Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

Accepted Paper:

The ethnic dynamic in Bolivia before and under Evo Morales's administration: Sumaj Qamaña from project to agenda  
Magda von der Heydt (Johns Hopkins University)

Paper short abstract:

This essay analyses the ethnic dynamic at the cross roads of ethnicity and class implicit in the anti-systemic protests against the neoliberal agenda, and the possibilities and limits of the ethnic agenda Sumaj Qamaña Sumaj Qamana under the Morales government in Bolivia.

Paper long abstract:

Andean core culture, which is founded on communal property rights, organization of production based on reciprocity and mutual help, forms of redistribution, decision-making strategies based on rotational management and administration of common-pool resources, is oriented to the common good and therefore incompatible with the logic of capitalism. Fighting for their ancestral rights, Andean peasants are inherently anti-systemic. At the discursive level "Indianness" became the cultural reference not only for peasants, but also for the urban poor, becoming the powerful motor of the anti-neolibeal protests. The worldview of Sumaj Qamaña (living well) based on ancestral Andean principles is presented as an alternative to the western concept of development. Morales included diverse ethnicities officially in nationhood. He has redistributed income through conditional cash-transfer programs as part of his government's social policy in the fight against poverty and exclusion. However, in spite of the resonance of Sumaj Qamaña, once in power, the Morales administration did not propose any specific programs based on Sumaj Qamaña. The Andean sacralisation of Mother Nature has not been translated into a modern ecological program of development. I want to discuss the possibilities and limits of the alternative agenda Sumaj Qamaña in the context of current correlation of social forces in Bolivia, within the constraints imposed by the world oconomy.

Panel P07
Development, culture and redistribution of inequality: the formation of new ethnic, political and environmental landscapes in Latin America
  Session 1