Toward a Decolonial Alternative to Development? The Emergence and Shortcomings of Vivir Bien as State Policy in Bolivia in the Era of Globalization

There is an urgent demand for the examination of the critical perceptions of new kinds of ‘development’ which are emerging in the Global South in response to—and often opposed to—the global capitalist political economy. This article discusses the case of contemporary Bolivia in which indigenous political alternatives have emerged as the resistance to economic globalization and the powers of capital accumulation, as well as to the cultural and epistemological commitments of the Western order. Through an ethnographic approach, it examines the emergence and shortcomings of the notion of vivir bien—a local, decolonial, indigenous concept of good life—as state policy. It argues that despite its transformative potential, the translation of vivir bien discourses into state practices has not been, to a large degree, achieved.