Feminist Knowledge Production: What Western(ized) Feminist Thought can learn from Buen Vivir

Feminist scholars and activists around the world are working towards transformation of gender hierarchies as well as other oppressive orders such as racism. Decolonial theory permeates the analysis of this paper since it allows us to question the power structures and hierarchies that are found in different ways in people’s lives in this period of ‘global coloniality’, including within academia and within contemporary knowledge production. This contribution aims at strengthening the dialogue between different strands of feminism. Buen vivir with its roots in indigenous cosmologies and especially feminist interpretations of this philosophy offers proposals of how to work towards social as well as environmental justice. This paper therefore discusses what Western(ized) feminist thought can learn from these proposals, using examples both from South and Central America.