In the Search of the Territory of Good Life: A Theoretical Exploration of the Language of Buen Vivir in Education Roundtable

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Historicizing the Neocolonial "Languages" of Inclusion and the Good Life as Pathways for Transformation Roundtable

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical exploration looking at the language of ‘good life’ as an “event” to understand its travel into education. The focus is to understand how the politics of knowledge constitute ‘good life’ as "a territory" on which it is possible to draw boundaries around people producing them as (under)developed, (non)reasonable, (non/pre)modern and even (non)citizens. The methodology used is discourse analysis of the curriculum and texts for rural education produced by the Ministry of Education together with the Ministry of Agriculture and UNESCO between 1950 and 1984, the plan for education and development 1960-1979, the national curriculum of 1996, the national plan of education of 2002 and the latest curriculum reform of 2010. The analysis is centered on the events and conditions that allow for the emergence of the relation good life-development.
The paper to be presented is part of a larger project that draws parallels with similar permutations of “good life” in the curriculum of other countries of the South.

The term Buen Vivir (BV)—good living—, has been used in Ecuador to talk about living in harmony between humans and humans with nature (government discourse), teachings about everyday life of Kichwa people (Inuca, 2017) and of an invented tradition (Dominguez, 2017). It is clear that BV as a notion of good life for all and a guide for planning sustainable development was not overtely in use before its inclusion in the constitution of 2008. Nevertheless, the idea of good life as a product of development has connections to plans of ‘integration’ of rural population emerging in the 1950s.

The translation of BV into knowledge for sustainable development follows the rationality of progress as it is built on the assumption of gradual and self-driven change (Nisbet, 2009). Learning about a ‘good life’ is addressed in the curriculum as both a matter of understanding ‘ancient’ wisdom and incorporating ‘scientific knowledge’ to move towards a ‘modern’ and ‘inclusive’ society. These translations are not unfamiliar. The history of the language of ‘good life’ in education intertwines with ‘development’ plans and programs for ‘integration’ of peasants occurring since the late 1950s. From their emergence they take part in the discursive production of worlds—First World, Third World—as realms of kinds of lives and the kinds of people. Education for development guards the lines or is related to the step, the crossing or not crossing, that makes the border between ‘worlds’ clear. Thence crossing is guarded by points of reference set by a particular reason and knowledge. Simultaneously, that knowledge is promised to allow the flow between ‘worlds’ and the ‘advancement’ of country and people towards a ‘good life.’ Education for development thus guards the porous border of the ‘good life’ territory. This paper engages with the territory of ‘good life’ drawing upon Deleuze’s ideas of event and geography and Derrida’s work on borders.

Author

• Gioconda Pamela Coello, University of Wisconsin - Madison