La interculturalidad en cuestión


Book Description

Reflexiones sobre los derechos humanos, la construcción de la ciudadanía y la lucha por el reconocimiento pleno y real de las diversidades culturales en las sociedades latinoamericanas. Los conflictos interculturales en el mundo actual se agudizan cada vez más. Entender que en dichos conflictos se confrontan no solo intereses económicos y políticos sino también formas de pensar, valorar y sentir el mundo es empezar a comprenderlos. La interculturalidad no es solo un problema, es también una posibilidad de convivencia dignificante basada en el reconocimiento de la diversidad. Así, las nociones de dignidad y de derechos humanos no son universales por naturaleza. Pero deben serlo. Y para ello deben interculturalizarse. De allí la necesidad de crear las condiciones subjetivas y objetivas que hagan posible un diálogo intercultural sobre los derechos individuales y colectivos en contextos asimétricos. Entender la construcción dialógica de la universalidad de los derechos humanos como una necesidad ética y social de envergadura nos conduce a reformular nuestra concepción de la ciudadanía. Esta se ejerce básicamente en los espacios de deliberación pública, lamentablemente hoy colonizados por el logocentrismo, la lengua y la cultura hegemónica. Descolonizar dichos espacios para hacerlos inclusivos de la diversidad es una tarea pendiente. Para ello son necesarias las "políticas interculturales de reconocimiento", siempre y cuando se articulen a políticas redistributivas y de representación política tanto afirmativas como transformativas. En ello consiste el interculturalismo como posibilidad.




Enacting and Envisioning Decolonial Forces while Sustaining Indigenous Language


Book Description

Through the presentation of visual and textual insights, this book chronicles the experiences of Quechuan bilingual college students, who strive to maintain their ethnolinguistic identity while succeeding in Spanish-centric curricula. The book merges decolonial theory and participatory action research in pursuit of mobilizing Indigenous languages such as Quechua and depicts the ways in which these Andean college students deal with limited opportunities for Quechua-Spanish bilingual practices. It provides an overview of their collective efforts to mobilize Quechua in higher education, efforts which will help all who read it understand the maintenance of the Quechua language beginning at the grassroots level. The author advocates for engaging language researchers in critical collective forces at the core of conditions which promote Quechua in higher education, a collective effort which must reflect decolonial, non-Eurocentric, non-fundamentalist Indigenous concepts in combination with action-oriented cultural wealth for the benefit of minoritized languages and peoples.




Multilingualism in the Andes


Book Description

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.




The Future of the Past: Paths towards Participatory Governance for Cultural Heritage


Book Description

The Future of the Past is a biennial conference generally carried out during the commemoration date of the incorporation of Santa Ana de Los Ríos de Cuenca Ecuador as a World Heritage Site (WHS). It initiated in 2014, organized by the City Preservation Management research project (CPM) of the University of Cuenca, to create a space for dialoguing among interested actors in the cultural heritage field. Since then, this space has served to exchange initiatives and to promote coordinated actions based on shared responsibility, in the local context. The third edition of this conference took place in the context of the 20th anniversary of being listed as WHS and a decade of CPM as the Southern host of the PRECOM3OS UNESCO Chair (Preventive Conservation, Maintenance and Monitoring of Monuments and Sites). For the very first time, and thanks to the collaboration with the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation of the University of Leuven (Belgium), the conference expanded its local scope. On this occasion, contributions reflected round a worldwide challenge in the cultural field: revealing the paths towards participatory governance of cultural heritage. Participatory governance is understood as institutional decision-making structures supported by shared responsibilities and rights among diverse actors.




La formación doctoral en América Latina... ¿más de lo mismo?, ¿una cuestión pendiente?


Book Description

La actitud competitiva e individualista de la "sociedad capitalista del conocimiento" ha generado y sigue generando una carrera loca en la apertura de programas doctorales en Colombia y América Latina. Estos programas, en su generalidad, están ofreciendo más de lo mismo en el sentido de repetir los modelos extranjeros con una visión colonialista de mantener el status quo. Consideramos que el libro "La formación doctoral en América Latina... ¿más de lo mismo?, ¿una cuestión pendiente?" aspira a desvelar los entresijos de esta formación y proponer otras visiones que intentan ofrecer respuestas posibles a los numerosos interrogantes que nos planteamos para la región. Invitamos a los lectores a participar del desafío.




The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication provides a comprehensive historical survey of language and intercultural communication studies with a critical assessment of past and present theory, research, and practice, as well as an insight into future directions. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars from different parts of the world, this second edition offers updated chapters by returning authors and many new contributions on a broad range of topics, including reflexivity and criticality, translanguaging, and social justice in relation to intercultural communication.With an emphasis on contemporary, critical perspectives, this handbook showcases the varied range of issues, perspectives, and approaches that characterise this increasingly important field in today’s globalised world. Offering 34 chapters with examples from a variety of languages and international settings, this handbook is an indispensable resource for students and scholars working in the fields of intercultural communication, applied linguistics, TESOL/ TEFL, and communication studies.




Critical Pedagogies for Modern Languages Education


Book Description

In the context of Black Lives Matter, decolonizing initiatives, #MeToo, climate emergency protests and other movements for social and environmental justice, this volume posits a simple question: how can modern languages be taught so that they challenge rather than reinforce social inequalities? Informed by interdisciplinary theories, Critical Pedagogies for Modern Language Education focuses on practical discussions of case studies in areas directly relevant to the classroom contexts of modern languages educators. The volume transforms modern language educators and the modern language profession by putting the politics of language teaching at the centre of its analysis. With case studies covering 11 languages (Modern Standard Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Levantine, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamazight) across 13 countries and regions (Austria, Brazil, China, France, Italy, the Levant, Morocco, the Netherlands, Palestine, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA), the contributors cover a wide range of theories, including critical discourse analysis, activist pedagogies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, linguistic justice and translanguaging. With student-teacher collaboration at its heart, critical modern languages pedagogy unmasks the ideologies and hegemonies that lie behind mainstream language use and affirms the value of minority linguistic and cultural practices. The volume thus provides transformative approaches to modern languages teaching and learning that respond to the key social concerns of the 21st century.




Pope Francis and the Search for God in America


Book Description

In Tutti Fratelli, Pope Francis has called again for a “culture of encounter,” But how should his theology, pastoral practice, and social message be understood and applied in the Church of the Americas, a single but complex reality that extends from South to North? This volume offers analyses from experts looking back to the Argentine pontiff’s first fateful encuentros in the Americas as a help for understanding the present reality of the Church in the Western Hemisphere. The group includes theologians, historians, and political scientists, and the unique contribution of the volume lies in the panoramic perspective offered by the book as a whole. The initial essays set the stage for the volume as a whole, offering rich insight into Argentine and Latin American history, the world from which the Pope came and to which he returned in 2015, as well as surveying the impact of the Latin American “theology of the people” on the Pope’s visit to the U.S. Additional essays address theological, historical, and pastoral engagements that cut across several of the visits. The final group of essays is dedicated to the visits themselves and is arranged in the order that they occurred. Pope Francis and the Search for God in América is offered to all the members of the Church in América, South and North, old and young, with the hope that it will spur even more thought, reflection, prayer, and service.




Cultural Management and Policy in Latin America


Book Description

Cultural Management and Policy in Latin America provides in-depth insights into the education and training of cultural managers from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. The book focuses on the effects of neoliberalism on cultural policies across the region, and questions how cultural managers in Latin America deal not only with contemporary political challenges but also with the omnipresent legacy of colonialism. In doing so, it unpacks the methods, formats, and narratives employed. Reflecting on emerging and contemporary research topics, the book analyses the key literature and scholarly contexts to identify impacts in the region and beyond. The volume provides scholars, students and reflective practitioners with a comprehensive resource on international cultural management that helps to overcome Western-centric methods and theories.




Recognizing Indigenous Languages


Book Description

"What follows when state institutions name historically oppressed languages as official? What happens when bilingual education activists gain the right to coordinate schooling from upper-level state offices? The intercultural bilingual school system in Ecuador has been one of the most prominent examples of Indigenous education in Central and South America. Since its establishment in 1988, members of Ecuador's pueblos and nationalities have worked from state institutions to coordinate a second national school system that includes the teaching of Indigenous languages. Based on more than two years of ethnographic research in Ecuador's Ministry of Education, at international and national conferences, in workshops, in schools, and with families, Recognizing Indigenous Languages considers how state agents carry out linguistic and educational politics in eras of greater inclusivity and multiculturalism. This book shows how institutional advances for bilingual education and Indigenous languages have been premised on affirming the equality - and the equivalency - of the linguistic and cultural practices of members of Indigenous pueblos and nationalities with other Ecuadorians. Major responsibilities like serving as national state agents, crafting a standardized variety of Kichwa, and teaching Indigenous languages in schools provide vast authority, representation, and visibility for those languages and their speakers. However, the everyday work of directing a school system and making Kichwa a language of the state includes double binds that work against the very goals of autonomous schooling and getting people to speak and write Kichwa"--