In Indigenous Development in the Andes, Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie and Sarah Radcliffe draw from geography, political science and other fields to address several important questions concerning development, culture and transnationalism in the central Andes. This book deepens the Latin American studies scholarship on identity, culture and development in at least three ways: first, by questioning the transnational dimensions of indigenous identity politics; second, through an in-depth examination of ‘cultures of development’ and the ‘development of culture’ in countries with large indigenous populations; and, third, by highlighting the contradictions of state and global neoliberal modernisation projects which aim simultaneously to grant rights to indigenous peoples and livelihoods and to capitalise, literally and figuratively, on them. The authors offer a fresh look at how a variety of related factors and processes, including neoliberal restructuring, multicultural state projects, the professionalisation and transnationalisation of indigenous actors and movements, and the emergence of ethnodevelopment, intersect as forms of governmentality to shape contemporary indigenous struggles and ongoing modernisation processes. This book, which gives in-depth accounts from Ecuador and Bolivia, provides one of the best transnational analyses of indigenous politics and development in Latin America to date.

One of the authors' central arguments is that indigenous politics must be understood through a transnational lens, and that ‘key decisions [concerning indigenous peoples as stakeholders] occur within transnationalised institutional settings and policy forums’ (p. 7). Most concretely, the authors aim to understand how the neoliberal project of multiculturalism, a project that they define in their introduction, has responded to and shaped indigenous demands, and how this contributes more generally to understandings of the politics of multiracial societies and geographies of globalisation. With an explicit post-structuralist agenda and an ethnographic goal of analysing multiple scales and spaces, the authors aim to grapple with the contradictions of these processes as they affect both indigenous politics and transnational/local arenas of development, including the ‘paradox of simultaneous cultural affirmation and economic marginalization’ that these processes deploy (Hale, cited by authors, p. 7). They attempt to address this paradox as it results from various factors, including cultural difference but also racial, class, regional and gender differences, in what they refer to as ‘social neoliberalism’. As they state in chapter 3, ‘social neoliberalism assumes that concerns such as cultural pluralism, environmental protection, gender equity, and popular participation are compatible with market economics and self-help agency’ (p. 80). By bringing together these various issues and processes, the authors portray a complex terrain upon which indigenous and other marginalised and/or ‘non-capitalist’ actors are seen as compatible with, and instrumental for, market-based development – a characteristic which resonates with ‘second wave neoliberalism’ as it has been defined by some other scholars (see, for example, Christina Ewig, Second Wave Neoliberalism, Penn State University Press, 2010).

Several lessons can be learned from this study. To begin, and perhaps stating the obvious, it is important to situate the successes and failures of contemporary indigenous struggles in a transnational context. Many studies of Latin American indigenous movements address legislation in relation to indigenous demands, but do not adequately take into account the transnational networks in which many indigenous political and economic actors are necessarily located, even – or perhaps especially – in ‘local’ contexts. From the start, Andolina, Laurie and Radcliffe draw from the political science/international relations literature to examine the ‘boomerang effect’ of indigenous demands as they are inserted into transnational discussions of development and then ‘reloaded’ (in other words, resignified) in local settings (pp. 2–3).

In relation to this, the book challenges scholars in Latin American studies to understand better how the configuration of transnational development, neoliberal multicultural states and social movement networks – what they sometimes also consider part of neoliberal governmentalities – combine to shape patterns of indigenous economic, political and cultural practices. Likewise, it makes a strong case for moving beyond Western/non-Western binaries to understand the production of culture and indigenous identity as occurring at the nexus of these processes and not as produced on only one side of the binary, so to speak. This approach explains why indigenous demands have apparently been so easily co-opted by neoliberal agendas, yet also how these very agendas have created forms of cultural and political power for indigenous peoples, despite the inherent contradictions. Finally, the book sheds new light on development studies by providing a grounded, highly interdisciplinary, multi-scaled framework. It thus contributes to studies of indigenous politics, studies of neoliberal states and governmentalities, and critical development studies.

In attempting to move beyond binaries, Indigenous Development in the Andes is less about indigenous cultures per se and more about how ‘culture’ itself is contested, negotiated and understood in what the authors refer to as ‘transnational local’ settings, namely those in which identities are mediated transnationally yet situated locally. The book is divided into six thematic chapters and includes introductory and concluding chapters which tie the others together. While most of the book focuses on the neoliberal period in Ecuador and Bolivia, the conclusion provides some initial thoughts on the shift away from neoliberalism to a ‘post-neoliberal’ order in the two countries, and generally the book provides a strong foundation for asking further questions about these issues in the current post-neoliberal context. I highly recommend this book for use in graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses, and to scholars interested in indigenous movements, development, cultural politics, transnationality, neoliberalism and Latin American studies.