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Commentary III: Decolonizing critique?

environment and nature-society studies have elucidated the fragmentation and exclusion of certain geographic spaces relative to others in conservation and land use policy and management. In western South America, for example, the geographic differentiation of mountain land use (e.g. valley versus upland spaces) and the under-representation of desert environments in conservation policies both reflect the influence of the colonial present. Predictably one particular strength of Dilemmas of Difference, and the focus of this final refraction onto postcolonial environment and health policy, is the book’s treatment of the decolonization policies of sumak kawsay or ‘Living Well’. Elucidated by Radcliffe, the latter Ecuadorian Kichwa term is preferred among the warmikuna, the Andean indigenous women, who reject the widespread use of the Spanish buen vivir. To indigenous Andean women, the term sumak kawsay and the national policies of decolonization have brought development closer to their reality than previously. Meanwhile the Tsáchila of Santo Domingo, whose ethnicity is distinct from the Kichwa indigenous majority, do not find much meaning in these terms and the related policies. In the initial presentation of her findings Radcliffe adeptly weaves key points about the recent and ongoing decolonization policies including persistent colonial distinctions (p. 21), influences of rights-based agendas (p. 22), and gendering (p. 35). The book’s introduction also foreshadows the importance of ‘discerning motley alternatives’ (p. 36), building upon Cusicanqui’s formulation of emergent modern Andean hybridities that are defined in part by prevalent livelihood practices such as migration. This idea of hybrid social relations and identities is needed to move beyond the category of ‘indigenous women’, scare-quoted as Radcliffe notes (p. 156), owing to its fraught legacy and ongoing imaginary visà-vis dominant institutions and one-dimensional narratives (e.g. Third World women as victims, p. 149). The food preferences and health practices embedded in the everyday and embodied practices of the indigenous women are an integral part of sumak kawsay (pp. 257–90). These vibrant ethnic expressions contribute to the suggestion of potential motley alternatives. Rationales for the motley alternatives emerge from the experience of hybrid livelihoods. Widespread migration and dynamic socioeconomic and environmental changes contour the often interspersed spaces of the indigenous and nonindigenous worlds. Biopolitics in the food and health dimensions of decolonization policies and political alternatives in Ecuador offer the potential for illuminating insights across closely related spans of geographic space and historical time. These dimensions have become similarly integral in the national policies and movements of vivir bien in Bolivia and Peru, and in the indigenous precepts expressed linguistically and culturally as sumaq qamaña and allin kawsay. Per Radcliffe’s resplendent tracing, the current decolonization policies on environment, food, and health issues must be framed in arcs of understanding that span the colonial past and the colonial present. Karl S. Zimmerer Pennsylvania State University, USA