Introduction: Vivir bien/Buen vivir and Post-Neoliberal Development Paths in Latin America: Scope, Strategies, and the Realities of Implementation

• Author: Mei L. Trueba,Kepa Artaraz,Melania Calestani
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211009461
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211009461

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 238, Vol. 48 No. 3, May 2021, 4–16

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211009461

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

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Introduction

Vivir bien/Buen vivir and Post-Neoliberal Development

Paths in Latin America

Scope, Strategies, and the Realities of Implementation

by

Kepa Artaraz, Melania Calestani, and Mei L. Trueba

Neoliberalism has economic, political, sociocultural, and environmental conse-

quences that are known to cause imbalances across the globe (Navarro, 2020). The

financial crisis that began in 2008 in the economic centers of the Global North has

been steadily spreading to low- and middle-income countries, including much of

Latin America. Political leaders around the world are unable to confront the con-

tradictions of market-led forms of development that deepen socioeconomic ine-

qualities while unsustainably extracting the natural resources required to maintain

consumption-driven forms of economic growth. At the same time, economic

growth appears to be the prerequisite for responding to immediate local needs

and bringing social groups and entire countries out of poverty. Awareness of and

resistance to the structural inconsistencies of the neoliberal globalization project

at the margins, led by people from countries at the so-called periphery of the

world system, had already emerged in the crisis of the 1980s (Wallerstein, 1984).

This was a resistance that sometimes emerged from civil society rather than being

led by traditional political and economic elites (Petras, 2011).

Having survived the lost decade of the 1980s and beyond, Latin America

perfectly illustrates the crisis of legitimacy of the neoliberal revolution and

the sociopolitical counterrevolution of civil-society-led alternatives. It is in

this context that we are witnessing innovative ideas emerge from communi-

ties and subjects that have historically been economically, politically, and cul-

turally marginalized. Latin America’s upheaval and contestation have their

roots in indigenous epistemologies—epistemologies of the South (Santos,

2015)—and practices. Where indigenous groups have become a newly

empowered political subject (Postero, 2006), as in Bolivia, the repercussions

Kepa Artaraz is a principal lecturer at the University of Brighton, where he teaches global social

policy and politics. He is the author of Cuba and Western Intellectuals since 1959 (2009), Bolivia:

Refounding the Nation (2012), and (with Michael James Hill), Global Social Policy (2016). Melania

Calestani is an anthropologist and a senior lecturer at Kingston and St. George’s, University of

London. Her publications include An Anthropological Journey into Well-being (2013) and Prayer as

Transgression? The Social Relations of Prayer in Healthcare Settings (2020). Mei L. Trueba is a lecturer

in international development and global health at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and

the University of Sussex. Her research is predominantly concerned with the political economies

of health and ill health. The collective thanks them for organizing this issue.

1009461LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211009461LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESArtaraz, Calestani, and Trueba / INTRODUCTION

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