ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at re-discovering a piece of the Spanish and Latin American contribution to the history of ideas that influenced the theoretical construction of postdevelopment prior to Escobar’s conceptualisation during the 1990s. Specifically, the text focuses on two theoretical approaches, human and ecological development theorised by Spanish economist José Luis Sampedro (1979, 1982a, 1982b, 1982c), and human-scale development, as proposed by Chilean economist Max-Neef and his colleagues (Max-Neef, Elizalde & Hopenhayn 1986). These two concepts provided inspiration for the forging of Ecuador’s buen vivir, often considered a postdevelopmental proposal or an alternative to development (Gudynas 2014) between 2006 and 2016. They both reject development as a quantitative GDP-based concept, and put emphasis on other dimensions of human life, including its psychological dimension. These authors, less known than other postdevelopment pioneers, suggest public policy orientations for practical implementation, based on the revalorisation of local knowledge and practices, the emphasis on traditional communities and the role of civil society in participatory democracy. Ecuador’s political constitution and national planning between 2008 and 2016 recognised most of these orientations; the tension between the ideals of buen vivir and the more developmentalist tendency eventually adopted by the government can provide valuable lessons for putting postdevelopment in practice.
