RIGHTING IMBALANCE: Striving for Well-Being in the Andes
RIGHTING IMBALANCE: Striving for Well-Being in the Andes
Catherine J. Allen
ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s, indigenous notions of well-being (Quechua sumak kawsay, Aymara suma qamaña, Spanish buen vivir, vivir bien) have entered the political discourse of the Andean nations (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru), serving as rallying points for networks of indigenous federations, environmentalists, NGOs and intellectuals united in a critique of neoliberal development paradigms. Ecuador and Bolivia have enshrined sumak kawsay and suma qamaña in their national constitutions. How does this political discourse correspond to indigenous notions of well-being experienced in the socio-culturally diverse communities of the Andean region? I begin by focusing on inhabitants of Sonqo, a rural Quechua-speaking community in the highlands of southern Peru, where I have carried out research since 1975. I explore notions of well-being through vocabulary drawn from Southern Peruvian Quechua, including allin kawsay (well-being), pacha (world), ayllu (community), ayni (reciprocity), uyway (nurturance), hucha (sin) and animu (individuating energy), with particular emphasis on values and ontological orientations that are generally consistent across the Andean ethnographic and ethnohistorical record. Underlying this vocabulary is a mindset that prioritizes relationships over individual agency; this entails connections among a multitude of human as well as other-than-human persons and necessitates collective work in which everything contributes to keeping the collectivity in a precarious balance. Although, at the national level, these notions of well-being often are honored in the breach, by articulating and promoting alternate notions of well-being, sumak kawsay and suma qamaña may have cracked open a door to a fundamental reshuffling of priorities.
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