Using relevant theoretical approaches, this article seeks ways in which to consider the conditions of existence of a politics of recognition through the elaboration of ‘regimes of recognition’. The ‘regimes of recognition’ are developed through an understanding of decentred political and social formations that, nevertheless, foreground a series of sites that are central to the politics of recognition: democracy, citizenship and the nation. This article takes issue with current accounts of the demise of the nation as both imaginary and territorially (...) realized. Instead, it offers a substantive account of political activism in Ecuador as one moment in the politics of recognition. (shrink)