Convivial Technologies in the context of Decolonial thought

Introduction
Seeking alternative ways of life, specifically in accordance with conviviality (Illich 1973), remains a prevalent challenge in times of accelerating socio-ecological crises. A pluriverse of counter-hegemonic voices from around the world have converged to re-evaluate different knowledge systems and make visible aDelternative pathways to social, ecological, economic, and political transformation. Degrowth in Global North and the Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay in Global South have become one of the main representatives of the pluriverse. Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay is understood as a sociocultural paradigm to overcome Eurocentric, anthropocentric, capitalist, and economistic modernity that has roots in the historical struggles of the native peoples, for which it is also an emancipatory political project and an exercise in decolonial praxis (delink-relink-reexist) (Mignolo & Walsh 2018).
The achievement of these new ways of life proposed from the Global North and South requires a fundamental reordering of productive capacities and socio-technical systems. This includes not only technological (re)appropriation, but also the introduction of convivial technologies as tools for socio-ecological transformations. The Matrix of Convivial Technology (MCT) (Vetter 2018) conceptualizes the type of features and deliberations (connectedness, accessibility, adaptability, bio-interaction, appropriateness) for degrowth oriented technology and innovation.
This paper adapts the notion of convivial innovation and technology in the context of decolonial political struggles. It builds on cases where dominant development perspectives and practices of extractivist economic growth are challenged and explores innovations and technologies as praxis for decoloniality.

Theory
Apart from a few exceptions (e.g., Maldonado-Villalpando et al., 2022; Velasco-Herrejón et al., 2022), discussions on degrowth aligned technologies have mostly taken place in the context of global north. For example, Maldonado-Villalpando et al. (2022) discuss grassroots innovations from a pluriversal perspective, highlighting that innovations based on decolonial and indigenous comovisions point to needs-based innovation, collective ethical-political life, knowledge and learning strategies, social practices, horizontal relationships; multi-scale networks, sustainable coexistence with more-than-human natures. Innovations stemming from such settings create meaningfulness and sense of self at the same time. They emerge from contexts of resistance and desire for self-sufficiency and -determination. Similarily, Velasco-Herrejón and others (2022) highlight in the context of wind energy development in local indigenous communities in Mexico that pluriversal technologies embrace ontological and epistemological diversity by being co-designed, co-produced and co-owned by the inhabitants of the socio-cultural territory in which they are embedded.

Methods and data
We explore convergences and divergences of convivial innovations and technologies with indigenous imaginaries and practices on innovations and technologies and ask, “how can practices of Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay inform conviviality in innovation and technology development?”. The paper answers the question through a case study with organizations affiliated with Union of Indigenous Peasant Organizations of Cotacachi (UNORCAC). Established in 1977, this organization is a non-profit organization comprised of 48 communities that promotes projects in development with an identity based on the principles of integrality, complementarity, parity, and solidarity. The qualitative data comprises of observations (n. 5) and semi-structured and unstructured interviews (n. 8) conducted in various UNORCAC advocacy communities: Cotacachi, Arrayanes, Cuicocha, El Cercado and Piñán in December 2023. The data was collected through a qualitative research approach, and focused ethnography (Stahlke-Wall, 2015). Based on previous work with indigenous communities (Cuestas-Caza, 2021; Cuestas-Caza et al., 2024), we gained access to the UNORCAC as a case study.
Interviewees were identified through a snowball method and with the support of the organization's leaders. An observation template and field notes were used to support the interviews. Content analysis was used as a strategy for the information analysis, and inductive and deductive techniques were applied following the iterative logic of coding and categorization (Saldaña, 2013).

Preliminary analysis
Preliminary results show that the grassroots technologies developed and used by the indigenous communities studied are not necessarily convivial in all cases, or a priori, cannot be evaluated through the prism of MCT (Vetter, 2018). It is important to note that many interviewees highlighted that the communities lack access to the basic elements of a dignified life: health, education, roads, provision of basic services, for which they argued that growth in economic activities was deemed important, i.e. to increase revenue to organize and gain access to these services. While doing so, the interviews also highlighted that the innovations and technologies developed in the communities have a strong normative basis and direction: to enable fulfilling basic needs while embracing harmonic relationship with nature through using a combination of ancestral knowledge, cultural practices as well as new inventions in agriculture, tourism, and education. These sectors were prominent in the rural-peasant context that we studied.
An example of this can be identified in the food dehydration technology of the Sumak Mikuy community enterprise. This technology was used to add value to native fruits and vegetables (uvilla-golden berries, mortiño-andean blueberry, aji rocoto- rocotto pepper), by extending the use-time of the food. In this case, the managers emphasized the organic origin of the raw material, the fair price paid to suppliers and the rescue of native biodiversity. The company is currently working on obtaining organic production certifications for both the plantations and the production process. The long-term goal is to build several community-owned production plants in different communities and increase production levels to reach international markets. While this shows an economic growth imperative in technology design, it does so by integrating the value generation in local solidarity economy context by using already existing knowledge and practices.
Another example of the duality of the grassroots technologies studied was the use of ancestral techniques for the preservation and redistribution of seeds stands out. This set of techniques, which we call the seed care and conservation technology, is not only related to the dimensions and levels proposed in the MCT (with certain nuances) but also to the logic of decolonial praxis, specifically applied to agri-food systems (Figueroa-Helland et al., 2018). On the one hand, it delinks from the agro-industrial logic closely related to the use of chemicals for food production and the market of genetically modified seeds, while promoting a relinking with ancestral knowledge and practices, based on healthy eating as an elementary principle in the achievement of the Buen Vivir/Sumak Kawsay (Inuca, 2017). And finally, from this exercise of epistemic justice, the indigenous communities proclaim their re-existence as holders of their own knowledge aligned with the struggle for food security and sovereignty (Jimenez et al., 2022) under the principle of self-determination (Cuestas-Caza et al., 2024), while inviting us to redefine development as a development with identity.

Conclusions
We contribute to the discussion on decolonial convivial technologies and innovations by introducing how principles of the community, commons, land rights and food sovereignty, culture and identity interlink with how technologies and innovations enable continuation and survival of cultures and knowledges that are increasingly narrowing in the face of the powers of modernity. We show how innovations and technologies for pluriversal degrowth take are also vehicles of cultural preservation. Innovations and technologies in our case study context are embedded, use, and sustain the reproduction of ancestral knowledges and practices, which form an important part of development with identity and epistemological preservation. This refers to identity, to the sacred and ritual connection with nature, as the objectives pursued by the technologies. From a decolonial perspective the history of land ownership and the distributions od means of production result to resistance struggles for autonomy, existence and self-sufficiency for which formalization of knowledge and creation of innovations were deemed important.