Education

Work Experience

Project: "A Fragmented Future? Imaginaries, Projections, and Expectations in Andean Popular Markets"

This project aims to analyse how multitemporalities –understood as the coexistence of different regimes of historical, social, and economic time– shape the imaginaries of the future, the aspirations, and the collective projections present in the popular markets of the Andes. From an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on theoretical and methodological tools from anthropology, sociology, and economics, the study seeks to understand how these spaces configure alternative ways of imagining the future, particularly in contexts marked by cultural heterogeneity, historical inequality, and structural exclusion.

The study approaches the popular market not merely as a site of economic exchange, but as a sociocultural arena where different epistemologies of time are compared and negotiated. In particular, it focuses on the encounter between a temporality of a spiral in movement –linked to quechua-kichwa-aymara epistemologies- and a linear temporality associated with modernity. Within this framework, the central question arises: how can a shared future be projected from temporally dissonant imaginaries?

Simultaneously, it examines how the State, in several Latin American countries, seeks to reinscribe popular markets within frameworks of touristic patrimonialization and folklorization, while reaffirming consumption models embodied by shopping malls. This contradiction becomes even more significant considering that in certain spaces of the so-called Global North emerges the interest in community-based practices and short supply chains, typical of popular markets, as response strategies to the negative effects of hyperindividualism.

From this double tension, the project aims to investigate the flows, articulations, and episteme that structure the economic logics of popular markets, with particular attention to the agency of indigenous women, who constitute a fundamental, though not exclusive, actor within these spaces. The research seeks to understand the mechanisms of self-regulation, informal institutions, and economic practices that configure a complex system of capital accumulation, redistribution, and circulation. Also, it explores how these local dynamics of economic organization influence collective projections of the future and the elaboration of well-being narratives.

If, as hegemonic modernity suggests, the economy constitutes the structuring nucleus of social life and consumption is its primary indicator of well-being, this study asks: what are the temporal and political grammars through which indigenous communities think and project the future? What does the indigenous episteme of the future reveal about the limitations of the dominant development model?

Monographs

Ibañez, Carmen (2018): "Consecuencias políticas de la migración interna en Bolivia", (PhD-Thesis) Madrid/Frankfurt, Ibero­ameri­cana/Vervuert.

Chapters

Ibañez, Carmen (2024): “Nociones temporales y sociedades colonizadas”, B. Hausberger, R. Pérez Montfort, S. Rinke and C. C. Zamorano Villarreal (eds): Temporalidades del futuro: lo colonial, lo posible y lo político. Vol. I., Mexiko: El Colegio de México, pp. 29-52.  

Ibañez, Carmen (2017): "Politisierung von Indigenität in Bolivien", J. Kemner (ed.): Indigenitätsmappe: El mundo al revés: Pueblos Indígenas en América Latina. Unterrichtsmaterialienreihe "Wissen um globale Verflechtungen", Bielefeld: Kipu.

Ibañez, Carmen (2017): "Where is the development? Challenging the concept of development from the perspective of Buen Vivir", L. Rehm, J. Kemner, O. Kaltmeier (eds.): Politics of Entangle­ments in the Americas: Connecting Transnational Flows and Local Perspectives. Inter-American Studies / Estudios Interamericanos Vol. 19. Trier: Wissen­schaftlicher Verlag/ Bilingual Press.

Ibañez, Carmen (2017): "Reproduktion indigener Stereotypen in Bolivien", R. Steger et al. (eds.): Subalter­na­tiven. Postkoloniale Kritik und dekolonialer Widerstand in Lateinamerika. Münster: Edition Assemblage, pp. 125-138.

Ibañez, Carmen (2017): "La migración interna en la construcción de la identidad nacional", A. Saez-Arance et al. (eds.): Identidades nacionales en América Latina. Discursos, saberes y representa­cio­nes. Stuttgart: Heinz Verlag, pp. 241-251.

Ibañez, Carmen (2015): "Diversidad y heterogeneidad pero ante todo migrantes", B. Potthast et al. (eds.), Dinámicas de inclusión y exclusión en América Latina. Conceptos y prácticas de etnicidad, ciudadanía y pertenencia. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, pp. 203-216.

Articles

Ibañez, Carmen (2019): "La migración como estrategia política de resistencia", Bastos, Santiago (ed.), La etnicidad recreada. Desigualdad, diferencia y movilidad en la América Latina global, Mexico Citiy: CIESAS, pp. 387-418.

Ibañez, Carmen (2018): "El cuerpo como evidencia: etnicidad y género en los Andes" FIAR. Journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies, 10, 2, pp. 66-84.

Other publications

Ibañez, Carmen. (2022). “Las nociones temporales del colonizado”. In Columnas del Futuro, Observatorio Latinoamericano OLA. New York: The new School.

Ibañez, Carmen. (2021). "Consecuencias políticas de la migración interna". In El Canto del Tordo. Nº5, El Alto: SJM.

Ibañez, Carmen. (2020). "El significado de la migración interna para los cambios políticos en Bolivia". In Matices. Zeitschrift zu Lateinamerika, Spanien und Portugal, No. 101.

Ibañez, Carmen. (2020). "Coronavirus in Zeiten des Pachakutik". In Boulletin Eirene e.V.

Ibañez, Carmen. (2020). "Viviendo como las sardinas". El País (Bolivien).

Ibañez, Carmen. (2020). "Was es bedeutet, „der Andere“ zu sein". In Boulletin Eirene e.V.

Ibañez, Carmen. (2020). "El amor en tiempos de coronavirus". El País (Bolivien).

Ibañez, Carmen (2018): "Interview with the Bolivian feminist Maria Galindo of Mujeres Creando. With: Britt Weyde", ILA, Zeitschrift der Informationsstelle Lateinamerika, No. 417, Bonn.

Ibañez, Carmen (2016): "Negociaciones de etnicidad y ciudadanía: Ayllu vs. Sindicato", KLA Working Paper Series No. 16.

Ibañez, Carmen (2015): "Movimientos sociales en Bolivia", Lobato Mirta, Barbara Potthast, Johanna Below, Débora Bendocchi, Carmen Ibáñez, Bea Wittger et al. (Eds.): Soziale Bewegungen in Latein­amerika. Kollektive Aktionen testen die Grenzen der Macht. Catálogo, Red de Investigación sobre América Latina.

Ibañez, Carmen (2008): "Bolivia: país de conflictos", Matices. Revista para América Latina, España y Portugal, 59, 4.