This interdisciplinary study of development in the Andes analyzes ethno-development policy paradigms and specific programs primarily in the highlands of Bolivia and Ecuador since the 1990s. There is much merit in this “post-structuralist” account, which offers a “theoretical composite” derived from such disciplines as international studies, geography, development and environmental studies. The authors succeed in illustrating such concepts as transnational issue networks, scale jumping, social neo-liberalism, governmentality, and boomerangs. They do so through an analysis of organizations, networks, and their dynamics with empirical data gleaned from discourse analysis, and interviews, and via “inter-institutional” ethnography (p. 247). The authors' theory work, especially their spatial approach to globalization, as well as their organizational and network analyses, are convincing.

To understand changes in development paradigms, the authors traced money flows as well as politicized transactions to show what transnational issue networks look like, how they operate, what they respond to, whom they affect, why they change, and how these dynamics implicate power and inequalities. They show that paradigms since the mid-1980s have increasingly emphasized indigenous peoples' participation in development plans, in part because contentious indigenous movements in the Andes influenced funding agencies to do just that. Indigenous people not only engaged critically with others at multiple scales (local, regional, national, transnational) but also became influential actors in these transnational networks. Their “entanglement” with international organizations resulted in the investment of more than $60 million (USD) for indigenous peoples' participation in local development projects between 1997 and 2009 (p. 121).

The shifts in development policy that concern the authors amount to what they call “social neo-liberalism,” the more humane version of pro-market development politics that recognize multiculturalism, gender equity, environmental protection, and other social concerns (a “post-Washington consensus”). They argue that social neo-liberalism constitutes a new form of governmentality that helps to make neo-liberal policy palatable to subalterns by responding positively to their demands. It does so in part by including indigenous peoples' agendas in new, decentralized programs for development and, in so doing, enlisting them in their own subjugation. The latter is accomplished through incentives—whether development money for their communities, an education, or professional work in program administration—motivating their self-discipline.

Further, in discovering the power of transnational alliances, indigenous people in the Andes localized, and in other ways reworked, their political identities while also globalizing their networks. In articulating local, place-specific, identities they silenced or otherwise obscured broader, class-based, or national ones. However unwittingly, new race projects emerge through transnational exchanges, gender inequalities are restructured, new forms of stratification are introduced, and North–South power dynamics are recreated. In their words, “Gendered and racialized bodies inform the practices, meanings, and discourses of development for indigenous people” (p. 15). Because local spaces are not insular, they too are co-produced by indigenous actors as well as by regional, national, and international ones in ways that may reproduce racialized geographies (pp. 82, 118).

While these self-governance outcomes help to illustrate Michel Foucault's notion of governmentality, however, the indigenous subjects are not docile bodies. As noted, the authors insist that development policies change in a dialogical manner by incorporating indigenous peoples' agendas. Indeed, they argue that indigenous peoples' impact in these networks are consequential in a way that is consistent with Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's boomerang theory. This theory argues that when local groups reach out to international actors (through “boomerang throws”), they enlist the help of stronger transnational organizations that amplify a local group's demands in a way that influences states to comply with international norms. So, while development policies are largely influenced by international donors, subaltern movements matter and states may strategically mediate between the two. The contingent outcome of these three-way negotiations may result in graduated sovereignty (by ethnic groups), which also involves a reorganization and remapping of the physical spaces of state intervention (p. 123).

Indigenous people remain active participants in these networks through project completion and assessment. If a development project is not to their liking, they may opt to discontinue outsider help, as illustrated in their rejection of Stage II of the Prodepine project in Ecuador. Further, while some indigenous people engage in development programs as planners, beneficiary students, or “professionalized” program administrators, others forcefully oppose neo-liberal policies that threaten their livelihoods. Put differently, the multiracial, multiscalar dynamics have not been without tensions about the very (re-)construction of hierarchies and threatened livelihoods associated with transnational networks.

These observations contribute to the scholarship on transnationalism by emphasizing the complexity of the multi-ethnic and multiscalar dimensions of non-diasporic communities, aspects glossed over by the body of work either on migration or on global business expatriates. Beyond relativism, this book treats extra-local powers as the most influential force capable of “reloading” the boomerang with external agendas that reshape the interests of local indigenous groups (p. 119). Their analysis that indigenous movements matter, but in a limited way, lead the authors to conclude that “subaltern consent and resistance are principle forces in the scattering of hegemony and prove significant for the content and purview of governmentality” (p. 230).

The book is conceptually rich, and its anecdotes about struggle—for example the water wars in both Bolivia and Ecuador, or the pueblo/ayllu movements in these countries—are fascinating. I also found the authors' critiques of the notion of “authentic indigenous” people useful. They caution analysts to move beyond the binary that sharply contrasts indigenous/non-indigenous people in places where urban and rural mestizos have syncretic identities. There are also peasant communities where the people no longer speak an indigenous language and are, for that reason, presumed to be non-indigenous. Complicating things even further is the fact that many indigenous people migrate to cities and indeed to other countries, including to Europe. We miss some aspects of indigeneity by focusing on the countryside, or by counting Indians by language abilities. Finally, even villagers who speak a native language at home are stratified along class, gender and educational lines in ways that matter for indigenous culture and politics.

As noted, the organizational analysis is rich because the authors clearly illuminate the circuitry of ideas as well as money flows (p. 92). I have some concerns about their discourse analysis, which at times treats the conclusions of other researchers as mere discourse. For example, the rural poverty conclusions about indigenous people by a World Bank economist and agency administrators are treated as a “representation” that deflected attention from structural disadvantages (p. 59). The authors all but dismiss a World Bank anthropologist as follows: “[A] senior World Bank anthropologist went so far as to claim, ‘women … are the culture’” (p. 203). If we are to believe that the reports by anthropologists and other researchers who argue that women do more of the work toward family and cultural reproduction are mere “representation,” the authors need to do more than simply call for references to female leaders and producers. To persuade, they also need to explain the extent to which women are, in fact, political leaders; they also need to explain whether their paid urban labor means that they are not also still doing more of the work for family, community, and cultural reproduction.

To conclude, this book successfully intervenes in a number of important theoretical debates about the politics of indigenous development. It combines rich empirical description with complex network analysis. And even if some of its specific arguments are problematic, it represents an important contribution.