Eija Ranta-Owusu
Biographic Data
| ID | 771693 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eija Ranta-Owusu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eija |
| FAMILY NAME | Ranta-Owusu |
| SIGNATURE | RANTA-OWUSU E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6978-6174 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Intersecting inequalities: Afro-Bolivian women’s experiences of racism and antiracism in plurinational Bolivia
This article explores the intersectional experiences of Afro-Bolivian women navigating racism and anti-racism within the context of plurinational Bolivia, which has become internationally known for its decolonizing policy agendas and inclusive politics. Despite advances in constitutional recognition, anti-racism legislation, and political organizing, Afro-Bolivian women continue to face intersecting inequalities shaped by race, gender, and econom…
Eco-territorial feminisms and re-existences against neo-extractivism in Bolivia
Throughout Latin America, women’s leadership and protagonism seem to characterise the contemporary wave of territorial resistance to extractivist projects and their multiple dispossessions. This article examines eco-territorial feminist resistance, and experiences of re-existence, as alternatives to extractivism in contemporary Bolivia, where the twenty-year rule of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government, characterised by neo-extractivist …
Post-Extractivist Horizons in Latin America: Between Utopias and Struggles for Re-Existence Against Neo-Extractivism
The triumph of neoliberal globalisation has been presented as the end of history, with no viable alternatives available. In Latin America, however, the structural adjustment programmes imposed by international financial institutions and the increased role of transnational corporations were resisted by social and popular movements that eventually translated into progressive politics and policies. Nevertheless, despite anti-capitalist and pro-envir…
Citizenship Utopias in the Global South: The Emergent Forms of Activism in an Era of Disillusionment
América Latina ya no es ese continente homogéneamente católico que fue durante siglos. Hoy, es escenario de una profunda diversificación religiosa y espiritual: la expansión de las iglesias evangélicas, el crecimiento de los “sin religión” y de los que son creyentes a su manera, la persistencia de las religiosidades populares y el resurgimiento de cosmovisiones indígenas, feministas y ecológicas.
Intersecting inequalities in women’s political inclusion in Kenya
Sub-Saharan Africa has become known for its growing number of women political decision makers, and its progressive policies and laws such as gender quotas. Yet we still do not know enough about how politically active women themselves perceive the challenges and opportunities of being women in politics, and how their experiences differ because of intersecting inequalities. Inspired by the intersectional approach and literature on women and politic…
Narratives of Authoritarianism in Times of Crisis: Democracy and Limitations of Progressive Politics in Plurinational Bolivia
In Bolivia, expectations for a decolonised society turned into a political crisis in the autumn of 2019. Discussing the limitations of progressive politics in cultivating democracy, this article identifies three narratives of authoritarianism – liberal democratic, developmentalist and colonial – which the opponents of Evo Morales use to frame their disillusionment with his rule. It argues that these multiple narratives lend meaning to contradicto…
Bret Gustafson. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia
Bret Gustafson. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia. Durham and London: Duke UniversityPress, 2009. Pp. 352. ISBN: 978-0-8223-4529-9 (cloth); 978-0-8223-4546-6 (paperback)
Just fundraising? Campaigning gendered inequalities in changing CSO fundraising markets in Finland
Civil society organisations (CSOs) often communicate global gendered inequalities simplistically from a fundraising framework to Global North audiences. While the stereotypical and racialising portrayals of women and girls in the Global South have been widely criticised, the diverse perceptions and experiences of development professionals regarding contested campaigning practices have been less discussed. Furthermore, literature has focussed on t…
Nascent activism in times of disillusionment: Struggles between Indigenous self-determination and state co-optation in plurinational Bolivia
The restructuring of the Bolivian state as plurinational raised high hopes for Indigenous self-determination. In practice, however, attempts by the governing political party to co-opt Indigenous representation have compromised the autonomy and diversity of Indigenous peoples. This article investigates the emergence, forms, and rationale of nascent Indigenous activism in times of disillusionment in the plurinational state of Bolivia, where the pol…
Toward human/non-human conviviality
Capitalist coloniality has produced multiple crises in our minds, bodies, and social relations by commoditizing wellbeing. Our sense of belonging, collective responsibility, and conviviality with other human and earth beings has been miserably deprived. This chapter explores the decolonizing potential of new forms of conviviality as alternatives to the crisis for humanity and the biophysical environment in the Global South. Most specifically it f…
Contested meanings of Vivir Bien
This chapter focuses on the multiple definitions, interpretations, and understandings of Vivir Bien by indigenous activists, scholars, and social movements, as well as how it is framed by state policies, discourses, and actors. It argues that the principal importance of constructing alternative indigenous terminologies lies in the enhancement of indigenous political struggles for self-determination through autonomies and indigenous territories, a…
“Colonialism strikes back”
This chapter examines the complex and contested process of translating Vivir Bien improvement schemes into concrete bureaucratic practices during Morales’s first executive period. It will be shown that, to a large extent, Bolivian bureaucratic logic differs from discursive and ideological framings of state transformation and, therefore, it is argued that more attention should be paid to examining the internal functioning of state governance. Cons…
Bureaucracy as a disciplinary power
This chapter looks at the articulations between government and discipline in a state bureaucracy that is in the process of change. It examines how bureaucracy as a disciplinary power functions when it is challenged by discourses of decolonization. I argue that the MAS’s transformational agenda faces severe challenges, as indigenous policy formations collide with the existing bureaucratic-institutional structures of the Bolivian nation-state. I al…
Indigenous resistance struggles, coloniality of the state, and the capitalist world-system
This chapter sheds light on the history of the intertwined relations between Bolivian state formation and indigenous politics by looking at the complex articulations of global, national, and local processes. It is shown that indigenous peoples’ claims for indigenous self-governance have a long and active historical trajectory through the medium of resistance struggles. It is further argued that while the appearance of the notion of Vivir Bien in …
Towards decolonial government
This chapter explains the theoretical framework and conceptual choices of the study, which is located at the intersections of scholarship on Latin American decolonial thinking, Foucauldian governmentality, and global political economy. It establishes theoretical foundations for studying the use of indigenous terminologies as state policy in processes of change while also developing a theoretical framing of the concept of decolonial government.
In the name of Vivir Bien
This chapter discusses battles and power struggles over the political-economic basis of Bolivian plurinationalism. It focuses on describing and understanding diverging views and interpretations amongst elements of the political opposition, indigenous activists, left-wing politicians, and social movements over the control and distribution of assets such as natural resources, land, and territories. It examines the emergence of state-led development…
Concluding remarks
This chapter summarizes the findings of the study. It concludes that the Bolivian process of change can be best understood as a contested battlefield involving different forms of government: decolonial, neoliberal, and state oriented. The overlap and conflict of these forms illustrate the insight that the state works in complex and articulated ways in processes of social change, while indigenous terminologies have been increasingly swallowed by b…
The politics of development: Anthropological perspectives
Anthropology has consistently struggled with its role as a trustee of a ‘global liberal project’. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines the relationship of political anthropology to the politics of development through the prism of a long-term process – incomplete and perhaps ultimately unsuccessful – of disassociating anthropology from the (post)colonial project of domination through improvement. The chapter scrutinizes such a potential de…
State Governance and Micropractices of Power in the Process of Decolonizing the State in Bolivia
This article investigates how multiple and nuanced micropractices of power work through everyday bureaucratic actions in the course of major state transformations. It argues that it is not solely the grand ideological battles or global asymmetries of power that impede the implementation of revolutionary political alternatives. More attention should be paid to the internal functioning of state governance and its micropractices of power in processe…
Alternative Paradigms of Development in State Politics and Policy Making in the Global South: An Introduction
The global recognition of local/indigenous alternativesIn many parts of the Global South, locally rooted, indigenousor indigenisedcultural conceptualisations have become key denominators in state politics and policy-making processes.This is an interesting fact in itself, since many of these alternative concepts arising from grassroots social movements, indigenous activists and radical decolonization scholars articulate a fundamental criticism at …
Vivir Bien as an Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization: Can Indigenous Terminologies Decolonize the State
Presenting an ethnographic account of the emergence and application of critical political alternatives in the Global South, this book analyses the opportunities and challenges of decolonizing and transforming a modern, hierarchical and globally-immersed nation-state on the basis of indigenous terminologies. Alternative development paradigms that represent values including justice, pluralism, democracy and a sustainable relationship to nature tend…
Patronage and Ethnicity amongst Politically Active Young Kenyans
Vivir bien governance in Bolivia: Chimera or attainable utopia
The notion of vivir bien – a complex set of ideas, worldviews, and knowledge deriving from indigenous movements, activist groups, and scholars of indigeneity – has become an overarching principle for policy-making and state transformation processes in Andean countries. This article analyses the contradiction between the principle of vivir bien as an egalitarian utopian category and its bureaucratic application in Bolivia to state formation proces…
Toward a Decolonial Alternative to Development? The Emergence and Shortcomings of Vivir Bien as State Policy in Bolivia in the Era of Globalization
There is an urgent demand for the examination of the critical perceptions of new kinds of ‘development’ which are emerging in the Global South in response to—and often opposed to—the global capitalist political economy. This article discusses the case of contemporary Bolivia in which indigenous political alternatives have emerged as the resistance to economic globalization and the powers of capital accumulation, as well as to the cultural and epi…
Governing Pluralities in the Making: Indigenous knowledge and the question of sovereignty in contemporary Bolivia
It is a common argument that indigenous movements are not organized to seize state power but rather sovereignty through autonomous arrangements. In Bolivia, however, they evolved rapidly into a governing political instrument. The process of state transformation that followed emphasizes indigenous knowledge as the ideological basis for the construction of a plurinational state, a conglomeration of indigenous autonomies. The article examines dynami…
Vivir Bien as an Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization: Can Indigenous Terminologies Decolonize the State
Presenting an ethnographic account of the emergence and application of critical political alternatives in the Global South, this book analyses the opportunities and challenges of decolonizing and transforming a modern, hierarchical and globally-immersed nation-state on the basis of indigenous terminologies. Alternative development paradigms that represent values including justice, pluralism, democracy and a sustainable relationship to nature tend…
Toward a Decolonial Alternative to Development? The Emergence and Shortcomings of Vivir Bien as State Policy in Bolivia in the Era of Globalization
There is an urgent demand for the examination of the critical perceptions of new kinds of ‘development’ which are emerging in the Global South in response to—and often opposed to—the global capitalist political economy. This article discusses the case of contemporary Bolivia in which indigenous political alternatives have emerged as the resistance to economic globalization and the powers of capital accumulation, as well as to the cultural and epi…
Intersecting inequalities in women’s political inclusion in Kenya
Sub-Saharan Africa has become known for its growing number of women political decision makers, and its progressive policies and laws such as gender quotas. Yet we still do not know enough about how politically active women themselves perceive the challenges and opportunities of being women in politics, and how their experiences differ because of intersecting inequalities. Inspired by the intersectional approach and literature on women and politic…
Post-Extractivist Horizons in Latin America: Between Utopias and Struggles for Re-Existence Against Neo-Extractivism
The triumph of neoliberal globalisation has been presented as the end of history, with no viable alternatives available. In Latin America, however, the structural adjustment programmes imposed by international financial institutions and the increased role of transnational corporations were resisted by social and popular movements that eventually translated into progressive politics and policies. Nevertheless, despite anti-capitalist and pro-envir…
Narratives of Authoritarianism in Times of Crisis: Democracy and Limitations of Progressive Politics in Plurinational Bolivia
In Bolivia, expectations for a decolonised society turned into a political crisis in the autumn of 2019. Discussing the limitations of progressive politics in cultivating democracy, this article identifies three narratives of authoritarianism – liberal democratic, developmentalist and colonial – which the opponents of Evo Morales use to frame their disillusionment with his rule. It argues that these multiple narratives lend meaning to contradicto…
Vivir bien governance in Bolivia: Chimera or attainable utopia
The notion of vivir bien – a complex set of ideas, worldviews, and knowledge deriving from indigenous movements, activist groups, and scholars of indigeneity – has become an overarching principle for policy-making and state transformation processes in Andean countries. This article analyses the contradiction between the principle of vivir bien as an egalitarian utopian category and its bureaucratic application in Bolivia to state formation proces…
Just fundraising? Campaigning gendered inequalities in changing CSO fundraising markets in Finland
Civil society organisations (CSOs) often communicate global gendered inequalities simplistically from a fundraising framework to Global North audiences. While the stereotypical and racialising portrayals of women and girls in the Global South have been widely criticised, the diverse perceptions and experiences of development professionals regarding contested campaigning practices have been less discussed. Furthermore, literature has focussed on t…
Nascent activism in times of disillusionment: Struggles between Indigenous self-determination and state co-optation in plurinational Bolivia
The restructuring of the Bolivian state as plurinational raised high hopes for Indigenous self-determination. In practice, however, attempts by the governing political party to co-opt Indigenous representation have compromised the autonomy and diversity of Indigenous peoples. This article investigates the emergence, forms, and rationale of nascent Indigenous activism in times of disillusionment in the plurinational state of Bolivia, where the pol…
State Governance and Micropractices of Power in the Process of Decolonizing the State in Bolivia
This article investigates how multiple and nuanced micropractices of power work through everyday bureaucratic actions in the course of major state transformations. It argues that it is not solely the grand ideological battles or global asymmetries of power that impede the implementation of revolutionary political alternatives. More attention should be paid to the internal functioning of state governance and its micropractices of power in processe…
Governing Pluralities in the Making: Indigenous knowledge and the question of sovereignty in contemporary Bolivia
It is a common argument that indigenous movements are not organized to seize state power but rather sovereignty through autonomous arrangements. In Bolivia, however, they evolved rapidly into a governing political instrument. The process of state transformation that followed emphasizes indigenous knowledge as the ideological basis for the construction of a plurinational state, a conglomeration of indigenous autonomies. The article examines dynami…
Toward a Decolonial Alternative to Development? The Emergence and Shortcomings of Vivir Bien as State Policy in Bolivia in the Era of Globalization
There is an urgent demand for the examination of the critical perceptions of new kinds of ‘development’ which are emerging in the Global South in response to—and often opposed to—the global capitalist political economy. This article discusses the case of contemporary Bolivia in which indigenous political alternatives have emerged as the resistance to economic globalization and the powers of capital accumulation, as well as to the cultural and epi…
Patronage and Ethnicity amongst Politically Active Young Kenyans
Vivir bien governance in Bolivia: Chimera or attainable utopia
The notion of vivir bien – a complex set of ideas, worldviews, and knowledge deriving from indigenous movements, activist groups, and scholars of indigeneity – has become an overarching principle for policy-making and state transformation processes in Andean countries. This article analyses the contradiction between the principle of vivir bien as an egalitarian utopian category and its bureaucratic application in Bolivia to state formation proces…
Contested meanings of Vivir Bien
This chapter focuses on the multiple definitions, interpretations, and understandings of Vivir Bien by indigenous activists, scholars, and social movements, as well as how it is framed by state policies, discourses, and actors. It argues that the principal importance of constructing alternative indigenous terminologies lies in the enhancement of indigenous political struggles for self-determination through autonomies and indigenous territories, a…
“Colonialism strikes back”
This chapter examines the complex and contested process of translating Vivir Bien improvement schemes into concrete bureaucratic practices during Morales’s first executive period. It will be shown that, to a large extent, Bolivian bureaucratic logic differs from discursive and ideological framings of state transformation and, therefore, it is argued that more attention should be paid to examining the internal functioning of state governance. Cons…
Bureaucracy as a disciplinary power
This chapter looks at the articulations between government and discipline in a state bureaucracy that is in the process of change. It examines how bureaucracy as a disciplinary power functions when it is challenged by discourses of decolonization. I argue that the MAS’s transformational agenda faces severe challenges, as indigenous policy formations collide with the existing bureaucratic-institutional structures of the Bolivian nation-state. I al…
Indigenous resistance struggles, coloniality of the state, and the capitalist world-system
This chapter sheds light on the history of the intertwined relations between Bolivian state formation and indigenous politics by looking at the complex articulations of global, national, and local processes. It is shown that indigenous peoples’ claims for indigenous self-governance have a long and active historical trajectory through the medium of resistance struggles. It is further argued that while the appearance of the notion of Vivir Bien in …
Towards decolonial government
This chapter explains the theoretical framework and conceptual choices of the study, which is located at the intersections of scholarship on Latin American decolonial thinking, Foucauldian governmentality, and global political economy. It establishes theoretical foundations for studying the use of indigenous terminologies as state policy in processes of change while also developing a theoretical framing of the concept of decolonial government.
In the name of Vivir Bien
This chapter discusses battles and power struggles over the political-economic basis of Bolivian plurinationalism. It focuses on describing and understanding diverging views and interpretations amongst elements of the political opposition, indigenous activists, left-wing politicians, and social movements over the control and distribution of assets such as natural resources, land, and territories. It examines the emergence of state-led development…
Concluding remarks
This chapter summarizes the findings of the study. It concludes that the Bolivian process of change can be best understood as a contested battlefield involving different forms of government: decolonial, neoliberal, and state oriented. The overlap and conflict of these forms illustrate the insight that the state works in complex and articulated ways in processes of social change, while indigenous terminologies have been increasingly swallowed by b…
The politics of development: Anthropological perspectives
Anthropology has consistently struggled with its role as a trustee of a ‘global liberal project’. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines the relationship of political anthropology to the politics of development through the prism of a long-term process – incomplete and perhaps ultimately unsuccessful – of disassociating anthropology from the (post)colonial project of domination through improvement. The chapter scrutinizes such a potential de…
State Governance and Micropractices of Power in the Process of Decolonizing the State in Bolivia
This article investigates how multiple and nuanced micropractices of power work through everyday bureaucratic actions in the course of major state transformations. It argues that it is not solely the grand ideological battles or global asymmetries of power that impede the implementation of revolutionary political alternatives. More attention should be paid to the internal functioning of state governance and its micropractices of power in processe…
Alternative Paradigms of Development in State Politics and Policy Making in the Global South: An Introduction
The global recognition of local/indigenous alternativesIn many parts of the Global South, locally rooted, indigenousor indigenisedcultural conceptualisations have become key denominators in state politics and policy-making processes.This is an interesting fact in itself, since many of these alternative concepts arising from grassroots social movements, indigenous activists and radical decolonization scholars articulate a fundamental criticism at …
Vivir Bien as an Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization: Can Indigenous Terminologies Decolonize the State
Presenting an ethnographic account of the emergence and application of critical political alternatives in the Global South, this book analyses the opportunities and challenges of decolonizing and transforming a modern, hierarchical and globally-immersed nation-state on the basis of indigenous terminologies. Alternative development paradigms that represent values including justice, pluralism, democracy and a sustainable relationship to nature tend…
Toward human/non-human conviviality
Capitalist coloniality has produced multiple crises in our minds, bodies, and social relations by commoditizing wellbeing. Our sense of belonging, collective responsibility, and conviviality with other human and earth beings has been miserably deprived. This chapter explores the decolonizing potential of new forms of conviviality as alternatives to the crisis for humanity and the biophysical environment in the Global South. Most specifically it f…
Bret Gustafson. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia
Bret Gustafson. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia. Durham and London: Duke UniversityPress, 2009. Pp. 352. ISBN: 978-0-8223-4529-9 (cloth); 978-0-8223-4546-6 (paperback)
Just fundraising? Campaigning gendered inequalities in changing CSO fundraising markets in Finland
Civil society organisations (CSOs) often communicate global gendered inequalities simplistically from a fundraising framework to Global North audiences. While the stereotypical and racialising portrayals of women and girls in the Global South have been widely criticised, the diverse perceptions and experiences of development professionals regarding contested campaigning practices have been less discussed. Furthermore, literature has focussed on t…
Nascent activism in times of disillusionment: Struggles between Indigenous self-determination and state co-optation in plurinational Bolivia
The restructuring of the Bolivian state as plurinational raised high hopes for Indigenous self-determination. In practice, however, attempts by the governing political party to co-opt Indigenous representation have compromised the autonomy and diversity of Indigenous peoples. This article investigates the emergence, forms, and rationale of nascent Indigenous activism in times of disillusionment in the plurinational state of Bolivia, where the pol…
Citizenship Utopias in the Global South: The Emergent Forms of Activism in an Era of Disillusionment
América Latina ya no es ese continente homogéneamente católico que fue durante siglos. Hoy, es escenario de una profunda diversificación religiosa y espiritual: la expansión de las iglesias evangélicas, el crecimiento de los “sin religión” y de los que son creyentes a su manera, la persistencia de las religiosidades populares y el resurgimiento de cosmovisiones indígenas, feministas y ecológicas.
Intersecting inequalities in women’s political inclusion in Kenya
Sub-Saharan Africa has become known for its growing number of women political decision makers, and its progressive policies and laws such as gender quotas. Yet we still do not know enough about how politically active women themselves perceive the challenges and opportunities of being women in politics, and how their experiences differ because of intersecting inequalities. Inspired by the intersectional approach and literature on women and politic…
Narratives of Authoritarianism in Times of Crisis: Democracy and Limitations of Progressive Politics in Plurinational Bolivia
In Bolivia, expectations for a decolonised society turned into a political crisis in the autumn of 2019. Discussing the limitations of progressive politics in cultivating democracy, this article identifies three narratives of authoritarianism – liberal democratic, developmentalist and colonial – which the opponents of Evo Morales use to frame their disillusionment with his rule. It argues that these multiple narratives lend meaning to contradicto…
Post-Extractivist Horizons in Latin America: Between Utopias and Struggles for Re-Existence Against Neo-Extractivism
The triumph of neoliberal globalisation has been presented as the end of history, with no viable alternatives available. In Latin America, however, the structural adjustment programmes imposed by international financial institutions and the increased role of transnational corporations were resisted by social and popular movements that eventually translated into progressive politics and policies. Nevertheless, despite anti-capitalist and pro-envir…
Intersecting inequalities: Afro-Bolivian women’s experiences of racism and antiracism in plurinational Bolivia
This article explores the intersectional experiences of Afro-Bolivian women navigating racism and anti-racism within the context of plurinational Bolivia, which has become internationally known for its decolonizing policy agendas and inclusive politics. Despite advances in constitutional recognition, anti-racism legislation, and political organizing, Afro-Bolivian women continue to face intersecting inequalities shaped by race, gender, and econom…
Eco-territorial feminisms and re-existences against neo-extractivism in Bolivia
Throughout Latin America, women’s leadership and protagonism seem to characterise the contemporary wave of territorial resistance to extractivist projects and their multiple dispossessions. This article examines eco-territorial feminist resistance, and experiences of re-existence, as alternatives to extractivism in contemporary Bolivia, where the twenty-year rule of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government, characterised by neo-extractivist …
Political science (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Indigenous (9 works) · Politics and Society in Latin America (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (5 works)