Gudynas will discuss prevailing trends on the concept of buen vivir (BV), including its origins in radical development critiques in the Andean countries, its re-appropriation by the region’s progressive governments, ethical and political debates around BV and critiques from modernist perspectives and the limits and possibilities of linking BV with other critical notions, such as degrowth. Concrete examples will be drawn from Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

Gudynas is director of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology (CLAES – Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social), Montevideo, Uruguay. He has been visiting professor at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo. His current appointments include research associate, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis; coordinator, Latin American Alliance of Critical Studies on Development (ALECD); and member of the Expert Group on Alternatives to Development, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Quito.

Besides maintaining a very active lecturing circuit at universities in Europe and the Americas and a program of workshops and meetings with civil society and social movement organizations, Eduardo is an extremely prolific writer. His two most recent books summarize his work of many years and the continental debates of last decade on buen vivir, the rights of nature and transitions to post-extractivism.

This talk is sponsored by the Latin American Social Cartographies Working Group, Carolina Seminar on the Theory and Politics of Relationality, Institute for the Study of the Americas and Curriculum in Global Studies.