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- Title
Rationalizing 'Vivir Bien': The Modern State and the formal limits to transformative rationalism in Bolivia.
- Authors
CASTELLANO-DURÁN, RUBÉN D.
- Abstract
Drawing on the case of the 2011 march against a highway project through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) in Bolivia, alongside a discussion of Max Weber's conceptions of rationality, this paper situates that demonstration in the interface between the Bolivian State's modern formal rationality with the substantive rationality proposed as 'Vivir Bien'; an umbrella term for a conglomeration of indigenous proposals for a sustainable relationship between humans and nature that goes beyond neoliberalism, colonialism, and their cultural and environmental consequences. As with any modern institution, the Bolivian State performs with modern means-ends calculations, thus subduing the transformative potential of 'Vivir Bien' as a distinct rationalism, with its means-ends framework, knowledge, and patterns of action. In a Weberian critique of Modernity, two issues will be raised. First is the need to recognize the modern state as the institutional embodiment of modern formalinstrumental rationality bound to Modernity's means-ends framework. Second, an evaluation of the possibility of incorporating other rationalisms into the modern state, allowing other means-ends valuations for state policymaking involving other patterns of action and sociality. Based on these considerations, this paper recognizes modern rationalism in contrast to other rationalisms, worldviews, and practices in a critical search for alter native approaches and proposals for attending to local and global problems threatening sustainable human existence, from environmental devaluation to social inequality.
- Subjects
BOLIVIA; RATIONALISM; WEBER, Max, 1864-1920; EQUALITY; NEOLIBERALISM; LIBERALISM
- Publication
Intersections. East European Journal of Society & Politics, 2023, Vol 9, Issue 3, p87
- ISSN
2416-089X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.17356/ieejsp.v9i3.1139