Ecuador's "Good Living": Crises, Discourse and Law

by Carlos E. Gallegos Anda

Overview

In Ecuador's "Good Living" : Crises, Discourse, and Law scholar and Ecuadoran official Carlos E. Gallegos Anda presents a critical appraisal of the concept of Buen Vivir—or sumak kawsay by its indigenous name. Buen Vivir was enshrined in Ecuador's 2008 Constitution and purports to map out a community-centric and ecologically sound path for development. Due to its apparent legal novelty, this normative formula received much praise from multiple civil society and academic circles by forging what some argued to be a new development paradigm based on Andean epistemologies. Gallegos Anda theorizes this important phenomenon through an inductive analysis of context and power relations. Through a masterful navigation of epistemological fields, the author offers a critical theory of Buen Vivir that focuses on changing citizenship regimes, a retreating state, politicised ethnic cleavages, discursive democracy, and the emergence of an empty signifier.

Gallegos-Anda's book is the first to situate Buen Vivir in a theoretical context grounded in international human rights law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642596175
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Series:	Studies in Critical Social Sciences
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Carlos E. Gallegos Anda has served in various positions within the Ecuadorian Government and consulted for a number of international organizations. He has published monographs, translations and edited books regarding environmental law, indigenous rights, Latin-American politics, international public law and socioeconomic rights.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

Introduction 1

1 The Context of Good Living 3

2 Critical Approaches towards Good Living 13

3 Why Good Living? 18

4 On Methodology 20

5 Positioning Critical Good Living: Discourse and Rights 25

6 Book Layout 27

1 The Context of Good Living: Situating Theory and Method 31

1 Method 32

2 Politicised Ethnic Cleavage 38

3 The Retreating State 42

4 Changing Citizenship Regimes 47

5 Wider Theoretical Framing 52

6 Transnational Governmentality 54

7 Social Protest and Discursive Democracy 57

8 Conclusion 66

2 Good Living in the Academic Literature 67

1 Ecuadorian Discussions on Good Living 74

2 Indigenist or Pachamama Good Living 76

3 Developmental or Statist Good Living 88

4 Ecologist and Post-developmental Good Living 98

5 Critical Approaches towards Good Living: Power Not Ontology 102

3 The Critical juncture 108

1 Theory-guided Process Tracing 112

2 Development Paradigms in Indigenous Communities 114

3 Denning the Theory behind a Theory 116

4 Lead-up to the Critical Juncture: 1960-1979 118

4.1 Agrarian Revolts and Reforms 118

4.2 Oil Induced Military Nationalism 120

5 Economic, Institutional, and Political Breakdown 122

5.1 State Retreat 122

5.2 Regionalist Challenges to State Building 123

5.3 Economic Turmoil and Reform during the 1980s 124

5.4 The Financial Meltdown of the 1990s 125

5.5 Inter-branch Crises and Ghost Coalitions 128

6 Politicised Ethnic Cleavages: Rise and Fall of Indigenous Mobilisation 131

7 Changing Citizenship Regimes 144

7.1 The Quest for Civic Virtue 148

7.2 Constitutional Convergence and Graduated Sovereignty 153

7.3 Diffusion and the Scripts of Modernity 154

8 The Inter-American Human Rights System 156

8.1 Selected Jurisprudence: Vida Digna 158

8.2 The Graduated Sovereignty of the GATT 158

9 Conclusion 160

4 The Polymorphism of Good Living 161

1 The New Governmentality 166

2 Transnational Governmentality and the Critical Juncture 168

3 The Theme of Social Capital 172

4 Social Capital or the Myth of Ethnodevelopment 178

5 The Sources of Social Capital 182

6 The Master Framing of Transgressive Politics 185

7 The Empty Signifier Is Born 193

8 Yasuní: a Case Study on the Empty Signifier 199

9 Yasuni and the Discourse of Good Living 201

10 Conclusion 208

5 Beyond Living Well 209

1 Crafting Good Living: from Speaking to Listening 212

2 Exhaustion of the Rights Discourse 217

3 The Importation of Law: Local and International Influences 221

4 From Human Dignity to Vida Digna 225

5 Graduated Sovereignty and the Role of the IACtHR 228

6 The Vida Digna Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights 234

7 Convergence of Rights: Domestic Approaches to Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 238

8 Back to Basics: Recalibrating the "Engine Room of the Constitution" 241

9 Conclusion 243

Bibliography 245

Index 276