Contending cosmologies and the politics of development in Latin America

• In Event: Theoretical challenges and (geo)political perspectives in 21st century Latin(a) America

Abstract

At a time when developmentalism has gained renewed force in Latin America, and also when many question whether our planet can stand maintaining current economic
models, hundreds of indigenous communities and riverside dwellers have continued to gather in the Brazilian Amazon, where a massive hydroelectric power complex is being erected, to demand the negotiation of the terms of development. Similarly, elsewhere in Latin America, Andean indigenous groups have organized their plea against developmental projects by drawing from their cosmovisions to question a model of development based on making citizens consumers, and to demand that constitutions include non-human rights. When disparate understandings of life find themselves at odds with each other, this paper seeks to ask the following questions: to what extent are different cosmologies incommensurable, and what do we do at the face of incommensurability? In asking these questions, I also consider a parallel one and its ethical implications for social theory: how do we talk about different “understandings” of life, nature, and humanity, without at the same time resorting to essentialism nor to a
liberal multiculturalism that simply tolerates “other” knowledges without engagement and self-critique?

Author

• Túlio Zille, Johns Hopkins University