The old new words for an economy of life: sumak kawsay, kabuhanan, kalusugan, kalikasan.

Pereira, Nancy Cardoso

When the Thracian slave laughed at Thales of Miletus (2)--who closely watched the sky and the stars and, inadvertently, fell into a well--what did she laugh at? Was it a depreciative laugh at the cosmic investigation of the philosopher? No. She laughed the laugh of the female workers who are tied to the world of need and all the relations within the inhabited earth. "She said, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet." (3) I wish to take this example of the slave's laugh as a possible place for reflection on Latin-America and the whole inhabited world.

Three words rub against each other here: economy, ecology, and ecumenism. The three share the oikos: the social base unit (house, but also world). The widened and extensive use of oikos to make the "house" fit the "world" has been neglected. The word, which intends to say both things (house and world), attempts to make one fit into the other, that is, the whole world is shown in a place of life or habitat. The metabolism of living spaces--without ignoring scale and variations--brings us closer to "the world of the house" and "the house of the world," revealing the relationships that make life work. In this sense, the view of oikos cannot be so high as to leave out the daily life of living ones from its understanding. "Living ones" here refers to a mixture of holy things and human things, like the "worldly things" from Mercedes Sosa's song.

The Thracian slave's world (the need for water) and the philosopher's world (the sky and constellations) are simultaneous and interwoven happenings of the same life. What creates the friction is not the slave's laughter, but the hierarchical relationship between "her world" and "his world"--the hierarchy between the care of domestic life and the care for the life of the cosmos. This is the real dimension that structures the "oikos" (house and world): sexism, racism, social inequality.

Life then consists of three dimensions:

1. economy [right arrow] oikos (house, but also world) + nomos (law, norm of the house)

2. ecology [right arrow] oikos + logos (understanding, study of the house)

3. ecumenism [right arrow] oikos + mene (to inhabit/inhabitants of the house).

These three dimensions deal with the same reality--oikos from distinct sensibilities, instruments of analysis, and interpretative places: the economy, ecology, and ecumenism. The need that science and politics have to specialize their approaches cannot be shared by a theology that expresses, through the lexicon of ecumenism, the pretension of the totalities, the impossibility of segmenting life, and the humility of continually seeing life as "a pile of holy things mixed with human things, like I tell you ... worldly things."

Human things live in society. Worldly things live in the life of the world. Altogether constituting a "pile" of holy things, the simultaneity of the living the body/self in the social body/body of the world. Latin-American theologies, exhausted by science and philosophy that segment and hierarchize the knowledge of the oikos and tired of the neo-colonial trends that prohibit "grand narratives," face the challenge of ascertaining all the liberating passion of the oikos. They seek to articulate the worldly/human/holy things as a vital mixture of economy, ecology, and ecumenism.

In Ivone Gebara's words:

   The immediate social problems, the ones our eyes can see and our
   bodies feel, are forgotten or turned into something commonplace.
   For many, this is not ecology! The social ecology no longer has a
   meaningful public space. Indeed, social injustice is not perceived
   as an ecological problem, that is, as a problem that is related to
   the "oikia", our common house, origin of the ecological word and
   Science. (4)

Thus, these are three ways of being in the world and organizing life in the world. While economy disposes and standardizes the forms of production of life in relation to the world, ecology deals with understanding the logic and implications of those relations, and ecumenism asks how (objectively and subjectively) to occupy/live in the world. We propose three old and new challenges for Latin American theology: to confront fundamentalism--economic (capitalism), social (racism and sexism), and religious--as expressions of a liberating spirituality.

On the Laughter and Struggles in Latin America

The work of the social movements for land and territory in Latin America reveals the growing centrality of the issue of ecology and the concrete difficulties of articulating this issue with other vital issues of the complex life of the peasantry, and the traditional and indigenous Latin-American populations. The complex issues of the agrarian reform agenda must be considered in a special way. This place "of the people of the land" is very much like the laugh of the Thracian slave/woman: she does not despise the academic scientific debate, but states that the lives of poor people are grounded with/in nature, seeing it as a place of reflection and mystery:

   This is why thousands of peasants, fisher folks, indigenous people,
   women, pastoralists, landless agricultural workers and other civil
   society organizations mobilized massively during the conference. We
   demand a new vision of agrarian reform. The international peasants
   movement La Via Campesina believes that a genuine, integrated
   agrarian reform offers an important alternative model of
   development. It includes wrestling control over land, water,
   maritime resources, seeds and other natural resources from the
   clutches of those who use these assets to enhance their own profits
   and giving it to the people of the land. Public policies must be
   reoriented to ensure that social, ecological and cultural values
   are integrated into rural development. The market place must be
   reorganized to give priority to local ecologically and culturally
   appropriate food production for local consumption, i.e. food
   sovereignty. (5)

The peoples of the land and territory confront each other with claws sharper than those of the exploitative and degrading capitalists, and it is in the lands and territories of those populations in a global perspective that the systems of life, forests and water continue intact or in resistance preservations. Any ecological approach that does not consider the claims of these social groups, with their concrete connections to the body of the earth, reduces "ecology" to the trapping of the institutional powers that aim to maintain their violent policies.

For the peoples of the land and territories, the issue of agrarian reform raises a fundamental question: How to confront and dismantle the structures of private property of the land, in both the agrarian and the agricultural model. For the Latin-American social movements this issue is central to all and every conversation about ecology:

   The single most important change imposed by the modern world-system
   is that it established a systematic legal basis for what is called
   title to the land. That is to say, rules were created by which an
   individual or a corporate entity could "own" land outright. Owning
   land--that is, property rights--meant that one could use the land
   in any way one wanted, subject only to specific limitations
   established by the laws of the sovereign state within which this
   unit of land was located. Land to which one had title was land that
   one could bequeath to heirs or sell to other persons or corporate
   entities. (6)

Any format, formulation, or concept about ecology in Latin America (as well as Africa and Asia) needs to face the question of property and its orderings as structuring mechanisms of inequality and voraciousness that destroy lives--human lives and the lives of all living beings.

Taking this perspective as a place for evaluating ecological politics and spiritualities, any system of thought and politics needs to be familiar with the Latin-American people's struggle for life, land, and territory. Any problems in the lexical and philosophical framework need to be subordinated to these local organizations. We must remember and insist that these people of resistance, especially peasant and indigenous women and traditional communities, are the ones who still keep standing alive and living in the territories coveted by the agri-business capitalists, by the mining companies, and by the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.

In a superficial evaluation, the "eco" stances of the movements of the land and territory in Latin America are confused and vulnerable, not fitting any conceptual line of approach. That's how it is! It is precisely this refusal to fit the epistemological formats available at universities and "development" agencies that makes the positioning of those social movements important and irreducible. For example, when they insist on calling their proposal "agroecology," they are not denying their relationship with the land in the maintenance of human life, but they do it to confront "agri-business" and "agri-culture," stating what they do, what they know, and what they live: that is, agroecology. As stated at the "Surin Declaration": Glogal Meeting of the Via Campesina on Agroecology and Peasant Seeds, (7) in November 2012.

   We understood that agroecology is an intrinsic part of the global
   answer to the main challenges and crises we face as humanity.

   In the first place, small scale farming can feed, and is feeding
   humanity and can tackle the food crisis through agroecology and
   diversity. Despite the common misconception that agribusiness
   systems are more productive, we now know that agroecological
   systems can produce much more food per hectare than any
   monoculture, all the while making food healthier, more nutritious,
   and available directly to the consumers.

   Secondly, agroecology helps confront the environmental crisis.
   Peasant agriculture, coupled with agroecology and diversity, cools
   down the earth; keeping carbon in the soil and providing peasants
   and family farmers with the resources for resilience to climate
   change and the increasing natural disasters. Agroecology changes
   the oil dependant energy and agriculture matrix, a main part of the
   systemic changes needed to stop emissions.

   Third, agroecology supports the common good and the collective.
   While it creates the conditions for better livelihoods for rural
   and urban people, agroecology, as a pillar of Food and Popular
   Sovereignty, establishes that land, water, seeds and knowledge are
   reclaimed and remain as a patrimony of the peoples at the service
   of humanity.

   Through agroecology we will transform the hegemonic food production
   model; permitting the recovery of the agricultural ecosystem,
   reestablishing the functioning of the nature-society metabolism,
   and harvesting products to feed humanity. As the Philippine farmers
   say "Kabuhanan, Kalusugan, Kalikasan" (for economy, for health, and
   for Nature). (8)

The laughter of the Thracian woman/slave is a place from which to discern and critique the consecrated and legitimated modes of knowledge, politics, and spirituality. It is no longer about abstract "civil society." It is about perspectives with regard to social class, gender, and ethnicity that affirm and empower themselves, refusing both the subordination of the land and its creatures and of women, poor people, and ethnic groups. The peoples of the land and territory laugh their laughter in the halls of the debate forums on the environment, climate, food crises, and they laugh: "Kabuhanan, Kalusugan, Kalikasan."

We call it the "Pachakuti," a term taken from the Quechua "pacha," meaning time and space or the world, and "kuti," meaning revolution. Put together, Pachakuti can be interpreted as a re-balancing of the world through a tumultuous turn of events that could be a catastrophe or a renovation. The main form that this indigenous perspective seems to be taking is the presentation of a "model" called "Live well, but not better": Vivir Bien" or "Buen Vivir" in Spanish, "Sumak Kawsay" in Quechua, and "Suma Qamana" in Aymara.

"Sumak Kawsay" has been defined as

   a complex concept, non linear, historically developed and
   constantly under revision, which identifies as goals the
   satisfaction of needs, the achievement of a dignified quality of
   life and death, to love and be loved, the healthy flourishing of
   all in peace and harmony with nature, the indefinite prolongation
   of cultures, free time for contemplation and emancipation, and the
   expansion and flourishing of liberties, opportunities, capacities
   and potentials. (9)

A racist Western perspective has often understood indigenous cultures and their cyclical appreciations of time as "turning back the clock," but this does not mean a return to the past.

   Living Well proposal means living a sovereign and communal life in
   harmony with nature, working together for our families and for
   society, sharing, singing, dancing, producing for the community. It
   means living a modest life that reduces our addiction to
   consumption and maintains a balanced production ... knowing that
   all of these approaches are in preparation for the inevitable
   de-industrialization of agriculture as cheap energy supply
   declines. (10)

Ecology, Spirituality and Ecumenism

Religion is one of the languages to speak about the social forms of organization of life. So it is important how we understand religion itself, especially how we understand religion in a market-driven economy and its relations with the world/planet. While understanding economy as a basic form of organizing society and its arrangements of material life, it is important to ask for the correlations between beliefs and social mobilities/immobilities. Generally speaking, religion--especially new religious forms inside Christianity--fulfills its role of "giving soul" to the capitalist logic, liberating the private accumulation of goods in the form of "blessings" and "prosperity."

In this sense, capitalism finds in religion a justification and legitimate grounding of the unequal forms of usufruct (the claim to use things produced by another) of the world. Through the internal articulation of the religious phenomenon, we have total identity and homogeneity; dissension takes place in the context of the social groups' faithfulness.

The volatility of belief is apparent and does not compromise the function that the market designates to religion and the circulation of religious goods. In this sense, belief systems can be more or less pressured by economic and political conflicts, enabling narratives of pretension of the norm, knowledge, and belonging. Being ecumenical implies asking question about the place of belief systems in the whole of the social relations.

Those who are not ecumenical are not capable of being critical of religion! Those who are ecumenical do not abandon their interpretative and political capacity: the oikos matters more than the norm. Those who are ecumenical ask for the living ones, all the inhabitants, and from there are able to question and challenge the norms (economic) and the arrangements/values (ecology). That's why ecumenism is more than the unity of Christians or the dialogue of Jews and Muslims. Ecumenism is the question for another possible world. Ecumenism is attitude, political standing before the world, in all inhabited. That's why ecumenism is rejected and undesirable in Christian churches that do not accept giving up their hegemonic place of power in society.

Back to the Thracian slave:

   If this woman was to be considered in conjunction with the wheel
   (one with her) a heart of the land, she would operate on the soil,
   through the streams of water (veins and arteries of the body/field)
   a regenerative, therapeutic and prophylactic action: it would teach
   the breathing and the re-circulation of air and water, fertilizing
   blow and liquid, blood and mood of an earthly body that desires to
   be aired, enlivened, healthy. (11)

Going back to this moment of the Thracian woman's laugh is to seek to overcome the exact moment in which so-called Western thought preferred to tear from the search for an organic knowledge when it was refused or was indifferent to the mediation of a woman's laugh. She is there as wisdom, organized through the efforts of continuing life, just as management of the efforts that, in relation to water, wells, and land, create the regenerative, therapeutic, and prophylactic possibilities of living. She is the body--in time and place--and is also the need and freedom in the management of the body--work, thirst, tiredness, and the ability to laugh.

Through the Thracian woman's laugh we recover the suspicion and critique of the Western view of itself as universal and self-sufficient in disrupting the body of the needs, the social body, and the body of the work and its "other beings." Ecology will be deep if it is submerged in the popular struggles. Theology will listen to the laughter of the female workers searching for water and their penultimate and final concerns: packing up their bags, seasoning the food, conquering the mantle of the liberated folk, understanding the harmony of the whole inhabited world, and singing the happiness.

DOI: 10.1111/erev.12154

(1) Part of this article appeared in Voices / EATWOT, in: CARDOSO PEREIRA, Nancy; PY, Fabio, Deep Ecology: for an ecology of the Proletariat, in: http://internationaltheologicalcommission.org/VOICES/VOICES2014- 2&3Presentation&Index.pdf.

(2) Platao, Teeteto/Cratilo (172d-176a), trans. Carlos Alberto Nunes, coord. Benedito Nunes (Belem: EDUFPA, 2001).

(3) Ibid.

(4) Gebara, Ivone, Justiya ecologica: limites e desafios, in Tempo e Presenca Digital 5:21 (2010), at www.koinonia. org.br/tpdigital/detalhes.asp?cod_artigo=400&cod_boletim=22&tipo=Cr%F4nica. On the issues of feminist ecosocialism, see Nancy Cardoso Pereira, Remover pedras, plantar roseiras, fazer doces--por um ecossocialismo feminista (Sao Leopoldo: CEBI, 2009).

(5) Via Campesina, Time for Agrarian Reform, at: http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu27/agrarian- reform-mainmenu-36/101-time-for-agrarian-reform

(6) Immanuel Wallerstein, "Ecologia versus Direitos de Propriedade: A terra na economia-mundo capitalista," at: JANUS.NET e-journalofInternationalRelations, No. 1, Outono 2010janus.ual.pt/janus.net/pt/arquivo_pt/ pt_vol1_n1/pt_vol1_n1_art1.html

(7) Via Campesina, at: http://www.pjr.org.br/teste/index.php?option--com_content&view--article&id--271:declaracaode- surin-encontro-global-da-via-campesina-sobre-agroecologia-e-sementes-camponesas&catid=1:latest-news

(8) Via Campesina, Surin Declaration: First Global Encounter on Agroecology and Peasant Seeds, at: http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/sustainable-peasants-agriculture-mainmenu-42/ 1334-surin-declaration-first-global-encounter-on-agroecology-and-peasant-seeds

(9) Rene Ramirez in Ecuador's "National 'Buen Vivir' Plan," cited in Irene Leon, "Re-significaciones, cambios societales y alternativas civilizatorias," America Latina en Movimiento 457 (Alai, Quito, July 2010).

(10) "The Concept of 'Living Well': A Bolivian Viewpoint," Bolivia delegation at the UN, originally published by the Energy Bulletin, 8 October 2012, at: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-10-08/concept-"living-well"bolivian- viewpoint

(11) Ana Paula Guimaraes, Revista da Faculdade de Ciencias Socials e Humanas, vol. 9 (Lisboa, Edicoes Colibri, 1996), at: run.unl.pt/bitstream/10362/6931/1/RFCSH9_355_366.pdf

Nancy Cardoso Pereira is a Methodist minister and member of the Pastoral Land Commission in Brasil (1)