The Social Life of Indianism

A sophisticated analysis of an influential Indigenous political ideology.

When the political ideology known as “Indianism” developed in Bolivia in the 1960s, it was premised on a rejection of Bolivian nationalism. Over the ensuing decades, however, it underwent several mutations as it moved out of a close circle of intellectuals to grip the urban masses that brought Evo Morales—the first Indigenous president—to power in 2006.

The Social Life of Indianism offers a fresh perspective by examining Bolivian Indigenous politics through the lens of political ideology. Through an ethnographic study of Indianism in the city of El Alto, Tathagatan Ravindran shows how canonical Indianism—the original ideology that rejects Bolivia as enslaver of the Indian nation—provided philosophical ballast for exponents of a more popular folk Indianism that accommodates the Bolivian state and pursues Indigenous empowerment within it. Synthesizing approaches from several disciplines, Ravindran demonstrates how canonical Indianism was not refuted or supplanted; it refracted, in the broader public, into a new common sense. A sophisticated analysis of a complex political landscape, The Social Life of Indianism brings much-needed nuance to one of the most prominent forms of Indigenous ideology and offers a unique framework for analyzing political ideologies across the contemporary world.

Tathagatan Ravindran is an anthropologist working on social movements, political identities, indigeneity, and race/ethnicity in Latin America. He is the director of Epistemological Justice and the Laboratory of Data at Baobab: Centro de Inovación en Justicia Étnicoracial, de Género y Ambiental in Cali, Colombia.