This illuminating book critically examines multicultural language
politics and policymaking in the Andean-Amazonian countries of Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia, demonstrating how issues of language and power throw
light on the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state.
Based on the author's research in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia over
several decades, Howard draws comparisons over time and space. With due
attention to history, the book's focus is situated in the years
following the turn of the millennium, a period in which ideological
shifts have affected continuity in official policy delivery even as
processes of language shift from Indigenous languages such as Aymara and
Quechua, to Spanish, have accelerated. The book combines in-depth
description and analysis of state-level activity with ethnographic
description of responses to policy on the ground. The author works with
concepts of technologies of power and language regimentation to draw out
the hegemonic workings of power as exercised through language policy
creation at multiple scales.
This book will be key reading for students and scholars of critical
sociolinguistic ethnography, the history, society and politics of the
Andean region, and linguistic anthropology, language policy and
planning, and Latin American studies more broadly.
