Paper short abstract:

The paper examines political ontological frictions in Buen Vivir's commitment to equality in diversity, describing how inequality and diversity are understood and mobilized by diverse actors.

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines the postcolonial and epistemic frictions in Buen Vivir's commitment to equality in diversity. With major transformations in the goals, meanings and outcomes of public policy in Ecuador over the past decade, the paper describes and analyses the ways in which inequality and diversity have come to be understood, mobilized and institutionalized by diverse actors. Drawing on decolonial and feminist critiques, the paper seeks to explore the contentious politics around social difference. Buen Vivir state programmes draw on development, ecology, feminist and indigenous proposals to create an innovative approach to equality. Ecuador's decade-long experiments of tackling intersectional disadvantage have potential global relevance, given the Sustainable Development Goal of leaving no-one behind and addressing intersectional disadvantage. Yet Buen Vivir is partially connected with Kichwa epistemologies of sumak kawsay in which notions of nurturing relations and the scope of difference speak to ontological politics at the heart of Buen Vivir.