Buen vivir como Ideología?: Sobre cómo se construyen otros significados desde las prácticas de la comunidad de Zhiña

Abstract

The objective of this work is to use the category of ideology to analyze the Buen Vivir and his possible structuring and meaning-generating power within the community of Zhiña. Characteristics that could contribute to the construction of new forms that give meaning to the social reality beyond the community. To understand this potential of the Buen Vivir, we will begin by a theoretical approach from the contributions of indigenous theorists and from the academy. There will also be an approach to his main source, the Sumak Kawsay, categories that compose it and the elements that define it.

This theorization will be contrasted with the practices of the community of Zhiña to understand how the Buen Vivir is present in the everyday and gives meaning to the community reality based on three dimensions: community, relationship with nature and economy and work. These practices will be analyzed from the discourses present in the interviews applied in Zhiña by the project Alternatives to Development in Local Cultures of Ecuador, from the University of Cuenca.

The concept of ideology will be used to analyze these community practices, proposing a new entry that can facilitate the understanding of Buen Vivir, this analysis will be reinforced with interviews with experts in the will allow us to identify Buen Vivir as a possible alternative element that distances itself from the hegemonic ideological proposals and meanings that at this moment give meaning to social reality.

Finally, it will be discussed and concluded on whether Buen Vivir has characteristics that can give another meaning to reality and that therefore enter into a dispute and struggle to signify it with the current hegemonic proposals such as the idea of development. This could lead us to understand Buen Vivir as having a structuring power as it has the ideology