Ecuadorâs âGood Livingâ: Crises, Discourse, and Law by Gallegos Anda, presents a critical approach towards the concept of Buen Vivir that was included in Ecuadorâs 2008 Constitution. 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 through 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 is the first to situate Buen Vivir in a theoretical context grounded in international human rights law.
Carlos E. Gallegos Anda, Ph.D. (2020) Australian National University. Dr. 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.
âList of Figures
âIntroduction
â1 The Context of Good Living
â2 Critical Approaches towards Good Living
â3 Why Good Living?
â4 On Methodology
â5 Positioning Critical Good Living: discourse and Rights
â6 Book Layout
1 The Context of Good Living: situating Theory and Method
â1 Method
â2 Politicised Ethnic Cleavage
â3 The Retreating State
â4 Changing Citizenship Regimes
â5 Wider Theoretical Framing
â6 Transnational Governmentality
â7 Social Protest and Discursive Democracy
â8 Conclusion
2 Good Living in the Academic Literature
â1 Ecuadorian Discussions on Good Living
â2 Indigenist or Pachamama Good Living
â3 Developmental or Statist Good Living
â4 Ecologist and Post-developmental Good Living
â5 Critical Approaches towards Good Living: power Not Ontology
3 The Critical Juncture
â1 Theory-guided Process Tracing
â2 Development Paradigms in Indigenous Communities
â3 Defining the Theory Behind a Theory
â4 Lead-up to the Critical Juncture: 1960â1979
ââ4.1 Agrarian Revolts and Reforms
ââ4.2 Oil Induced Military Nationalism
â5 Economic, Institutional, and Political Breakdown
ââ5.1 State Retreat
ââ5.2 Regionalist Challenges to State Building
ââ5.3 Economic Turmoil and Reform during the 1980s
ââ5.4 The Financial Meltdown of the 1990s
ââ5.5 Inter-branch Crises and Ghost Coalitions
â6 Politicised Ethnic Cleavages: rise and Fall of Indigenous Mobilisation
â7 Changing Citizenship Regimes
ââ7.1 The Quest for Civic Virtue
ââ7.2 Constitutional Convergence and Graduated Sovereignty
ââ7.3 Diffusion and the Scripts of Modernity
â8 The Inter-American Human Rights System
ââ8.1 Selected Jurisprudence: vida Digna
ââ8.2 The Graduated Sovereignty of the GATT
â9 Conclusion
4 The Polymorphism of Good Living
â1 The New Governmentality
â2 Transnational Governmentality and the Critical Juncture
â3 The Theme of Social Capital
â4 Social Capital or the Myth of Ethnodevelopment
â5 The Sources of Social Capital
â6 The Master Framing of Transgressive Politics
â7 The Empty Signifier Is Born
â8 YasunÃ: a Case Study on the Empty Signifier
â9 Yasuni and the Discourse of Good Living
5 Beyond Living Well
â1 Crafting Good Living: from Speaking to Listening
â2 Exhaustion of the Rights Discourse
â3 The Importation of Law: local and International Influences
â4 From Human Dignity to Vida Digna
â5 Graduated Sovereignty and the Role of the IACtHR
â6 The Vida Digna Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
â7 Convergence of Rights: domestic Approaches to Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
â8 Back to Basics: recalibrating the âEngine Room of the Constitutionâ
â9 Conclusion
âBibliography
âIndex
All interested in Latin American politics and political economy, human rights law, citizenship, sociology, political theory. Particularly relevant for research situated between 1978 â 2020 interested in Latin American politics. Also relevant for social movements research and discourse theory.