Latin American-postdevelopment relationalities

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Please find the discusion page for Latin American-postdevelopmental relationalities HERE.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, activists, communities, and social movements have highlighted the importance of Latin American relational lifeways and scholarship for sustainability transformations (Escobar 2015; Beling et al. 2018; Gallegos-Riofrio et al. 2022). Latin American relationalities are exceptionally diverse, enacted through Indigenous, afro-descendent, peasant, student, environmentalist, and women’s movements, among others, and articulated by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars writing across the Global South and North (Escobar 2015; Feola et al. 2021). Examples include the Zapatista movement in Mexico (Maldonado-Villalpando et al. 2022), peasant movements in Colombia (Feola et al. 2021), Indigenous philosophies and governance approaches such as Sumak Kawsay or Suma Qamaña (translated into Spanish as Vivir Bien or Buen Vivir, and in English as ‘living well’) in the Bolivian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian Andes (Jimenez et al. 2022), as well as the work of scholars such as Paulo Freire and Humberto Maturana, among many others (Souza et al. 2019). Such approaches often seek to support spaces of territorial and political sovereignty to pursue ways of living through relational ontologies emphasising care, the commons, and collective governance and educational practices focusing on social-ecological wellbeing (Maldonado-Villalpando et al. 2022:1302). Increasingly, diverse Latin American relationalities have been collectively framed as enacting resistance to neoliberal capitalism and extractivism through ‘alternatives to development’ or ‘postdevelopment’ – sometimes in dialogue with structural-dialectical approaches, including the degrowth movement in the Global North – as territorially situated but globally networked movements towards social-ecological transformation (Escobar 2015; Beling et al. 2021; Lang 2022).

Human-nature connectedness

In identifying some of the common threads woven through Latin American postdevelopment approaches, Escobar (2015:459) highlights the importance of ‘communality’ between humans and nonhumans, writing that “communal worlds are relational worlds, defined as those worlds in which nothing pre-exists the relations that constitute it (reality is relational through and through), as opposed to the dualist ontologies that predominate in modern worlds, where entities are seen as existing on their own (the ‘individual,’ ‘nature’, ‘the world’), prior to their inter-relations.” For example, Feola et al. (2021:7) explore territorios campesinos agroalimentarios (TCAs; or agrofood peasant territories in English) in Colombia as an example of sustainability transformation, quoting Daza (2017) as writing: “We are the water from the mountains, the water from the mountains is in our bodies, because we, our grandparents, great-grandparents, we all have this water and the minerals it contains in our body. We are the land because we eat the products and the minerals that the land gives; they are in our bodies.” Describing the philosophy and practice of Buen Vivir, Gudynas (2011) writes that “it is a space of well-being in which people, animals and crops live together,” which means that “political communities […] are not restricted to people, and there is a place in them for the nonhuman (in some cases there will be other beings, or elements of the environment, or even spirits)” [translation by the authors]. For example, Jimenez et al. (2022:1640) explore innovation in the Parque de la Papa (‘Potato Park’) established by the Chawaytire, Pampallaqta, Sacaca, Paru Paru, and Amaru Indigenous communities in the Pisaq region in Cuzco, Peru. Leaders of the park explain that that to achieve Sumak Kawsay, “harmony must be sought between three different ayllus [collectiveness]: the runa ayllu (humans and domesticated species), sallka ayllu (wild and semi-domesticated species), and auki ayllu (the sacred and the ancestors).”

Agency and leadership

Latin American relationalities often enact distributed and communal forms of agency and leadership. Mancilla Garcia (2013) writes that Aymara communities around Lake Titicaca are organised with a rotatory leadership that falls on each of the families of the community, typically every year, ensuring that all families reach a position of authority within a short time period. This leadership is understood as provisional and its success is measured by the capacity to mobilise the community. Kaul et al. (2022:1150), in discussing alternatives to development in Latin America, India, Africa, and Europe, among others, suggest that attention to relational collectives unsettles a tendency in sustainability science to reify the agency of either individuals or states. In Latin American relationalities agency also often extends beyond the human. de la Cadena (2022), working with Mariano and Nazario Turpo, highlights the agency expressed by ‘earth beings’ in the Peruvian Andes: “co-labouring with the Turpos I learned about ‘ayllu’ as a relational condition whereby runakuna-with-tirakuna emerge inherently together; through such relation they take-place and become distinctly each other […] runakuna is Quechua for people, and the word tirakuna combines the Spanish tierra, with kuna the pluralising Quechua suffix. I translated tirakuna as earth beings, they can be where/what we call mountains.”

Scale and scaling

The primary scalar reality in many Latin American relationalities is that of the territory. For example, Feola et al. (2021:6), in the context of TCAs in Colombia, write that “local peasant communities share a deep-rooted cultural identity defined in relation to territory […] Due to this strong connection between land and identity, the idea of a territorio campesino (peasant territory) […] was an old aspiration of local peasants.” The peasants’ emphasis on territory is combined with a strong sense of respect for other territorial arrangements, such as those of Indigenous and afro-descendent communities (Feola et al. 2021:7). Meanwhile, Lang (2022:193) describes how the first Indigenous mayor and administration of Cayambe County, in the Ecuadorian Andes, attempted to apply ancestral knowledge and principles of Sumak Kawsay at the municipal level, for example through the introduction of the minga (communitarian labour) as a way to carry out public works, and issuing a law to ensure the care of the páramo highlands as a commons, recognising that “the páramos, forests and wetlands constitute living beings.” The recognition of deep connections between people and places, and the diversity of territorial arrangements, has generated the ‘pluriverse’ as an alternative notion of scaling to the “universalism of the [Western] development project” (Kaul et al. 2022:1149), instead supporting “a plural yet interdependent ecology of knowledges and practices, opening up space for alternative socio-cognitive and normative structures for social action towards sustainability” (Vanhulst & Beling 2019:115). Indeed, movements around Buen Vivir, for example, have been articulated by activists and scholars as part of globally interconnected movements towards - as Aymara scholar Mamani (2006; quoted in Escobar 2015:458) puts it – “a new civilizational project.”

Time and change

The notion of ancestrality and ancestral connections is central to many Latin American relationalities, linking past, present, and future in pursuit of transformation. Escobar (2019:47) describes the ancestrality expressed in the song and poetry of La Toma afro-descendent communities in Colombia, noting that “far from an intransigent attachment to the past, ancestrality stems from living memory that orients itself to the ability to envision a different future – a sort of ‘futurality’ that imagines, and struggles for, the conditions that will allow them to persevere as a distinct world.” In showing how relationality informs the everyday lives and practices of peoples throughout Latin America, Gallegos-Riofrio et al. (2022:480) describe the holiday ‘the Day of the Dead’ as a “feast with the ancestors. The conception is that ancestors interact with the living, in time that is spiralling rather than linear.” Feola et al. (2021:9) highlight that temporality can be a site of resistance, describing that the Plan de Vida Digna (community planning) of peasant communities in Nariño and Cauca, Colombia, “assumes a long timeframe ranging from twenty to thirty years. This […] is a key form of opposition to the ‘short term mentality of capitalist accumulation as a criterion for development’ (Iguaran 2018).” Likewise, Maldonado-Villalpando et al. (2022:1311) describe the transformative educational practices of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, based on ancestral knowledge and “involv[ing] the participation of parents and grandparents with the children.”

Knowledge and action

Feola et al. (2021:2) present transformation as a “multi-faceted, multilevel process that entails the deconstruction of capitalist modernity or elements thereof, as well as the construction of post-capitalist realities.” Latin American relationalities have challenged dualistic, rationalist accounts of knowledge and action in many Western traditions and have emphasised the active social and emotional aspects of knowing, working these aspects into transformative pedagogies and educational praxis (Maldonado-Villalpando et al. 2022). Souza et al. (2019:1608) develop learning-based approaches to transformation rooted in the work of Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana and Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, with Gallegos-Riofrio et al. (2022:479) highlighting Freire’s concept of conscientização (conscientization) as “critical awareness of the deeply relational realities that surround people.” Gudynas (2011), writing about Buen Vivir, argues that such approaches lead beyond epistemological relativism towards ontological pluralism, and grappling seriously with the politics of moving towards a pluriverse where many worlds fit. In terms of the roles of researchers in transformation, Escobar (2019:43) argues that the thinking of those involved in grounded struggles across Latin America “are actually more sophisticated and appropriate for thinking about social transformation than most forms of knowledge produced within the academy at present.” Gallegos-Riofrio et al. (2022:481) write that sustainability scientists working on transformations can learn from Indigenous and Indigenist Latin American scholars, “by exercising the same degree of respect that these intellectuals have for local sustainability ethics and customary practices, and by employing similar methods to involve communities in co-creation and long-term sustainability efforts.”

References

Beling, A.E., Vanhulst, J., Demaria, F., Rabi, F., Carballo, A.E., & Pelenc, J. 2018. Discursive Synergies for a ‘Great Transformation’ Towards Sustainability: Pragmatic Contributions to a Necessary Dialogue Between Human Development, Degrowth, and Buen Vivir. Ecological Economics 144:304-313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.025

de la Cadena, M. 2022. ‘Stengers Meets an Andean Mountain That Is Not Only Such’. In Bubandt, N & Schwarz Wentzer, T. (eds), Philosophy on Fieldwork, 1st ed. London: Routledge. pp. 443–62. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003086253-25

Escobar, A. 2015. Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation. Sustainability Science 10:451-462. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-015-0297-5

Escobar, A. 2019. ‘Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South’. In: B. de Sousa Santos & M. Meneses, Knowledges Born in Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South. New York: Routledge. pp. 41-57. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429344596