This ethnographic study examines post-agrarian aspirations and rural politics in Ecuador. After decades of urban outmigration under a neoliberal agrarian order, many rural places have witnessed efforts to develop local tourism economies as a possibility to transcend stigmatised agrarian livelihoods and to (re)constitute communities. We build on anthropological studies of aspiration to explore how visions of post-agrarian futures are shifting the actors, scales and terms of rural politics in the present. Through two case studies, we observe how state actors have come to re-inscribe their role within post-agrarian imaginaries, partially rewriting the terms of state legitimacy in rural places. RÉSUMÉCette étude ethnographique examine les aspirations post-agraires et la politique rurale en Équateur. Après des décennies d'émigration urbaine sous un ordre agraire néolibéral, de nombreuses zones rurales sont le théâtre d'efforts visant à développer les économies touristiques locales pour transcender des modes de vie agraires stigmatisés et (re) constituer des communautés. Nous nous appuyons sur des études anthropologiques portant sur les aspirations pour explorer la manière dont les visions de l'avenir post-agraire agissent, au présent, sur les acteurs, les échelles et les paramètres politiques en milieu rural. À l'aide de deux études de cas, nous observons comment les acteurs étatiques ont reformulé leur rôle en fonction d'imaginaires post-agraires, modifiant partiellement les termes de la légitimité de l'État en zones rurales.

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Sumak kawsay, a vision of good living originating in the thought of indigenous intellectuals, has attracted many commentators since its incorporation into Ecuador's 2008 constitution. But it remains unclear in much of the secondary literature how the discourse of sumak kawsay and its Spanish derivative buen vivir relate to the day-to-day experiences of indigenous people. We address this lack of clarity through a three-part exploration of Kichwa perspectives on the good life. First, we describe how day-to-day discussions are more likely to revolve around the actually existing life of struggle. Then we analyze an artistic genre that illustrates how decolonized indigenous lives might look. Finally, we examine how the decolonial political philosophy of sumak kawsay has emerged out of concerted collective efforts to overcome the life of struggle. We consider how these three instances of discourse relate to a long Andean history of looking to the past for an alternative to the hardships of the present, and conclude with a call to take indigenous perspectives more fully into account when concepts such as sumak kawsay are invoked by nonindigenous actors.

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