Reflections on Collaborative Ethnography and Decolonization in Latin America, Aotearoa, and Beyond

As the ongoing legacies of colonialism are challenged, scholars and activists are increasingly carrying out collaborative research to respond to the asymmetrical privileges built into Western science by partnering with communities and explicitly orienting their research towards communities’ political aims. In this article, we trace the ways this shift intersects with other important trends in ethnographic research, especially attention to the politics of knowledge and decolonization. We discuss how collaborative research in Latin America is shaped by the context and political agendas of those involved to show what is produced. While in some circumstances collaboration can serve to level the colonial playing field by making Indigenous knowledge and practices visible, in other situations it can reinforce constructed dichotomies between Indigenous and Western knowledge and practices. As it increasingly the norm for government agencies, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations to promote participatory methods to further their own agendas, we suggest that collaboration can be the site of governance as well as liberation. By bringing the dilemmas in our different research projects on Indigenous politics in Bolivia into dialogue with critical engagements from Indigenous scholars in Aotearoa and decolonial thinkers globally, we urge careful analysis of the multiple and changing standpoints of our collaborators in order not to re-construct essentialized notions of Indigeneity. Ultimately, we see the need to acknowledge the tight spaces of negotiation that we all find ourselves drawn into when we undertake collaborative endeavours. &nbsp

Métodos etnográficos colaborativos

Investigadores y activistas están desarrollando cada vez más investigaciones colaborativas, en respuesta a los privilegios asimétricos que conforman la ciencia occidental, asociándose con comunidades locales y orientando sus investigaciones explícitamente hacia sus objetivos políticos. En este artículo, examinamos este importante cambio, identificando las maneras en que éste mismo se entrecruza con otras tendencias similares e importantes, especialmente la política del conocimiento y la descolonización. A la vez, analizamos dichas tendencias de la investigación colaborativa en Latinoamérica para comprender el contexto y los programas políticos de aquellos involucrados y para mostrar lo que se produce. Sugerimos que la colaboración, como otros discursos aparentemente progresistas, pueden ser espacios tanto de gobernanza como de liberación dado que, cada vez con mayor frecuencia, la norma en agencias gubernamentales, instituciones de investigación y ONGs consiste en el fomento de los métodos participativos para la promoción de sus propios planes. Teniendo en cuenta los dilemas particulares en nuestros propios (y distintos) proyectos de investigación sobre las políticas indígenas en Bolivia, recomendamos un análisis cuidadoso de los puntos de vista (standpoints) múltiples y cambiantes de nuestros colaboradores, así evitando reconstruir nociones esencialistas de la indigeneidad. En última instancia, resaltamos la necesidad de reconocer los estrechos márgenes de negociación en los que todos nos vemos inmersos cuando emprendemos proyectos colaborativos.  Scholars and activists are increasingly carrying out collaborative research to respond to the asymmetrical privileges built into Western science by partnering with local communities and explicitly orienting their research towards their political aims. In this article, we examine this important shift, tracing the ways it intersects with other important trends in the field, especially the politics of knowledge and decolonization. We discuss the tendencies of collaborative research in Latin America to examine the context and political agendas of those involved and to show what is produced. We suggest that collaboration, like other seemingly progressive discourses like decolonization, can be the site of governance as well as liberation, as it is increasingly the norm for government agencies, research institutions, and non-governmental organizations to promote participatory methods to further their own agendas. Considering the dilemmas in our different research projects on indigenous politics in Bolivia, we urge careful analysis of the multiple and changing standpoints of our collaborators in order not to reconstruct essentialized notions of indigeneity. Ultimately, we see the need to acknowledge the tight spaces of negotiation that we all find ourselves drawn into when we undertake collaborative endeavors.Investigadores y activistas están desarrollando cada vez más investigaciones colaborativas, en respuesta a los privilegios asimétricos que conforman la ciencia occidental, asociándose con comunidades locales y orientando sus investigaciones explícitamente hacia sus objetivos políticos. En este artículo, examinamos este importante cambio, identificando las maneras en que éste mismo se entrecruza con otras tendencias similares e importantes, especialmente la política del conocimiento y la descolonización. A la vez, analizamos dichas tendencias de la investigación colaborativa en Latinoamérica para comprender el contexto y los programas políticos de aquellos involucrados y para mostrar lo que se produce. Sugerimos que la colaboración, como otros discursos aparentemente progresistas, pueden ser espacios tanto de gobernanza como de liberación dado que, cada vez con mayor frecuencia, la norma en agencias gubernamentales, instituciones de investigación y ONGs consiste en el fomento de los métodos participativos para la promoción de sus propios planes. Teniendo en cuenta los dilemas particulares en nuestros propios (y distintos) proyectos de investigación sobre las políticas indígenas en Bolivia, recomendamos un análisis cuidadoso de los puntos de vista (standpoints) múltiples y cambiantes de nuestros colaboradores, así evitando reconstruir nociones esencialistas de la indigeneidad. En última instancia, resaltamos la necesidad de reconocer los estrechos márgenes de negociación en los que todos nos vemos inmersos cuando emprendemos proyectos colaborativos.

Introduction. Vivir bien / Buen vivir and post-neoliberal development paths in Latin America : scope, strategies and the realities of implementation

Neoliberalism has economic, political, sociocultural, and environmental consequences that are known to cause imbalances across the globe (Navarro, 2020). The financial crisis that began in 2008 in the economic centers of the Global North has been steadily spreading to low- and middle-income countries, including much of Latin America. Political leaders around the world are unable to confront the contradictions of market-led forms of development that deepen socioeconomic inequalities while unsustainably extracting the natural resources required to maintain consumption-driven forms of economic growth. At the same time, economic growth appears to be the prerequisite for responding to immediate local needs and bringing social groups and entire countries out of poverty. Awareness of and resistance to the structural inconsistencies of the neoliberal globalization project at the margins, led by people from countries at the so-called periphery of the world system, had already emerged in the crisis of the 1980s (Wallerstein, 1984). This was a resistance that sometimes emerged from civil society rather than being led by traditional political and economic elites (Petras, 2011). Having survived the lost decade of the 1980s and beyond, Latin America perfectly illustrates the crisis of legitimacy of the neoliberal revolution and the sociopolitical counterrevolution of civil-society-led alternatives. It is in this context that we are witnessing innovative ideas emerge from communities and subjects that have historically been economically, politically, and culturally marginalized. Latin America’s upheaval and contestation have their roots in indigenous epistemologies—epistemologies of the South (Santos, 2015)—and practices. Where indigenous groups have become a newly empowered political subject (Postero, 2006), as in Bolivia, the repercussions of these political transitions include the incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices into the roadmap for alternative, “refounded” (Artaraz, 2012) versions of these societies. As a result, both Bolivia and Ecuador have seen the introduction of indigenous concepts of vivir bien (living well) or buen vivir (good living) into their constitutions, national development plans, and public policies. When the concept of vivir bien was added to these constitutions, possibilities were opened for countries around the region to experiment with the meaning of sumak kawsay/buen vivir and suma qamaña/vivir bien and the ways in which a range of understandings of these terms could be translated into policy (Asamblea Constituyente, 2008). Versions of the concept have also gained salience in other Latin American countries, from Venezuela to Nicaragua

Candomblé and the Academic's Tools : Religious Expertise and the Binds of Recognition in Brazil

ABSTRACT Latin American state efforts to recognize ethnically and racially marked populations have focused on knowledge and expertise. This article argues that this form of state recognition does not only call on subaltern groups to present themselves in a frame of expertise. It also pushes such groups to position themselves and their social and political struggles in a matrix based on expertise and knowledge. In the context of early 2000s Brazil, the drive to recognition led activists from the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé to reimagine the religion's practitioners? long-term engagements with scholars and scholarly depictions of the religion as a form of epistemological exploitation that had resulted in public misrecognition of the true source of knowledge on the religion: Candomblé practitioners. To remedy this situation, the activists called on Candomblé practitioners to appropriate the ?academic's tools,? the modes of representation by which scholarly expertise and knowledge were performed and recognized by the general public and state officials. This strategy transformed religious structures of expertise and knowledge in ways that established a new, politically efficacious epistemological grounding for Candomblé practitioners? calls for recognition. But it also further marginalized temples with limited connections or access to scholars and higher education. [politics of recognition, politics of expertise, state recognition, Candomblé religion, Brazil]Peer reviewe

The Indigenous State

In 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new “democratic cultural revolution,” Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. In this perceptive new book, Nancy Postero examines the successes and failures that have followed in the ten years since Morales’s election. While the Morales government has made many changes that have benefited Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, it has also consolidated power and reinforced extractivist development models. In the process, indigeneity has been transformed from a site of emancipatory politics to a site of liberal nationstate building. By carefully tracing the political origins and practices of decolonization among activists, government administrators, and ordinary citizens, Postero makes an important contribution to our understanding of the meaning and impact of Bolivia’s indigenous state

The Indigenous State

In 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new “democratic cultural revolution,” Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. In this perceptive new book, Nancy Postero examines the successes and failures that have followed in the ten years since Morales’s election. While the Morales government has made many changes that have benefited Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, it has also consolidated power and reinforced extractivist development models. In the process, indigeneity has been transformed from a site of emancipatory politics to a site of liberal nationstate building. By carefully tracing the political origins and practices of decolonization among activists, government administrators, and ordinary citizens, Postero makes an important contribution to our understanding of the meaning and impact of Bolivia’s indigenous state

The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia

In 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new “democratic cultural revolution,” Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. In this perceptive new book, Nancy Postero examines the successes and failures that have followed in the ten years since Morales’s election. While the Morales government has made many changes that have benefited Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, it has also consolidated power and reinforced extractivist development models. In the process, indigeneity has been transformed from a site of emancipatory politics to a site of liberal nationstate building. By carefully tracing the political origins and practices of decolonization among activists, government administrators, and ordinary citizens, Postero makes an important contribution to our understanding of the meaning and impact of Bolivia’s indigenous state