Rationalizing ‘Vivir Bien’: The Modern State and the formal limits to transformative rationalism in Bolivia

Abstract

Drawing on the 2011 march against a highway project through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and IndigenousTerritory (TIPNIS) in Bolivia, this paper reviews Max Weber’s conceptions on rationality, situating the TIPNIS protestin the interface between the modern formal-instrumental rationality of Bolivian State with the Substantive rationalityproposed as ‘Vivir Bien’; an umbrella term for a conglomeration of Latin American indigenous proposals for asustainable human and nature relationship beyond neoliberalism, colonialism, and their cultural and environmentalconsequences. As any modern institution, the Bolivian State seeks to impose modern means-ends calculations,discourses and practices, thus subduing the original transformational potential of ‘Vivir Bien’ as a different rationality,with its means-ends framework, knowledge and patterns of action.In this regard, from a Weberian critique of Modernity, two questions will be raised. First, to recognize the modernstate as the institutional embodiment of modern formal-instrumental rationality, bounded to the means-ends frameworksettled by Modernity. Secondly, to evaluate the conditions for the possibility of incorporating other rationalities into themodern state, allowing another means-ends calculation for state policy-making as well as other patterns of action andsociality.From these considerations, this paper realizes modern rationalism in front of other rationalisms, other humanworldviews and practices in a critical search of alternative approaches and proposals to attend to local and globalproblems that threaten sustainable human existence, from environmental devaluation to social inequality.