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The Indigenous Concept of Vivir Bien in the Bolivian Legal Field: A Decolonial Proposal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2017

María Itatí Dolhare  and
Sol Rojas-Lizana
María Itatí Dolhare*
Affiliation:
TC Beirne Law School, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
Sol Rojas-Lizana
Affiliation:
School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
*
address for correspondence: María Itatí Dolhare, TC Beirne Law School, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia. Email: m.dolhare@law.uq.edu.au
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Abstract

This article discusses the concept of Vivir Bien (Living Well) (VB) and its role as a decolonising project in connection with the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009) (BC) and subordinated legislation. This subordinated legislation was enacted to implement in a more specific manner the general legal principles contained within the BC. The paper uses these legal texts within the framework of decolonial thinking to prove that the adoption of the concept of VB represents a legal and an epistemological shift that radically contests the dominant Western paradigm of modernity/coloniality. This shift has many facets; however, this article concentrates on two of them in order to characterise its radicalism: (a) the constitutional acknowledgment of the colonial difference, which is understood here as the pervading and living legacy of European colonialism in social organisations and the production of knowledge, and (b) the constitutional and legislative requirement of engaging in an ongoing intercultural dialogue as a vehicle for the achievement of a society based on the concept of VB. This article concludes that the confluence of these two facets marks the epistemological shift and is important in the advancement of the intercultural and decolonising project represented by the concept of VB.

Keywords

Vivir BienBoliviacolonial differenceintercultural dialogueMother Earthmodern liberal constitution
Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 47 , Special Issue 1: South-South Dialogues: Global Approaches to Decolonial Pedagogies , August 2018 , pp. 19 - 29
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017 

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