Jorge Garcia-Arias and Jorge Guardiola
The escalating crisis of capitalism/(mal)development has produced a civilizational polycrisis permeating every aspect of life. In the face of these profound, structural and destructive changes, the ‘pluriverse’ — a product of blooming and radical imaginations rooted in place-based alternatives — challenges the dominant paradigms of extractivism, coloniality and infinite growth by centering conviviality, community and the centrality of life and ecosystems.
This article was written in Spanish. Read the Spanish version here. // Este artículo fue escrito en español. Lea la versión en español aquí.
This article was originally published as a chapter in the book Economía Inclusiva. Conceptos Básicos y Algunos Debates. Madrid: Catarata, FUHEM y Universidad de Alcalá. The authors are grateful for permission to reproduce this text.
Please credit the article using the following citation:
Garcia-Arias, J. y Guardiola, J. (2025) “Pluriverso”. En Carpintero, Ó. (coord.) Economía Inclusiva. Conceptos Básicos y Algunos Debates. Madrid: Catarata, FUHEM y Universidad de Alcalá.
The pluriverse versus the capitalism/(mal)development paradigm
The capitalist system is facing a set of interrelated structural crises (ecological, economic, cultural, democratic, etc.). Within the polycrisis, each of these components operates individually and as a driving force for the others, characterized by its structural dependence on the “5Cs” (Gills and Hosseini, 2022): (i) the primacy of capital; (ii) dependence on carbon (fossil fuels) and global extractivism; (iii) the fetish of compulsive and unlimited growth; (iv) coloniality; and (v) the corruption of politics.
Part of the conventional solutions would involve dismantling the “5Cs” by applying the “5Ds” (de-capitalization, de-carbonization, de-growth, de-coloniality, and de-corruption), moving away from false solutions (Kothari et al., 2019) such as “green growth”; various versions of the “green new deal”; processes of “structural change and reindustrialization” anchored in addiction to unlimited growth; energy “transitions,” especially for the North, sustained by neo-extractivism, coloniality, dispossession, and the creation of sacrifice zones; etc.
On the other hand, despite their capacity to profoundly and lastingly affect individual and collective well-being, some of the crises mentioned are more systemic in nature than others and have a greater potential to generate consequences of a civilizational nature. Among these, the ecological crisis stands out with its multiple facets, vertices, and manifestations.
Although all these crises are global, intertwined, and mutually reinforcing, some affect certain territories, individuals, groups, classes, ethnicities, or genders more intensely. In this sense, and very specifically in the global South, capitalism is intertwined with the hegemonic vision of “development,” shaping a paradigm of capitalism/(mal)development (neoliberal, financialized, colonial, neo-extractivist, patriarchal, racist, ecologically predatory, and deeply unjust).
Underlying this paradigm is an element of coloniality that, following successive waves of independence, replaces the original colonialism and is sustained by a “colonial matrix of power (CMP)”(Quijano, 2000), consisting of a coloniality of being, a coloniality of knowledge, and a coloniality of power, which ignores, disregards, and destroys the knowledge, practices, and philosophies of the South. This CMP allies itself with, sustains, and reinforces an “internal colonialism” embodied by the extractive elites of the countries of the global South themselves, in order to impose a universalist and univocal vision (purely aspirational, phantasmagorical, and, in the vast majority of cases, doomed to failure) of what should be understood by “development,” creating a version of “one-world world” (Escobar, 2016), shaped by the countries of the North, international institutions and organizations, the political and economic elites of the South and North, mainstream academia, and other agents and institutions, and imposed by the different development “agendas.”
Moving from diagnosis to the design of alternatives involves carrying out profound socio-economic-ecological “transitions” (Escobar, 2016), fundamentally in the global North, such as those implied by some post-growth proposals, the care economy and ecofeminism, or insurgent urbanism, and recognizing and vindicating the fruition and cross-pollination of pluriversal alternatives (mostly originating ancestrally in the global South) rooted in indigenous cultures and peoples, Afro-descendant and peasant communities, or autonomist movements, and sustained around prefigurative policies and the “centrality of life and ecosystems” (Garcia-Arias et al., 2025).
This set of alternatives to the dominant paradigm constitutes what we call the pluriverse, which, in its simplest form—inherited from the Zapatista imaginary—can be understood as “a world where many worlds fit.” That is, the pluriverse designates and groups together a multiplicity of worldviews, ways of life, philosophies, practices, etc., throughout the world, which dissent the onto-epistemologies of the hegemonic and universalist paradigm of capitalism/(mal)development and advocate for the existence, and search for many different and possible ways (“many worlds”) of generating well-being and a good life for all people, based on the intimate communion between Nature and Humans, the centrality of life (human and non-human), the diversity of cultures and ways of life, and deep ecology (Kothari et al., 2019).
It is not, in any way, a question of eliminating or renouncing all elements of modernity or the capitalist/(mal)development paradigm, but rather those that have contributed to the configuration of an unjust, exclusionary, racist, colonial, patriarchal, unequal, predatory, and unsustainable system. The goal is not to aspire to more of the same (hyper-consumerism, work-life dichotomy, financialization of life, unlimited growth, etc.) for everyone, but to something totally different: a plurality of ways of knowing, being, existing, and coexisting among human beings, and between human beings, non-humans and nature that reclaims and enables the centrality of life and full ecological sustainability (Garcia-Arias et al., 2025)
In contrast to discourses built on unitary and often imperialistic onto-epistemologies, which assume that we live in “one-world world,” the pluriverse implies recognizing and celebrating the existence of a plurality or multiplicity of forms of knowledge(s) and life, of ways of “being in the world,” with their own autonomous schemes of relationships between human beings, non-humans, and nature.
These pluriversal alternatives—which, for the most part, do not need to be imagined, because they already exist, but rather recognized, cared for, valued, and made known—are often nourished by ancestral philosophies and worldviews (Allin kawsay, Sumak kawsay, Ubuntu, Swaraj, etc.), but are reinterpreted in the present through autonomist and prefigurative processes (Zapatismo, Rojava, radical ecological democracy, etc.), and through movements and networks of dissent, resistance, challenge, and insurgency across the planet, primarily in the global South, but also in the North.
Each of these pluriversal alternatives is independent, unique, linked to its territory, its culture, and its communities, and therefore cannot be extrapolated to other territories or cultures. However, many of them share common elements, establish links and form part (or not) of broad networks, such as the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (https://www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/). This allows for the configuration of interconnection networks between these pluriversal alternatives, forming a rhizomatic pluriverse (Garcia-Arias et al., 2025), recalling the concept of the rhizome developed by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari.
This rhizomatic pluriverse implies the existence of alternatives that interact and interweave autonomously but are connected (through radical interdependence), so that they feed back into each other, support each other, and learn from each other (Garcia-Arias et al., 2025).
These pluriversal alternatives share what Gustavo Esteva called “One No, and many Yeses.” That is, a “No” to the hegemonic paradigm of capitalism/(mal)development, which has brought us to the brink of a civilizational polycrisis, and a wide variety of “Yeses,” that is, many different but mutually interrelated struggles, which, without any intention of being exhaustive, would include: movements that defend the rights, the ways of life and knowledge(s) of indigenous peoples and/or Afro-descendants and peasant communities; collectives linked to permaculture and ecological agriculture; those defending the commons (water, land, etc.) and convivial and communal movements; movements for food or energy sovereignty; the very diverse anti-patriarchal struggles and those defending the rights of minorities and affective, sexual, and gender diversity; autonomist movements; those that defend the non-dissociation of humans and nature; and, in short, all the “very other” (“muy otras”) struggles in favor of subaltern beings (human and non-human) and their forms of knowledge and life, which seek to place human dignity, equality in diversity, and the good life (for all, metabolically viable within planetary limits, and worth living) at the center.
It is worth highlighting some additional elements. First, these pluriversal alternatives should not be idealized since, as human and political constructs, they are fraught with problems and shortcomings, some common to the hegemonic paradigm, and others different and specific to each alternative.
Second, the pluriverse is not, by definition, a homogeneous whole, and neither are its alternatives, so we should not aspire to generalize it—let alone impose it—as we would fall into the trap of trying to “universalize the pluriverse,” reproducing the errors of the universalizing version of the “one-world world,” only now in its pluriversal version. The objective, to paraphrase Aimé Césaire, involves constructing a “universe of particulars,” that is, a whole (‘universe’) that does not impose itself on diversities (“particulars”), but rather is composed of the sum of them without replacing them (Garcia-Arias et al., 2025).
In addition to these intrinsic risks, there is another extrinsic risk, namely the danger that these pluriversal alternatives will be co-opted and appropriated, both by the hegemonic powers of the global North and even by the global South (as has already happened with some) by political/state forces or by “bad government” (“el mal gobierno”), supposedly allies of the pluriverse. This may lead to the denaturalization of the specific pluriversal alternative and an attempt to domesticate and deactivate (politically, culturally, experientially, etc.) its transformative and revolutionary capacity.
Three examples of pluriversal alternatives
As we have pointed out, the pluriverse is not only made up of multiple and highly diverse alternatives, but, like any rhizome, it is constantly evolving and transforming, making it impossible to map in its entirety, let alone definitively. By way of illustration, we present three alternative interpretations of life, which at the same time form part of the idea of the pluriverse: the experiences of Ubuntu in Africa, Allin kawsay in Latin America, and Sarvodaya in India. Ubuntu and Allin kawsay could be considered a set of cultural institutions and ancestral worldviews (to understand them, one must live them and feel-think them); therefore, words fall short in capturing the spirit of both. For its part, Sarvodaya is part of autonomist processes of ancestral ways of relating in India, reconfigured through the economic-political thinking of Mahatma Gandhi.
Ubuntu
A conceptual approach to Ubuntu can be gleaned from the following dialogue, relating to a greeting in the Shona language of Zimbabwe (Nussbaum, 2003):
-Mangwani, marara sei? (Good morning, did you sleep well?)
-Ndarara, kana mararawo. (I slept well, if you slept well.)
At lunchtime, it would be something like the following:
-Marara sei? (How was your day?)
-Ndarara, kana mararawo. (My day was good if your day was good.)
This dialogue is reflected in the aphorism muntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person because of others). In short, Ubuntu contemplates that “your pain is my pain, my wealth is your wealth, your salvation is my salvation,” and that “I am because we are, and since we are, then I am.” The good of the individual and the community are intertwined.
The sense of community shapes Ubuntu as a social philosophy, a way of being, an ethical code, and a behavior that is part of African culture and soul. It reflects the capacity to show compassion, dignity, humanism, harmony, and friendship, as well as the interdependence between people and other non-human beings, and their reconciliation. Ubuntu has existed for thousands of years in the African territory, south of the Sahara, and its roots lie in the oral tradition of the South African region. Despite the erosion caused by urbanization and the transition to the capitalism/(mal)development paradigm, it is still alive in traditional African culture (Nussbaum, 2003; Ewuoso and Hall, 2019).
In philosophical terms, we could refer to Ubuntu as African ethics, which states that morally correct actions are those that strengthen relationships within the community, and are preferable to other individualistic moral actions. When there are disagreements, they are discussed through indabas, which are meetings with community members with the aim of reaching a consensus. The antithesis of Ubuntu is into, which occurs when someone distances themselves from the community or compromises it in some way.
In Ubuntu, the physical and spiritual worlds are strongly linked. The community not only includes people, but there is also a strong interconnection with other living beings and the spiritual world. Thus, each person sees themselves as interrelated with the spiritual world on the vertical line, as well as with other non-human species on the horizontal line (Ewuoso and Hall, 2019). Ubuntu is transmitted orally through the tradition of African peoples. However, these cultural values were strongly eroded through colonization.In postcolonial Africa, Ubuntu and its equivalents have been reclaimed in two ways: as a decolonial project and as a way to gain a better understanding of good living (Kothari et al., 2019).
Allin Kawsay
Allin kawsay in Latin America has followed a similar path to Ubuntu. It has been proposed as a transformative alternative to colonial logics and an indigenous alternative for living well. This idea stems from Andean philosophy and indigenism as a way of life, and had a major impact on the governments of Ecuador and Bolivia. The initiative gave content and form to the constitutions of both countries at the beginning of the 21st century. However, the “development plans” created to give voice to Allin kawsay were articulated along the lines of the capitalism/(mal)development paradigm, and caused severe damage to the environment and community life—and therefore to the indigenous understanding of good living—giving rise to a strange form of “socialism” that included the extraction of natural resources to be traded on international markets. Therefore, this would be a case of an alternative co-opted by the hegemonic powers of the global South.
Respect for and harmony with nature are of fundamental importance in the indigenous worldview, as are strong community ties (Coral-Guerrero et al., 2021). Nature is inseparable from human (and non-human) beings, as they belong to nature, and nature belongs to them (Garcia-Arias et al., 2024). All people are nourished by Mother Earth (Pachamama), and it is in nature that interrelationships and community life take shape. Community and emotional relationships are basic elements of the indigenous idea of good living, generating relationships of solidarity and community participation. An example of this is the mingas, a collective work in which the entire community participates in an activity of common interest, such as building a house or cleaning a neighborhood road. It is also a form of community gathering, in which essential aspects of Allin kawsay such as reciprocity, solidarity, and communal living are valued. The spiritual dimension is also an essential part of Allin kawsay; nature and its elements are sacred and a part of the community, as in Ubuntu, which is why neo-extractivism clashes head-on with the indigenous vision of the good life.
Sarvodaya
Unlike Ubuntu and Allin kawsay, which are ancestral communal experiences as well as philosophies of life, Sarvodaya comes from Gandhian philosophy, as a fragment of Mahatma Gandhi’s understanding of the “India of his dreams,” which he in turn offered to all humanity. Sarvodaya is a Sanskrit word that could be translated as “well-being for all people,” and it is articulated as an ethical proposal and an alternative to the capitalist/(mal)development paradigm. As with Ubuntu and Allin kawsay, it is also an idea of prosperity and good living, but unlike these, it is not an ancestral worldview, but rather a product of Gandhian philosophical thought, which stems from the Indian worldview.
Sarvodaya involves the creation of public institutions to guarantee well-being and meet human needs, as well as to promote equality, justice, and solidarity through direct political participation (López-Martínez, 2017). This concept is inseparable from Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence (ahimsa) and other aspects of his vision of prosperity for India and the world. Gandhi understood that Sarvodaya could only be achieved on a small scale, in communities, just like Ubuntu and Allin kawsay. These villages would be self-sufficient, and importance would be given to voluntary frugality, avoiding the creation of desires and attachment. The economy should include institutions such as a minimum wage, and technological development should only be pursued when it serves to satisfy human needs, which would be achieved through a strong commitment to Truth (with a capital T, since Gandhi gave a spiritual meaning to truth) and ahimsa (Guardiola et al., 2023).
Final considerations: the pluriverse and the inclusive economy
We have already pointed out that there is a history of appropriation of pluriversal alternatives by hegemonic powers, in order to fit them into the capitalism/(mal)development paradigm, and that we consider each alternative to be unique and not extrapolatable. However, we cannot help but imagine how the hegemonic paradigm would be transformed if it were permeated with the essence of a “pluriverse of individuals,” with the aim of shaping an inclusive economy.
An idea of an inclusive economy articulated through Ubuntu and Allin kawsay would result in an ethical and cultural system based on the centrality of life and ecosystems, very different from that provided by the hegemonic paradigm. Despite Europe’s proximity to the African continent, the Ubuntu experience is very far removed from the European worldview. Nussbaum (2003) points to three reasons for this: First, it is an oral and unwritten tradition that requires a communal experience that is difficult to convey through books and articles. Second, some political leaders have betrayed the idea of Ubuntu (another example of co-optation). Third, Westerners have a negative view of Africa, based on wars, dictatorships, famines, and diseases, which obscures the positive values of the region. And we could add a fourth reason, related to the previous one: the stigmatization of the black race as inferior, due to the colonizing, racist, and xenophobic history that sadly continues to exist in Western culture.
These first two reasons (experiential culture and co-optation) could easily be imported as a possible answer to why Allin kawsay has not permeated Western culture either.
Perhaps the idea of Sarvodaya is the one that has had the greatest impact in the West, or at least in that dissident and insurgent counterculture that aspires to transform capitalism into a more solidarity-based and humanistic economy. For example, the Sustainable Development Goals echo a universalist spirit, theoretically respectful of the “particularities” of each country. While it could be argued that its formulators were not necessarily inspired by this concept, they were surely familiar with Gandhi’s thesis of ahimsa, who was a key figure in 20th-century pacifism. Gandhi himself began his pacifist crusade in South Africa, the birthplace of Ubuntu and Nelson Mandela. Once again, as reflected in Ubuntu and Allin kawsay, the different pluriversal alternatives are interwoven in a rhizomatic pluriverse.
As we have pointed out, pluriversal alternatives advocate something totally different for everyone and therefore imply a radical and structural challenge to the dominant paradigm. We believe that only transitions of this magnitude (and interconnection) can confront the polycrisis with guarantees and prospects for the future; although we are not unaware that, for the same reasons, the reluctance they face is also enormous.
Jorge Garcia-Arias is Full Professor in International Political Economy and Global Development Studies, University of Leon, Spain. As un-disciplinary scholar, his research is situated at the multiple intersections between critical development studies, radical political ecology, critical IPE, political philosophy, and ecological humanities. His papers have been released in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, Environmental Politics, Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space, European Journal of Development Research, Global Policy, Globalizations, Latin American Perspectives, or Water International, amongst many others. https://jorgegarciaarias.unileon.es
Jorge Guardiola is a Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Granada, Spain. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Córdoba, Spain, and a Master’s degree in Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. His research areas include subjective well-being, sustainable development, and human needs. He has fieldwork experience in Latin American countries, particularly in Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, and Honduras. He teaches the course on Political Economy at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology.
This article was translated using DeepL and edited by Satakshi Gupta and Pooja Kishinani. Banner Image: World of Humans by Ashish Kothari
REFERENCES
Coral-Guerrero, C. A., García-Quero, F., & Guardiola, J. (2021). “What is Sumak Kawsay? A qualitative study in the Ecuadorian Amazon”. Latin American Perspectives, 48(3), pp. 35-50.
Escobar, A. (2016). “Thinking-feeling with the earth: Territorial struggles and the ontological dimension of the epistemologies of the south”. AIBR, Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 11(1), pp. 11–32.
Ewuoso, C., & Hall, S. (2019). “Core aspects of ubuntu: A systematic review”. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 12(2), pp. 93-103.
Garcia-Arias, J. & Cuestas-Caza, J. (2024). “Pluriversal autonomies beyond development. Towards an intercultural, decolonial and ecological Buen Vivir as an alternative to the 2030 Development Agenda in Abya Yala/Latin America”. Latin American Perspectives, 51(4), pp. 122-140.
Garcia-Arias, J., Tornel, C., & Flores Gutiérrez, M. (2025 ). “Weaving a rhizomatic pluriverse: Allin kawsay, the Crianza Mutua Networks, and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives”. Globalizations, 22(2), pp. 302-322.
Gills, B. K., & Hosseini, S. A. H. (2022). “Pluriversality and beyond: Consolidating radical alternatives to (mal-)development as a commonist project”. Sustainability Science, 17(4), pp. 1183–1194.
Guardiola, J., Checa, D., & Ruiz Jiménez, J. Á. (2023). “El concepto de sarvodaya en Gandhi como idea del buen vivir: convergencias y contradicciones con otros paradigmas”. Papeles de relaciones ecosociales y cambio global, (163), pp. 125-144.
Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (2019). Pluriverso: un diccionario del posdesarrollo. Barcelona: Icaria.
López Martínez, M. (2017). ¿Noviolencia o barbarie? Madrid: Dykinson. Nussbaum, B. (2003). “African culture and Ubuntu”. Perspectives, 17(1), pp. 1-12. Quijano, A. (2000). “Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina”. En E. Lander (Ed.). La colonialidad del saber. CLACSO. pp. 201–246.