**9. Ontology of the commons and quality of life**

*Quality of Life - Biopsychosocial Perspectives*

life and the environment.

and production model.

was led mainly by the economist Alberto Acosta.

nature must be taken into consideration.

*Ñamde reko* of the Guaraní [21–24]. All these concepts can be seen as manifestations of the ideas of *Buen Vivir* (which roughly translates as "good living") that have been addressed theoretically by Acosta and Gudynas, although *Buen Vivir* ideas are a current topic for various intellectual groups in Latin America, who gather ancestral ideas to grapple with development by rethinking it as a development focused on quality of

*Buen Vivir* is not a completely settled concept, as it is in a constant process of updating, incorporating ideas from indigenous groups and their traditional knowledge, the citizenry, and Latin American academia. A review of the literature indicates that its basic precepts are sustainable living, justice, democracy, a solidary, community economy, reciprocity, and the combination of different logics of production and work, fostering the appreciation of ancestral practices and knowledge and complementarity rather than competition as the foundation of the economic

The concept of *Buen Vivir* bursts into Latin American political discourse, public policies, and academic debate more than a decade ago. It has also been incorporated into the constitutions of Bolivia (2009) and Ecuador (2008). It bears mentioning that while the two constitutional systems have similarities, the Ecuadorian constitution presents *Buen Vivir* as a set of rights, while the Bolivian document presents it more as a fundamental ethic to take into consideration. Likewise, various processes and realities went into the creation of the concept; for example, the Bolivian discussion on *Suma Qamaña* was driven by the hard work of indigenous communities and indigenous intellectuals such as Simón Yampara, while in Ecuador the discussion

The concept of *Buen Vivir* appeared in the political sphere in the late 1990s, drawing on the *Buen Vivir* culture of indigenous origins [17, 25, 26]. It has been shaped by both global and local discourses, focusing on the search for post-development alternatives rooted in indigenous and citizen discourses in Latin America. As we have stated, *Buen Vivir* is centered on a critic of development, putting forth the idea that the social and the ecological overlap and are mutually related, thus taking on equal importance [27–29]. It is therefore considered a biocentric position, in which natural elements have intrinsic value: "They are, therefore, subjects. It is precisely this position that allowed the rights of nature to be recognized in the new constitution of Ecuador" ([28], p. 8)*.* The foregoing undoubtedly has many implications, since, when developing legal proposals, the defense of the rights of

Thus, *Buen Vivir* is a pluralistic concept [22, 28], a conceptual platform for understanding the world, and, in the case of indigenous people, a worldview consistent with each specific national and community context. Therefore, it could be said that there are various "Buen Vivires" specific to local situations. As Eduardo Gudynas puts it: "As Buen Vivir is pluralistic, it could be stated that any indigenous position, or any critique of development, is a synonym of Buen Vivir." ([28], p. 9). In keeping with the idea of the pluralistic nature of *Buen Vivir*, the concept has recently been used extensively in the discourse of Mapuche political organizations who have revived the ancestral idea of *Küme Mogen*, linking it to environmental and territorial problems in the Araucanía region. Through *Küme Mogen*, the Mapuche people offer an alternative to development from a perspective of "sustainability with identity," through which it is sought to implement an alternative guided by principles of balance and human harmony with the environment, thereby displacing western assumptions on the environment viewed in terms of the needs of man. Thus, the concept of *Küme Mogen* guides action by promoting values of respect and the Mapuche moral code *Ad Mapu*, which regulates good relations and reciprocity among all the elements of nature, whether animals, trees, rivers, plants, or rocks.

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Good and efficient participation requires a guarantee of transparency, great clarity, and information on the process a project will follow, its objectives, contents, costs, impacts, deadlines, and means of citizen participation, as well as the careful establishment of real possibilities for neighboring communities to influence its course [1, 31].

Social experience indicates that communities affected by interventions in their territories generally react and base their arguments on the defense of their individual and collective interests ([1], p. 36). They defend their heritage of common goods, whether water, an ecosystem, a landscape, clean air, a wetland, traditional crops, forms of coexistence, or local cultures. Thus, for a consultation system to be truly democratic and generate conditions for dialog and possible consensus, transparency regarding interests, common heritage, and the motivations of the actors participating in the project proves essential [1]. Concealing the underlying interests and motivations is detrimental to project acceptance. And the interests are not entirely rational; they also involve experiences and emotional expressions: "… more deeply, the public culture needs to be nourished and sustained by something that lies deep in the human heart and taps its most powerful sentiments, including both passion and humor. Without these, the public culture remains wafer-thin and passionless, without the ability to motivate people to make any sacrifice of their personal self-interest for the sake of the common good." ([19], pp. 61, 62).

Another important aspect to consider in a project is the possibility of creating added value for regions. Many projects merely extract raw materials without adding value; such projects keep regions poor, turning them into mere suppliers of cheap natural resources. By contrast, development projects that add value contribute to personal development (through the demand for qualified personnel) and that of the region/town through value chain momentum, the creation of knowledge and technology, and the improvement of trade. Along with adding value to what it produces, a project must also consider the identity of the town or region. It is known that some projects degrade or even destroy regional identity. The identity of a region is closely related to its ecological, productive, social, and cultural history. Identity unites a region and strengthens its inhabitants' sense of belongingness to and respect for its ecological and human habitats. And identity has an irreplaceable and immense value, as it nourishes the social and individual life of the community [1].

Before the appearance of private property and the capitalist mode of production, communities occupied territories with a vision, culture, and practices based on the commons or the common good [1]. "Commons im Pluriversum" (the common in various worlds), in Escobar's words, takes on an ontological character [32]. The ontology of the commons bases its philosophy on a world or various worlds with common senses and belongings that serve as a foundation for and enable the emergence of human life within the framework of a habitable and interdependent natural habitat [1]. Thus: "the emergence of 'the common' as a political rallying cry initially grew out of dispersed social and cultural struggles against the capitalist order and the entrepreneurial state. As the central term use to denote an alternative to neoliberalism, the common became the effective principle for struggles and movements, that, over the past two decades, have resisted the dynamics of capital

and given rise to original forms of activism and discourse. In order words, the common is far from a purely conceptual invention: the common is rather the concrete product of social movements and various schools of thought dedicated to opposing the dominant tendency of our era, namely the extension of private appropriation into every sphere of our societies, out cultures and out very lives." ([33], p. 21).

This ontological view of the world based on sharing inalienable common goods (alienable goods would have been inconceivable) prevailed for thousands of years until the arrival of capitalism—along with private accumulation—as a mode of production and construction of social life and culture took hold of the modernization processes of the Modern Age and buried the ancient traditions of ecological life still present in indigenous communities and local coexistence practices beneath a culture of trade. Defending local identity is not easy. Amid the globalizing trends in motion today, it means going against the flow, as argued by studies by noted thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Edgar Morin: "With globalization, identity becomes a heated matter. All the landmarks are canceled, biographies become jigsaw puzzles whose solutions are difficult and mutable. However, the problem is not the single pieces of this mosaic, but the way they fit in with each other." ([34], p. 104) "Identity, let us be clear about it, is a 'hotly contested concept.' Whenever you hear that word, you can be sure that there is a battle going on. A battlefield is identity's natural home. Identity comes to life only in the tumult of battle; it falls asleep and silent the moment the noise of the battle dies down. Cutting both ways cannot therefore be avoided. It can perhaps be wished away (and commonly is, by philosophers striving for logical elegance), but it cannot be thought away, and even less can it be done away with in human practice. 'Identity' is a simultaneous struggle against dissolution and fragmentation; an intention to devour and at the same time a stout refusal to be eaten…" ([34], pp. 163, 164).

Globalization tends to "devour" the local and disintegrate and fragment what remains of community life and culture to subject it to standardizing "technoeconomic" logics, as analyzed by Morin [35]. Nonetheless, the local does not disappear. It moves and endures in the appreciation of the commons, which unites, creates, and gives a sense and feelings of belongingness to a living human community in constant transformation.

The Latin American scientific community can make a significant contribution to the addition of value to the productive, social, and ecological life of the region [14]. Added value is urgently needed to overcome the region's considerable delay and advance toward sustainable development and improve the quality of life of its population. Creative capacities exist in all countries and areas. The defense of water—a vital resource—for instance, and natural resources in general in times of fierce global competition and irreversible climate change, is the only way to guarantee the construction of a truly sustainable ecosocial order. To this end, we must think less linearly and more circularly in order to sync the movement of the planet's ecosystem components with the complex movements of human life in the biosphere. In truth, everything is a common good, as even that which is paradoxically called "private" is the result of interactions of common goods and values.

### **Acknowledgements**

I especially appreciate the financial support you have provided me, and that made possible the elaboration, translation, and editing of this chapter, to the Water Research Center for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM), Conicyt/ Fondap/15130015 of the Universidad de Concepción, Chile, and Interdisciplinary Research Center of Excellence (www.crhiam.cl. +5641 2661758).

**203**

**Author details**

Concepcion, Chile

Concepcion, Chile

Hannover, Germany

Jorge Rojas Hernández1,2\* and Javier Lastra Bravo3

\*Address all correspondence to: jrojas@udec.cl

provided the original work is properly cited.

1 Department of Sociology, School of Social Sciences. Universidad de

2 Water Research Center for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM), Universidad de

3 Intitute of Sociology, School of Philosophy, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Quality of Life from the South, Local Knowledge, Socio-Ecological Relationships, and Citizen…*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88953*

*Quality of Life from the South, Local Knowledge, Socio-Ecological Relationships, and Citizen… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88953*
