Ancestralities in Development overcoming Coloniality: Comparative cases in the Global South 1

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1 Ancestralities in Development overcoming Coloniality: Comparative cases in the Global South 1 Rafael Bittencourt Rodrigues Lopes 2 ISA's 58th Annual Convention February 25 th, 2017, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. SC32: Learning IR from the Margins: Overcoming the Western Dominance ABSTRACT Postcolonial and decolonial perspectives have discussed how colonized countries can overcome their colonial past, rediscovering ancestral knowledges. Even if these values suffered distortion while mixing western and local features, the importance of looking for alternatives to Eurocentric development models become more relevant when we consider that capitalism is reaching several limits, as environmental and financial crises. We can observe that some countries tried to create development models based in Ancestralities, as Sumak Kawsay in Ecuador, Suma Qamaña in Bolivia, Ujamaa in Tanzania during Nyerere presidency and as Gross Happiness index in Bhutan. Thus, our aim is to analyze comparatively these cases, considering the construction of the ideas, the main policies for run these models and the ways they are looking for alternative of measuring and evaluating the results. This research is constituted in four steps, being the first two a theoretical construction through post-colonial lens of the possibilities of overcoming the westernizer modernization and the understanding of the World System. The last two are dedicated to compare the cases selected, identifying particularities and common proposals, despite their differences. It is expected that we can collaborate in the discussion of possibilities and limits of these decolonial experiences. Keywords: Development; Ecology; Eurocentrism; Indigenous Peoples; Postcolonialism; Race; Political Economy; Ecuador; Bolivia 1 Work in Progress. Please do not quote without asking the author. 2 PhD candidate in International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais. This article was only possible thanks to CAPES funding during my Master s degree. bittencourt.ri@gmail.com. ORCID: orcid.org/

2 1. Introduction The purpose of its paper is to sum up the main ideas of the research of the last two years about the possibility of considering ancestral ideas and values to think the development of a Global South country, particularly because of the negative impacts of colonization. Of course, the very idea of Development is a Eurocentric one, considering the steps towards the mass consumer society presented by Rostow (1978) and the reflection made by Samir Amin to denounce the ideology of Development (1976). Thus, our first step was to look for current or historical cases of countries that refuse the idea of Development to incorporate some aspects of their local thought. Four cases were selected: Tanzania, Bhutan, Ecuador and Bolivia. In all these countries, their Ancestralities are present in the National Constitutions, confirming that these ideas are part of the very existence of the country as a formal unit. The second step was to stablish an analysis framework to allow us to thinking in Development plans outside the Occidental standards. The Dependence Theory was important to comprehend the uneven relation among developed countries and underdeveloped countries, which conduct to a growing, abyssal distance in terms of industrialization and productivity and the Decolonial thought was very important in the attempt to break with Eurocentric theories, Epistemologies and Ontologies by allowing to understand the Ancestralities as border gnosis. Finally, the last and current step of the research was to design comparative categories to understand the impact of the Ancestralities in some of the main themes of Development in these countries. To do so, we selected some Five-Year Development Plans of all the four countries and we divided the themes in ten categories: agriculture, industry, mining, infrastructure, main export products, public administration, culture, environment, health and education and poverty reduction. Our objective is to understand if it is possible to thinking in Development Plans with these ancestral ideas. Besides that, we aim to identify to what extent the Ancestralities have a real impact in the projects and programs. Finally, we aim to recognize some patterns among the studied cases, particularities, best practices and challenges.

3 2. Ancestralities Three ideas were identified in our exploratory research. The first one is Ujamaa, a Swahili word to Familyhood, sometimes translated also as African Socialism which was chosen by Julius Nyerere to be the philosophy of the Arusha Declaration of In his explanation, Nyerere (1968) presents Ujamaa as a different logic of social organization and production, contrasting clearly against Capitalism but also against the European Socialism. According him, Capitalism is the exploitation of a man against another man to have wealth and the European Socialism is the consequence of the conflict against the classes. By its turn, the African Socialism was not something utopic, but was the reality of the villages, destructed by the European colonizers. In this logic, every adult has to work in the land, the land is not a property and one does not need to worry in accumulate wealth to the future because all the production is distributed among all people: children, workers and elderly who have given their contribution. Nonetheless, Ujamaa as a reference for Development was abandoned and Nyerere left the presidency in So, the Five-Year Development Plans studied are the first ( ) and the second ( ). The second case comes from the Kingdom of Bhutan, one of the most isolated countries in the world. Even if Bhutan never became a colony, India led the Eurocentric understanding of Development to the country, especially in the first Development plans during the sixties. In 1972, the Forth King Jigme Singye Wangchuck made a statement affirming that Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product. This phrase is repeated in various documents and reports and is an interesting case of border thinking, once Gross National Happiness (GNH) is not a historical idea, but is a modern one inspired in traditions and Buddhist values (Allison, 2012). The 9 th, 10 th and 11 th National Development Plans ( , , ) consider the GNH in a more substantial way, especially after the creating of the GNH index in the 10 th plan. It is important to highlight that happiness in Buddhist lens are different than happiness in Western lens. As Tideman explains happiness is not simply sensory pleasure, derived from physical comfort. Rather, happiness is an innate state of mind which can be cultivated through spiritual practice, overcoming mental and emotional states which induce suffering. (Tideman, 2004, p. 222).

4 Last, the third ancestral concept which was instrumentalized to plan the national Development is the idea of Sumak Kawsay (in Quechua), Suma Qamaña (in Aymara), Buen Vivir or Vivir Bien (in Spanish), Living Well in English. This Andean idea was chosen by Ecuador and Bolivia during the governments of Rafael Correa and Evo Morales respectively to decolonize the dominant understanding of Development. Sumak/Suma means the beauty, while Kawsay/Qamaña means the life, so this concept translates an idea of life with dignity, with harmony between the humankind and the universe (Kowii, 2015). In the Andean cosmology, the collectivity (ayllu) entails all the living beings (sallqa for nature, runas for human being and apus, wacas for Deities) inside the local (pacha) to regenerate/create the kawsay (Gonzales, 2014). 3. Main concepts The Dependence Theory made already a very important contribution the understand the peripherical status of these countries in the World-System 3. Their material concerns about the uneven relation let clear the difference in terms of global distribution of work, with raw materials exploited in the colonized countries and the manufacture with higher added value in the central markets. Nonetheless, the Latin American Subaltern Studies, and later the Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality group notice that the dependence was also in terms of knowledge. The creation of the concept of Coloniality in this context is vital to enlarge this argument. Colonialities are the colonial traits that remain in the colonized country even after the end of the formal colonization. Aníbal Quijano (2005) and Walter Mignolo (2007) are some of the authors who developed the concept, dividing it on coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge. That is, the material dependence identified by Gunder Frank and others is a kind of coloniality, but other less visible aspects remain present as well, as the control of economy, control of authority, control of nature and natural resources, control of gender and sexuality and control of subjectivity and knowledge (Mignolo, 2010; Ballestrin, 2013). The idea of Development, Escobar says, 3 Some important authors in this movement are Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Enzo Faletto and Maria da Conceição Tavares.

5 was and continues to be for the most part a top-down, ethnocentric and technocratic approach, which treated people and culture as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of progress [ ] It comes as no surprise that development became a force so destructive to Third World cultures, ironically in the name of people s interests. (ESCOBAR apud ANDREWS, BAWA, 2014, p. 929) In this perspective, we can understand Development as coloniality. Mignolo defends that coloniality and modernity are two faces of the same coin, being coloniality the hidd en one (Mignolo, 2007). Thus, if talking in Development as modernization through Western lens hide the colonialities, the alternative is look for local lens, even if silenced and corrupted by the colonial process, to make a turn. To these local lens, Mignolo (2003) will inspire in Mudimbe (1988) to create the idea of border gnosis. And to this change from Western to local gnosis, Mignolo (2006) will call this process decolonial turn. This turn is not just think different, but denaturalize the coloniality of power, of being and of knowledge, allowing the peoples to create new understandings of a better life per their own references. Our argument is that the Ancestralities of Ujamaa, Gross National Happiness and Sumak Kawsay/Suma Qamaña are local border gnosis to allow Tanzania, Bhutan, Ecuador and Bolivia to make their Decolonial Turn throw the policies and programs presented in the Five-year Development plans. 4. Methodology The comprehensive understanding of the Five-Year Development Plans of each one of the four countries needs a comparative model of analysis. First, we divided the Development views in three parts: idealization, execution and evaluation. Idealization comprehends the meaning of the ancestrality under its historical and cultural context, as well as the changes lived by each country before colonization, during the colonial rule and after the independence. Execution is the put in practice of the ideas in the ten themes selected (agriculture, industry, mining, infrastructure, main export products, public administration, culture, environment, health and education and poverty reduction). Finally, evaluation refers to the efforts of these countries in stablish their own means to evaluate success or failure of the plans, given that the use of indicators like Gross National Product cannot be enough to

6 contemplate non-material dimensions. With the complete framework, will be possible to identify the similarities among these cases, the particularities, the problems and the good solutions. 5. Partial results Even if the research is still on course, some elements can be already identified. First, all the cases confirmed that Ancestralities matter in planning the policies and programs for development in the selected cases. In some themes, the Ancestralities are important to orient the priorities, like education, cultural heritage and environment conservation. On the other hand, the Ancestralities represent an obstacle in other themes, especially those regarding production. Some dilemmas emerge in this context: specialized agriculture to export and reduce poverty or protect traditional means of production for subsistence? Seize the opportunity to use the gains with extractivism to finance social policies or ensure the ownership of productive lands to native populations which will conserve that land? Another interesting finding is that these countries do not close themselves to nonlocal influences. Technology and machinery is defended to help to fight against poverty. And South-South Cooperation can be important to led good practices between them. The main example is one project among Bhutan, Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico in which Bhutan teaches their GNH index to help these countries to create their own indicators of Living Well (in the Bolivian and Ecuadorian cases). The decolonial turn, though, can be thought in terms of non- Western teachings to countries which face similar challenges. Finally, these countries have a different relation to land. The land is sacred, is a living being, is the own mother (in the case of the Pachamama figure in the Andean cosmology). This aspect is important not by its romantic vein, but mainly because the whole world faces environmental problems, which are consequences of the disharmonious way of global production and consume. Another way to see the land should led the whole climate change regime to a more sustainable and balanced economy in every country of the globe.

7 6. Bibliography ALLISON, Elizabeth. Gross National Happiness. In: SPELLERBERG, Ian et al. Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability Vol. 6: Measurement, Indicators, and Research Methods for Sustainability. Great Barrington: Berkshire Publishing Group, AMIN, Samir. Eurocentrism. The Construction of Eurocentric Culture. New York: Monthly Preview Press, p , ANDREWS, N.; BAWA, S. A Post-development Hoax? (Re)-examining the Past, Present and Future of Development Studies. Third World Quarterly, v. 35, n. 6, p , BALLESTRIN, Luciana. América Latina e o giro decolonial. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política. n. 11, p , GONZALES, Tirso. Kawsay (Buen Vivir) y afirmación cultural: Pratec-Naca, um paradigma alternativo em los Andes. In: PIMENTAL, Boris Marañón (org.). Buen vivir y descolonialidad: crítica al desarrollo y la racionalidade instrumentales. México: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, KOWII, Ariruma. El Sumak Kawsay. Disponível em < fii /documents/el%20sumak%20kawsay-arirumakowii.pdf>. Acesso em 22 jun MIGNOLO, Walter D. Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, v. 21, n. 2, p , MIGNOLO, Walter D. Histórias Locais / Projetos Globais Colonialidade, saberes subalternos e pensamento liminar. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, MIGNOLO, Walter. Desobediencia epistémica: retórica de la modernidad, lógica de la colonialidade y gramática de la descolonialidad. Argentina: Ediciones del signo, MIGNOLO, Walter. El desprendimento: pensamiento crítico y giro colonial. In: WALSH, Catherine. Interculturalidad, descolonización del estado y del conocimiento. Buenos Aires: Del Signo, MUDIMBE, V. Y. The Invention of Africa Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, NYERERE, Julius K. Ujamaa - Essays on Socialism. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, QUIJANO, Aníbal. Colonialidade do poder, Eurocentrismo e América Latina. In: LANDER, Edgardo (org.). A Colonialidade do saber: eurocentrismo e ciências sociais. Perspectivas latino-americanas. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2005.

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