From capitalist development to Buen Vivir from the decoloniality of power

Abstract

The Buen Vivir (Good Living) is a societal proposal that is emerging as an alternative to the current pattern of modern/colonial power. This is not only an epistemological, philosophical, political and theoretical proposal, but is also a way of life that points to the De/Coloniality of Power, because it rejects the relations of domination and exploitation imposed by this power pattern, as the imposition of "race" as the basic criterion of hierarchical social classification in the world since the sixteenth century. The Buen Vivir raises the need to reestablish relations of reciprocity and complementarity between people and with "Nature", the Mother Earth, and it is about a project that draws on various ongoing practices that have been invisible, such as those of economic solidarity, which have transcended the question of survival and tend to the de-commodification of "Nature" and in general of Life itself, and toward the decolonization of social relations, towards the Buen Vivir. Thus, this paper aims to discuss the scope of the Buen Vivir as a societal proposal. It is argued that this represents a rupture with the Development, a modernizing project of the postwar period based on epistemological assumptions that conceal its colonizing character.