Rosaleen Howard's Multilingualism in the Andes is a unique and in-depth comparative study of language shift as a result of social policy, political economy, and hegemonic forces in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador over the course of the past three decades. This book builds on over forty years of critical ethnographic research from an established researcher to chart overarching trends of geopolitical significance and is illustrated with intimate vignettes from fieldwork in the region. Howard identifies distinct ideologies that have arisen and evolved in regard to Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara—with a particular interest in their use by political movements and educational institutions.
The first part of the book spans three chapters and details both the history of the region and the conceptual framework required for such an undertaking. A concise historical overview of the past five centuries in Latin America is followed by a detailed description of each country's sociolinguistic and geographical nuances with a final third chapter dedicated to policy text analysis. Key concepts such as interculturality, Indigeneity, bilingual education, campesino identity, and coloniality are introduced with a sensitivity to their shifting connotations over time and geography. Howard also lays out a novel conceptual framework that aims to critique power beyond the bounds of institutions and illustrate how language minoritisation and standardisation constitute a broader landscape of cultural hegemony.
The second part considers education in each of the three Andean nations. These three chapters represent the centrepiece of this book, offering grassroots insights into language shift against a backdrop of transient governments, terrorist groups, and social movements. The latter is evoked as the defining force in determining educational practice and language use.
The third and final part touches on a number of related if somewhat tangential issues. Literacies, both digital and analogue, are enthusiastically discussed as an emergent field of scholarly interest in Indigenous contexts. Howard also draws attention to the issue of translation, particularly for legal or legislative purposes and convincingly makes a case for urgent further study in this area, both to protect the linguistic human rights of the incarcerated and to transform the sovereignty of the Andean people.
In both style and substance, Howard's sixth book successfully weaves together the political with the personal. What might otherwise seem dry, technical points of policy analysis are skilfully counterbalanced with engaging ethnographic accounts. This text is likely to appeal to policymakers and scholars of language or education in the Andean region, as well as those hoping to deepen their understanding of the burgeoning field of intercultural education. Early chapters offer an accessible and comprehensive overview of the Latin American conceptualisation of decoloniality, while the final chapters suggest rich new directions for both research and activism in the Americas and beyond.
