Bolivian collective identity between traditional particularist values and modern universalist constraints

Abstract

This essay deals with the confrontation between universalistic and particularistic principles with regard to the building of collective identities and nationalities (especially as to the Bolivian case). We have, on the one hand, universalistic standards, based on classical rationalism and enlightenment, whose current and last consequence is to be seen in the globalization and modernization processes. In Bolivia it is carried out by the elite of whites and mestizos. Their ideology is clearly optimistic, but also uncritical vis-à-vis centralization and standardization drives. On the other hand they are still particularistic, relativistic and tradicionalist tendencies, which try to unterstand and further pre-industrial and premodern cultures of non-European origin. According to his analysis of Bolivian reality, the author sees the possibility of a fruitful synthesis of both tendencies, as they are rather conplementary and not contradictory: the universal ethics of human rights may be considered as the basis of the effective right to differences of all type.