Search

This commentary presents a broader perspective on the paper Psychopolitical foresensing for social transformation (PFST): theoretical reflections for action research in Brazil towards the SDGs. It is generally accepted that the current path of capitalism is accelerating the planetary climate crisis and social inequality and is bringing an individual and collective feeling of frustration.Cimini and Homem’s brings in their paper a proposal in tackle this frustration feeling through advancing the theory of change (ToC) concept by creating a framework for an action research project based on awareness-based systems change (ABSC). I highlight three relevant contexts to Brazil to be considered in their action research project: i. Decolonization and good living: concepts in Brazil’s current transformation mindset; ii. Nature-based solutions: the value of socio-biocultural diversity in Brazil; and iii. Practical experience on building a participatory ToC for the Amazon. Cimini and Homem’s proposed journey on PFST aiming to expand on ToCs approach by adding ABSC methodologies using presence-sense-reconnection, seems to be a path to integrate inner and out change with social and cultural transformation. They have a great opportunity, combined with a challenge, to plant a seed in leaders and changemakers in expanding their views of how impact can be generated. They can be bold in the PFST journey by enhancing awareness and actions, going beyond the SDGs, and bringing light to Brazil’s position as a global leader in nature-based solutions to face climate change.

This work arises within the framework of the Pehuajó Solidarity Network (RSP), where a voluntary group, independent since 1997, meets alternating kitchen/s to discuss some issues of interest related to signs and symptoms that a member of their family suffered, without know the condition of Celiac disease. Currently, the fact of being celiac in the social context where one lives and/or in the tourist places that they visit, do not always meet the nutritional needs of children, adolescents, young people, adults, people in general who they suffer from Celiac disease. That is to say, the achievement of Municipal Ordinance 94/2019 in district 079 of the province of Buenos Aires and the Laws: National and Provincial in Argentina are still known and are gradually being complied with, being the Gastronomic offer, sale of food, services of confectionery, among other insufficient. They do not have at least one menu for celiacs, with few exceptions. In other words, the group of aware independent volunteers not only incorporates knowledge to self-manage celiac disease, but as an informal entity it is managing to transpose in formal institutions, the community of the contextterritory, non-profit activities with the objective of: disseminate, raise awareness and make celiac disease visible as a pedagogical strategy. That is, to make visible the advances developed in the 21st century, the very concept of this chronic disease, which went from being defined as a mere food intolerance, to being recognized as a systemic pathology with an autoimmune basis.

In the face of global crises, various communities around the globe have been undertaking counter-hegemonic alternatives for social and productive organization. This essay takes up this premise, and through a narrative review of the academic literature and from a decolonial perspective, discusses the role of ecovillages within the pluriverse of alternatives, aiming to contribute to a critical reflection on the community confluence processes that strive to be both fair and ecological. It is understood that the socio-environmental practices of ecovillages, in confluence with the plurality of networked community alternatives, tend to represent a promising path for the necessary transition towards a fair and low-carbon society, in tune with the three-pronged dimensions of cultural identity, social equity and ecological sustainability associated with the communal ethics of Good Living.

In the context of the current systemic crisis, neoliberal capitalism is widely questioned for its unsustainability, but there is a lack of proposals from other epistemological and ontological frameworks that allow the construction of real alternatives of economy and existence. From a critical perspective, based on a field work in the Araucanía region of southern Chile, between 2010 and 2020, in this article it is analyzed the resignification of the economy based on the systematization of the economic and life principles of the Mapuche people, based on kelluwün, or reciprocity, and the equilibrium between subject, community and biodiverse environment, with their material and immaterial dimensions necessary for the production and reproduction of life. In the reconstitution of the lof as an ancestral socio-territorial basic unit, the original conception of economy can be repositioned, centered on the oikos, the foundation of proposals for economic and political autonomy.

A pesar de su diversidad étnica y cultural, Colombia no se presenta como referente del buen vivir en los ámbitos académico o político. Por esto, el presente trabajo busca analizar la existencia de los postulados del buen vivir a partir del estudio de tres pronunciamientos de la Corte Constitucional colombiana en los que se han resuelto conflictos sobre el modelo de desarrollo. Se puede anticipar que, en estos fallos, la Corte ha apostado por elementos afines al buen vivir, implícita o explícitamente, mediante una crítica a la irreflexibidad economicista con la que se asume el proyecto de desarrollo extractivo colombiano y el respaldo que otorgó a las diversas formas de vida de las comunidades involucradas en estos conflictos.

Abstract The negative impact of hydropower companies is cushioned frequently through compensation that is proportional neither to the needs of communities nor to the energy business. Considering the dependence of hydropower on the environment, it is unclear how the good living of communities can be combined with the long-term sustainability of power companies. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to establish a benefit sharing scheme between hydropower companies and local communities. We conducted a systematic literature review using a sequential mixed-method approach. In the first stage, we performed a quantitative bibliometric analysis, and its results, described in Model 1.0, were the basis of the second stage. Consequently, in the second stage, we conducted a content analysis of 40 documents to enrich the previous version of the model in Framework 2.0. After completing both the methodological stages, we prepared a theoretical operational framework for benefit sharing based on collaborative governance that assigned different specific weights for companies and local communities. Equal benefit sharing is the result of an adaptive process that depends on (1) the performance of companies, (2) the level of empowerment of communities and (3) the state’s capacity to intervene in setting rules of engagement that help reduce power asymmetries between companies and the society.

The framework of analysis for “buen vivir” (good living) requires new metrics that fit this theoretical perspective and its social mandates. Following Ramírez’s conceptual-methodological proposal (2012, 2019), it will be argued that studying “good living” implies analyzing the distribution and concentration of time well lived (tBV). To demonstrate the applicability and fruitfulness of this approach, a statistical comparison of the concentration of tBV between Germany and Ecuador is performed. This analysis yields three results: 1) At the macro level, the country with the higher level of development presents higher levels of tBV; 2) At the micro level, in Ecuador, the higher the level of income, the more tBV its citizens enjoy. In Germany, the opposite is true; 3) The composition of tBV varies between the two countries. Ecuadorians devote twice as much time to sociability as Germans.

Abstract The Kankuamo people from Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta [SNSM], Colombia, are undergoing a process of recovering their local knowledge and self-determination as an indigenous people; however, exogenous information affects their decisions and contributes to their acculturation. In this contr nnovative ones recommended by the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation [AGROSAVIA]. This study seeks to contribute to the construction of a Hybrid Methodology that integrates the two positions by identifying emerging points of intersection in social, cultural, agro-environmental, political, and economic activities in its territory. It concludes on the need to align technological innovation strategies with the “Law of Origin” that governs the life of its people in the search for “good living”, to adopt them without detriment to their autonomy and cosmogony.

This article presents the results of doctoral research centered on manifestations of taste in the home and in decoration. The house is analyzed as a place for acquiring social dispositions and symbolic struggles between elite segments of Recife (Pernambuco). The research is based on 20 interviews with homeowners conducted by an important Recife newspaper, analysis of documentary sources, and observation of interior design shows.

Environmental issues such as the progressive loss of biodiversity on a global scale and climate change cannot be separated from other territorial problems caused by social injustice, economic inequality, access to natural resources, gender violence and the fight for human and nature’s rights. The evaluation of biodiversity management strategies must by necessity draw on a retrospective look at the interpretation of the problem and the conceptual approach of the general territorial management policies in which they are framed. From a critical view, these approaches have different nuances depending on the historical journey, theories and main actors involved with territorial policies in different regions of the world. In this work, we apply qualitative content analysis to contrast the key concepts on which the main European territorial policies of recent decades have been based with the main guidelines of the emerging Latin American territorial perspectives. Thus, we seek to initiate a dialogue between the northern hemisphere’s globally hegemonic notions of nature, territory, biodiversity and its management and new theories and proposals from the South, whilst simultaneously contrasting both with the content of the latest Convention on Biological Biodiversity Strategic Plan 2011–2020. We conclude with some recommendations aimed at building bridges and contributing to the construction of future global conservation strategies from a critical and territorial perspective that tends towards integrating sustainability with social and environmental justice.

Resumen El coronavirus nos aterrizó en el mundo real, la posibilidad de soñar y de plantear utopías no ha desaparecido. Bajo ese escenario abordar la gran transformación, en términos de Karl Polanyi (1944), es un ejercicio apuntalado en el optimismo de la voluntad. Y desde esa perspectiva abramos el debate desde el Sur global rescatando el Buen Vivir, en plural, y el decrecimiento desde el otro lado, es decir desde el Norte global. El decrecimiento y el Buen Vivir, para abordar esta aproximación debemos poner atención al visibilizar las críticas y las potencialidades, poniéndolas en un contexto amplio, ofreciendo todos los elementos posibles que orienten la reflexión, todo con un necesario horizonte postcapitalista. Esta discusión nos ofrece un aporte doble, nos da pistas de cómo puede ser ese otro mundo posible; digámoslo de entrada un mundo en donde quepan muchos mundos: el pluriverso, en donde todos los seres humanos y no humanos puedan vivir con dignidad. Resumo O coronavírus desembarcou no mundo real, a possibilidade de sonhar e fazer utopias não desapareceu. Nesse cenário, abordar a grande transformação, em termos de Karl Polanyi, é um exercício sustentado pelo otimismo da vontade. E a partir dessa perspectiva, abrimos o debate do Sul global, resgatando o Bem Viver, no plural, e a diminuição do outro lado, ou seja, do Norte global. A diminuição e o Bom Viver, para abordar essa abordagem, devemos prestar atenção para tornar visíveis as críticas e as potencialidades, colocando-as em um contexto amplo, oferecendo todos os elementos possíveis que norteiam a reflexão, todos com um horizonte pós-capitalista necessário. Essa discussão nos oferece uma dupla contribuição, nos dá pistas de como esse outro mundo poderia ser possível; Vamos dizer desde o início um mundo onde muitos mundos se encaixam: o pluriverso, onde todos os seres humanos e não humanos podem viver com dignidade. Abstract The coronavirus landed us in the real world, the possibility of dreaming and posing utopias has not disappeared. Under this scenario, addressing the great transformation, in terms of Karl Polanyi, is an exercise underpinned by the optimism of the will. And from that perspective we open the debate from the global South rescuing Good Living, in the plural, and the decrease from the other side, that is, from the global North. The decrease and the Good Living, to approach this approach we must pay attention to make visible the criticisms and the potentialities, putting them in a broad context, offering all the possible elements that guide the reflection, all with a necessary post-capitalist horizon. This discussion offers us a double contribution, it gives us clues of how that other world could be possible; Let's say it from the outset a world where many worlds fit: the pluriverse, where all human and non-human beings can live with dignity.

This contribution to the collection of articles on “African Cultural Models” considers the topic of well-being. Reflecting modern individualist selfways of North American and European worlds, normative conceptions of well-being in hegemonic psychological science tend to valorize self-acceptance, personal growth, and autonomy. In contrast, given the embedded interdependence of everyday life in many West African worlds, one can hypothesize that cultural models of well-being in many Ghanaian settings will place greater emphasis on sustainability-oriented themes of material sufficiency and successful navigation of normative obligations. To explore this hypothesis, we interviewed local cultural experts who function as custodians of religion and an important source of support for well-being in many Ghanaian settings. We asked participants to identify and explain models of well-being implicit in four Ghanaian languages (Akan, Dagbani, Ewe, and Ga). Participants were 19 men and 15 women (age range 32–92 years; Mean = 59.83; SD: 14.01). Results reveal some features of local models, including good health and positive affective states, that appear to resonate with standard understandings of well-being in hegemonic psychological science. However, results also provide evidence for other features of local models – specifically, good living (including moral living, material success, and proper relationality) and peace of mind – associated with a sustainability or maintenance orientation to well-being.

During the last decades of the twentieth century, increasing social environmental awareness added up to the gradual penetration of environmental thinking into the Latin American states’ developmental policymaking. For Ecuador, this cocktail resulted in the long-run in a particular discourse, which emerged in the dawn of the twenty-first century, buen vivir. Central to rationalize buen vivir was its socioecological dimension, founded on a harmonic relationship between society and nature. Buen vivir was meant to materialize in a plan to save a significant portion of the Ecuadorian Amazonia from oil drilling by leaving about one quarter of the country’s oil reserves under the ground in exchange for an international monetary compensation: The Yasuní-ITT initiative. Despite the fact that the plan mobilized state and society, it succumbed to forty-years of dependence on oil of Ecuadorian economy, politics, and society. The termination of the initiative unveiled two antagonist environmental discourses traditionally held by the state and society. Whereas the state held the notion of natural resources available for commodification in the global market, society bet on other meanings of nature such as natural heritage and ancient peoples’ habitat and means of existence. As outcomes of the foreseeable divorce between the antagonist environmental discourses that rested on different meanings of nature, buen vivir turned into a polyphonic concept and the struggle over a hegemonic environmental discourse resumed. It is argued that during the twenty-first century, one of the consequences of such a struggle is the construction of different meanings of development alike.

The concept of “Development” from the neoliberal vision presents no positive results in social or natural material. Alternative models that advocate “Good Living”, born in Bolivia and Ecuador, face the concept of development as a break with capitalism. This paradigm presents the impossibility to transfer to the practice the guiding principles, loses its paradigm condition by applying the same tools and methodologies on the territory that refer to development. The aim of this paper is to raise the existing discussion between these contradictory models originally to infer an alternative view from the Ecuadorian constitutional reality. This will define the epistemological framework for generating one opening to proposals that address the socio-ecological transition posed Good Living. This disruptive sense cannot be resolved by reinterpreting the concept of development. A theoretical and methodological restructuring that allow more equitable ways to address the territory is needed.

In this work I am interested in reflecting on the group called the Movement of Indigenous Women for Good Living in Argentina that, since 2015, has been generating different actions in the public arena, denouncing various conflicts that affect indigenous peoples in the country and proposing a new cohabitability pact that ensures a Good Living. We chose to focus on the political dimension of their claims and proposals, trying to make the analysis contribute to reflecting on indigenous politics on their own terms. We analyze the formation of the group and its self-registration as indigenous women, attending to possible connections and disconnections with other feminisms, in order to track the logic of policy and politics. We also investigate their slogans, claims and proposals, focusing finally on their proposal of Good Living. This analysis allows us to glimpse how they move between these two logics of action but also urge us to schedule discussions that anthropologically concern the relationship between ontology and politics.

In this article we show the theoretical-regulatory basis of Good Living, understood as a transformation proposal of Latin American socioeconomic systems that aims to overcome the problems of bad development (alienation, inequality and unsustainability). So to achieve the objectives of identity, equity and sustainability, we propose a political strategy of the creation of a plurinational, post-capitalist and biocentric society.

This paper aims to critically analyze the relevance of ethnography as an alternative work for degree qualification, which is referred to in the Regulation of the Academic Regime 2013, issued by the Higher Education Council, CES. The selection of ethnography as a method of research work will enable students to strengthen the research skills and develop their skills in real contexts of community service. The proposal has been preceded by experiences of qualitative research that were conducted in Institutional Academic Projects in vulnerable sectors of Milagro city, Ecuador, in 2012 and 2013. In that draft some techniques were applied such as participant observation, informal interview, and document analysis, these techniques go hand in hand with ethnography. The main purpose was to establish the causes of the low participation of people and their level of involvement in the educational process of their children, linked to a need to influence the improvement of the educational quality and quality of life. With research expertise and knowledge of the legal framework, it is expected to demonstrate the feasibility of intervention ethnography in socio-educational problems and the possible use as an alternative for Degree qualification in Education

In the text I intend to trace the outlines of the thought of the indigenous peoples organizations in Latin America in the last 40 years, who began the elaboration of demands for respect and support for the national states and today propose higher levels of self-management, autonomy, struggle for life and Mother Earth. Simultaneously and often in dialogue with the people mentioned, the main proposals of critical thinking in the anthropological, social and related fields, on the development, alternative development, and post-development sciences. Based on readings and interpretations of various texts on both subjects, personal experience in academic research and supporting local initiatives in Mexico and other countries, as well as the analysis of the processes of the past 10 years, some ways are proposed to continue the critical and reflective dialogue.

This article proposes to replenish the multidimensional and multi-scale character of the ecological issue embodied in the “good living” proposals of Ecuador and Bolivia by focusing on three aspects: i) the multiple meanings of nature that coexist in the regulations and national plans of both countries; ii) the statement about the interdependence and complementarity of the rights of nature relative to individual and collective rights, and iii) the circulation of these proposals from Latin America’s Andean region in the global arena.

The Amazon, that huge South American territory which accommodates two main dichotomies, abundance and violence, is permanently struggling between life and death. For a long time the immense Amazon rainforest was seen as a reserve of natural resources where the capital would go shopping as it pleased. The very complexity of this territory requires new perspectives and alternative proposals to prevent its potential devastation. This territory has a life of its own and generates new knowledge; the very same knowledge the Western model is trying to silence, which also explains why it has become a territory of resistance. It is a matter of urgency to think about global alternatives and, above all, places for the different problems before it is too late. Comprehensive answers are needed to move towards good living or sumak kawsay, and to enable us to consider a post-extractive and post-capitalist society. Decommodifying the Amazon is the pressing challenge.

In 2008, Ecuador reformed its Constitution after a prolonged period of economic, social and political crises. The momentary rupturing of power structures, that had limited political participation to small clusters of elites, opened participatory spaces for historically marginalised social groups to engage in the process of constitutional drafting. As a result of this unprecedented political shift in participation and inclusiveness, alternative notions of cultural, social and economic rights surfaced. This progressive constitutionalism is thus a novel attempt at overcoming legal formalism in favour of a Living Law, a law that embraces the contextual settings where it will be applied by scrutinising the historic power structures that have moulded it. Good Living as a legal principle underlines the enactment of a Living Law.

Grey spring or spring without flowers, without colours ¿due to the massive disparition of bees and with them the key action to pollination¿ is a reflection on the necessity and urgency to manage environmentally the world. Precisely on this subject our vital and beloved professor Demetrio Loperena Rota used to stand out, whose memory and good work help to straighten out the environmental governance. This work, after explaining the importance of ecosistemic services of pollination that are mainly carried out by bees and the causes of its deterioration, proposes solutions to deal with the so alarming lost of biodiversity. The proposal to respond to the challege of the crisis of biodiversity sets limits to the expansion of the economic sphere albeit as a conservationist strategy, by means of a renewed colective regulaton on the uses of territories and their ecosistemic services, predicting a good life for all of them.

Este trabajo examina el concepto de vivir bien-buen vivir ponderando sus contribuciones y limitaciones. Esta cosmovisión tiene un horizonte normativo más ambicioso que el paradigma del desarrollo, pues apuesta por una concepción de la pobreza y la riqueza que no se reduce a la acumulación de bienes materiales, una economía que comprende sus efectos sobre la naturaleza y se centra en la satisfacción de necesidades, y una descolonización de los saberes. No obstante, se caracteriza por un déficit de operacionalización que se manifiesta en la dificultad para definir políticas concretas e indicadores de medición precisos.******This article examines the concept of live well-good living, by analyzing its contributions and limitations. This worldview has a normative horizon more ambitious than the development paradigm, as it wagers for a poverty and wealth conception that is not limited to the accumulation of material goods, but it is an economy aware of its effects on nature and the satisfaction of needs and the decolonizing of knowledge. Nevertheless, it is characterized by an operationalization deficit that is shown through the difficulty to establish specific policies and accurate indicators of measurement.

This essay tries to shed light on six open debates about sumak kawsay, its meaning, translation, origin, cultural referent, relation with development, and destination. Such debates are analyzed from the premise that the authors who participate in them do so from different cultural paradigms (Andean worldview, modernism, or post-modernism) and from different schools of thought (socialist and statist, indigenist and pachamamista, or ecologist and post-developmentalist).

The current work seeks to identify affinities and dissonance between the good living (buen vivir) to which legal and political priority was given in recent constitutional reforms in Ecuador and Bolivia and the common good (bien común), which in a parallel manner is flourishing in public debate in Italy–and in Europe in general–given several concrete experiences in defending and re- appropriating resources identified as “common.” Such a comparative perspective has brought about two possible interpretations of the relationship between the concepts in question: We can consider the common good as a general concept from which good living would be a local specificity or we can consider it as a constitutive element of the paradigm of good living with respect to which it is found in a relation of implication.

This article aims to describe how biotechnology becomes an obligatory passage point in the new Ecuadorian development model and how this helps to give meaning to the notion of good living that governs political rhetoric. Using Actor-Network Theory, we intend to show the distances that are maintained between political discourse and practices of biotechnology that are carried out in the country. It is of particular interest to make visible the controversies that arise between the duty of biotechnology -seen as a response to local problems and close to good living and the Pacha Mama-, and planning committed to science and technology transfer through models such as those proposed by South Korea with their knowledge cities.

En versiones no oficiales del nuevo Código Orgánico de Relaciones Laborales que se discute actualmente en el país, se contempla la posibilidad de distribuir el máximo de 40 horas semanales en seis días en lugar de cinco, reconociendo el recargo de apenas el 25% (en lugar del 100%) en las horas que se ejecuten durante el sexto día de labor, en franca oposición a los principios esenciales de la intangibilidad y de no regresividad de los derechos laborales, a los postulados de la Constitución, que reconoce y garantiza a toda persona una vida digna que asegure, entre otros derechos, el trabajo, el empleo, el descanso, el ocio y la salud (en definitiva los medios para conciliar el trabajo con la vida personal y familiar), y a las políticas públicas reflejadas en los Planes Nacionales del Buen Vivir. In unofficial versions of the new Labor Code that are currently being discussed in the country, it is included the possibility to distribute the maximum of 40 working hours per week in six days instead of five, recognizing a surcharge of only 25% (instead of 100%) in the working hours during the sixth day. This proposal is directly opposed to the essential principles of the non-derogability and non-regressivity of the labor rights, to the Constitutional principles that recognize and guarantee a dignified life to everyone, which includes rights to work, employment, rest, leisure and health (the means to balance work with personal and family life) and to public policies reflected in the National Plans for Good Living.

ResumenEn este texto se realiza un análisis desde la perspectiva andina del concepto del Buen Vivir a partir de la Constitución ecuatoriana, redactada en Montecristi y aprobada en 2008. En ésta, el Buen Vivir es un derecho reconocido junto a los derechos de la Naturaleza. En el contenido de esta Constitución afloran múltiples propuestas para impulsar transformaciones de fondo, construidas a lo largo de muchas décadas de resistencias y de luchas sociales, en las que se fueron construyendo propuestas alternativas de desarrollo e incluso alternativas al desarrollo, como lo es el Buen Vivir para el desarrollo de la ciudadanía y los pueblos.AbstractThis essay is an analysis from the Andean vision of the concept of Good Living based on the Ecuadorian Constitution, drafted in Montecristi and approved in 2008. In it, the Good Living is a right recognized along with the rights of the Nature. From the contents of this Constitution emerge multiple proposals to promote fundamental changes, built up over many decades of resistance and social struggles in which were built alternative development proposals and even alternatives to development, as is the Good living for the development of citizens and peoples.

Este artículo nos lleva, más allá de la crisis económica, hacia el calentamiento global y nos advierte de un problema profundo: un defecto estructural en el capitalismo. Vinculando teóricamente cambio climático, colonialismo y capitalismo, se estudia a San Lorenzo como una frontera agrícola en la que el CO2lonialismo se despliega a través del cultivo de palma aceitera y la producción de agrocombustibles. Esta investigación resalta las prácticas culturales y espaciales a través de las cuales las comunidades afro-ecuatoriana, chachi, y awá construyen y sostienen “geografías de esperanza” en medio de bosques talados, ríos envenenados y conflictos sociales. A través de la exposición detallada de la deuda ecológica del Norte global con el Sur global, este artículo condena discursos y acciones que se enfocan en el mejoramiento del clima económico mientras arrasan los bosques húmedos, las prácticas culturales de vida de las comunidades y las soluciones reales al cambio climático.This paper takes us beyond the present economic crisis to where global warming warns of a much more profound problem: a structural flaw in capitalism. Theoretically linking relations between climate change, colonialism, and capitalism, San Lorenzo is investigated as an agricultural frontier where “CO2lonialism” unfolds in African oil palm cultivation and agrofuel production. This research highlights the cultural and spatial practices through which Afro-Ecuadorian, Chachi, and Awá communities construct and sustain “geographies of hope” amid landscapes of fallen forests, poisoned rivers and social conflicts. Expounding on the ecological debt of the Global North to the Global South, this paper condemns discourses and actions that solely focus on improving the economic climate while bulldozing rainforests, livelihoods, and real solutions to climate change.