Barefoot Economics, one of the most symbolic texts authored by the Chilean economist, was relaunched by the Manfred Max-Neef Foundation and Ediciones UACh this week, four decades after its original publication. The brand-new edition includes an epilogue by Right Livelihood, which honoured Max-Neef in 1983 for revitalising small and medium-sized communities.
“It’s among our roles to keep alive his legacy and to have his books available,” said Christian Henriquez Zuñiga, Executive Director of the Manfred Max-Neef Foundation, which had been set up by Max-Neef’s former students and colleagues a year after his passing in 2019.
“We decided this book was the first to be re-edited as it was already out of print. Besides, it was originally published 40 years ago and was the book why Manfred was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1983. Next year, we’ll commemorate 40 years since this recognition as the first Latin American Right Livelihood Laureate,” added Henriquez Zuñiga.
Barefoot Economics is about Max-Neef’s experiences working as an economist among people from the poorest areas in Ecuador and Brazil during the 1970s. Some years later, he had the chance to write about these stories that had changed his mind and turned him into a “barefoot economist”, as he used to say.
After a year of hard work, the Manfred Max-Neef Foundation finally launched the new Spanish language edition of this historical and, at the same time, current and necessary text. The first presentation took place last week in Valdivia, the Patagonic city where Max-Neef lived and worked as a professor for the last 30 years. The second one was held on Wednesday, December 14, in Santiago, Chile’s capital city. Members from the disbanded CEPAUR (Max-Neef’s Centre for Development Alternatives) and interested colleagues from the academic, political and environmental sectors attended the events. The main concepts of the book were presented, as well as many memories of Max-Neef by those in attendance. There were also some pieces of music, as Max-Neef – who had described himself as a musician first and only second as an economist – would have enjoyed.
With new prologues and epilogues, Barefoot Economics includes a text by Ole von Uexkull, Executive Director of Right Livelihood. “We thank our beloved Patagonian Viking, as Manfred caricatured himself, for leaving us this valuable tool that calls us to participate responsibly. And to the Manfred Max-Neef Foundation, our gratitude and strength to continue pushing this colossus,” von Uexkull wrote.
