 19 March 2014

tionalization. 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 continent's indigenous cultures, this discourse has been theorized in

$33,/mfg,-Sr‘ the academic sphere and translated into normative principles that have started to permeate the public,

gumak Kawsay but also the political sphere, especially in Ecuador and Bolivia. In this article we refer to Buen vivir as the

Sustainable development contemporary discursive reelaboration of the Quechua concept Sumak Kai/vsay and similar principles

Discourse from other indigenous peoples. It includes both the idea of interdependence between society and nature

Latin America

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.

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In the second half of the 20th century the idea of ‘development’

asserted itselfas the main vector of the modern ideology of progress.

It seemed to describe a universal horizon, modeled after Western

standards and then disseminated globally. But ‘development’ was

eventually recognized to be a pathway ultimately leading to chronic cri-

ses in the sociopolitical, environmental and economic fields. As a

consequence, several ‘substitute’ discourses have emerged alongside

the axial idea of development; e.g. the call for “another development"

in the report What now? by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation

(1975), the proposals of a “Human scale development" (Max—Neef

et al., 1986; Schumacher, 1973), “De—growth" (Georgescu—Roegen,

1971; Latouche, 2006), “Maldevelopment" (Amin, 1990; Tortosa,

2001, i.a.), “Post—development",‘ “Human development" (UNDP,

* Corresponding author at: Universidad Catolica del Maule, Facultad de Ciencias

Sociales y Economicas, Avda. San Miguel 3605 - Casilla 617, Talca, Chile. Tel.: +56 71

2203770.

E-mail addresses: julienvanhulst@ulb.ac.be (J. Vanhulst), abeling@flacso.org.ar

(AE. Beling).

1 This trend of thought is wide and expanding, as exemplified in the work of Wolfgang

Sachs, Serge Latouche, Gustavo Esteva, Ivan lllich, Arturo Escobar, i.a. In this article we con-

sider, by way of illustration, the texts compiled by Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree in

the Post-Development Reader (1997).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016[j.ecolecon.2014.02.017

0921 -8009/© 2014 Elsevier BV. All rights reserved.

1990), “Development as Freedom" (Sen, 1999), and, finally, “Sustain—

able development" (SD).

SD arose from the hybridization of social development and ecologi-

cal theories. Indeed, since the late 1960s, given the growing evidence

of human responsibility in global environmental change, debates on

the relationship between development and the environment increased.

The idea of SD emerged from this problematization of the relationship

between society and its natural environment. Its roots certainly lie

with environmentalism, but also with the progressive codification of

the society/environment equation (Adams and Jeanrenaud, 2008;

O'Riordan, 1999; Pestre, 2011 ), and thus SD gradually became a central

axis in policy design, but also in civil society contestations, business

strategies, and in basic and applied research from the human and the

natural sciences (Adams, 2001; Dryzek, 2005; Elliott, 2006; Sachs,

1999; Zacca'1',2002,2012).

Therefore, from the outset, there is no single meaning of SD, but

rather a wide range of interpretations guided by specific views

(Adams, 2001; Dryzek, 2005; Hopwood et al., 2005; Jacobs, 1999; Lele,

1991, 2013; Sachs, 1997, 1999; Sneddon et al., 2006). In the words of

Sneddon et al., “Our Common Future marked, anchored and guided the

rise of a remarkable political debate, indeed a whole new political

discourse across contesting interests, from grounded practitioners to

philosophical academics, from indigenous peoples to multinational cor-

porations" (2006, p. 254). This polysemic nature of SD should not,

]. Vanhulst AE. Beling/Ecological Economics 101 (2014) 54-63 55

however, be regarded as an impediment for making meaningful distinc-

tions among its multiple interpretations according to the greater or less-

er integration of several core dimensions, notions and debates,

including environmental protection, the notion of development, de-

mocracy, a principle of intergenerational and international equity and

a global outlook (Haughton, 1999, pp. 235-237; Sneddon et al., 2006,

p. 261; Zacca'1', 2002, p. 39).

SD will thus be treated here neither as a concept nor as a theory, but

rather as a discourse2 or, more precisely, a hybrid and diffuse global dis-

cursive field made up from the “argumentative interaction" (Hajer,

2006, 1997) between culturally and politically localized discourses

with specific worldviews which compete for hegemony. This is the

perspective endorsed by Wolfgang Sachs, who addresses SD as a

“discursive field" (Sachs, 1997, p. 71) and differentiates discourses ac-

cording to their assessment of ‘development’ and the way they link

ecology and social justice (Sachs, 1999, 1997).]ohn Dryzek also adopts

a discursive approach, classifying environmental discourses according

to how far they challenge and redefine the notion of “industrialism"

and the political and economical chessboard (Dryzek, 2005, pp.

14-15). In line with Dryzek, Hopwood et al. (2005) provide a useful cat-

egorization of existing discourses in the field of SD: status quo, reform,

and transformation; according to the degree to which they adopt rather

an anthropocentric or an ecocentric approach, on the one hand, and to

which consideration they give to questions of social equality, on the

other. They further emphasize that, at present, the policy outlook is

dominated by the status quo approach, which is an “inadequate answer

to the need of sustainable development" (Hopwood et al., 2005, p. 48).

Finally, in this vein, Sneddon et al. emphasize the need to consider

SD in a “pluralistic" way, rather than searching for a single correct

approach towards sustainability (Sneddon et al., 2006, p. 262). This

approach basically seeks to retrieve the key ideals of SD (i.e. equity with-

in and across generations, places and social groups; ecological integrity;

and human well—being) as standard reference for the assessment of

current institutions and forms of governance. His basic argument paral-

lels that of Charles Taylor concerning “the need to undertake a ‘work of

retrieval’ to ‘identify and articulate the higher ideal’ of the ethics of

modernity rather than simply criticizing its more perverse forms of

practice" (Sneddon et al., 2006, p. 264).

The aim of this article is to describe and analyze one particular way

of appropriation and reformulation of the SD discourse

...