Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld – Plenitude: Searching for sumak kawsay among the merchants of cheap Chinese-made good in the northern Andes

Tuesday, November 15, at 1pm, FedEx GEC, Room 2008-2010

Alberto Acosta has described Ecuador’s development policy of buen vivir (sp. living well; Kichwa: sumac kawsay) as a still open invitation or “opportunity to imagine other worlds.” Among its humanistic commitments: collective rights and democratic participation, socioeconomic inclusion, noncapitalist relations of production, fullness of life in community, and humans in harmony with nature. Yet, the official embracing of buen vivir since 2008 has coincided with an era of enormous infrastructure investments backed by Chinese capital and the takeover of many popular markets by a wave of inexpensive goods from Asia.  In this presentation, I explore this juxtaposition through the lives of indigenous people who live amid it, those who make their living in precarious urban economies.  Examining the ways people are building careers and communities from cheap Chinese goods, I look for new Kichwa lesson in plenitude and living well.

Sponsored by UNC-CH’s Departments of Romance Studies, Anthropology, and the Institute for the Study of the Americas