Multilingualism in the Andes

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.