ABSTRACT
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 phenomenon that I call governing pluralities. In the sphere of the state, I argue that despite diverse and often conflictive policy discourses, the notion of Vivir Bien is portrayed as a unifying local alternative to universalizing development discourses and neoliberal globalization.
