Exzellenzstrategie

Prof. Dr. René Ramírez

Global Encounters Fellow | Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies | University of Tübingen

‘Buen Vivir’ as an uchronic political horizon

18th July 2023 | 6 p.m. | Neue Aula - Großer Senat

After a long and broadly participative constituent process, in 2008, Ecuador approved a new political Constitution where Buen Vivir or Sumak Kawsay was established as a social priority. The research contends that mainstream theories of well-being are insufficient to translate this social endeavor into practice, thus the need to establish a specific epistemic framework for the concept of Buen Vivir outlined in the Andean country. The research proposes the political socioecology of life as a theoretical, methodological, and empirical framework to examine, interpret, and dispute the realization of Buen Vivir in Ecuador. For this purpose, based on a critique that exposes the limitations of using money as an evaluator of well-being, the research applies the metric “time for a good life” as the unit of analysis. The measurement of time “well lived” has the advantage of being an ambivalent indicator; it is both empirical-factual and prescriptive-desiderative: it accounts for a fact and reveals a desire. The research shows how time well lived is characterized by the production and enjoyment of relational goods, a concept that allows us to address time distribution focusing on the time of existence / life; the time dedicated to the good life; the concentration or inequality of time well lived; geography and the time of time well-lived; the macro structuring of time for good life; the temporality of the Pachamama (nature’s sumak kawsay); and the impact of time on satisfaction with life. The conference ends by proposing a uchronic agenda for the good life.