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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how work to support an alternative economy was inflected with entrepreneurial logics by the bureaucrats tasked with its promotion. It highlights how middle-class ideas of status and ethics influence policy realisation and, by extension, ideas of a dignified life.

Paper long abstract:

The Popular Solidarity Economy (PSE) is a policy framework of the Ecuadorian government to try and create an alternative economy that “puts people above the market” and supports people in living “una vida digna” (a dignified life). Employees of the National Institute of Popular Solidarity Economy (IEPS) are tasked with supporting the PSE. They do not just do this in their work, however. They also try to live their values through their consumption patterns.

In this paper, I pay close attention to a new ethical consumption regime among Latin America’s emerging middle classes—in particular, how the idea of middle-classness is, in some circles, becoming tied to a sense of being part of a global community of ethical consumers. I then show how the ethics of this consumption regime affect PSE policy realisation. IEPS staff are involved in both the consumption and production of ‘ethical products’ for the PSE. They influence both supply and demand for PSE goods and services. Their preferences and ethics influence how they realise policy and, as a result, the dignified life the PSE enables becomes shot through with markers of their emerging middle-class status.

By examining government bureaucrats, I show how economies are shaped by the ethics and consumption patterns not only of consumers but those who enact policy. Despite wanting to push against the insecurities created by capitalism, IEPS staff tended to promote economic forms that reflected their own precarious employment and the entrepreneurialism they valorised.