Sociolinguistic studies often overlook the way the domains of home and education interact with individual and community ideologies and agency as well as macro factors such as economy and politics. This volume provides a number of successful ethnographic investigations of the interplay between such factors. The eleven chapters of the book cover language contact situations across the globe, ranging from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, to the Pacific.

Part 1, “Effects of educational policies,” focuses on the role of the education system in relation to language maintenance/shift. The studies in this part demonstrate the complex role of schooling, its unintended, intended, positive, and negative effects, and its relation to macro factors such as the state of the economy and community ideologies. The section raises the question whether education can be a viable tool to revitalize or maintain a language. Heidi A. Orcutt-Gachiri's research in Kenya shows how English and Kiswahili are favored because of exam-oriented schools and employment requirements. Olga Kazakevich argues that, due to the devastating impact of ideologies and political assimilation in Siberia and the Far East, schooling has had very little effect on language maintenance. Lynn Landweer's research in Papua New Guinea shows that schooling in the excolonial language has had very little effect on language endangerment because the home has remained a safe space for the endangered language, and there is a strong connection between identity and language.

Exploring the consequences of revitalization activities in California, Venezuela, and Miami, Part 2, “Effects of revitalization,” addresses issues such as the level of participation of the target group in revitalization activities, macro-economic and environmental factors, the impact of colonization on ideologies, and how these ideologies work at present. The authors contributing to this part, Paula Meyer, Marie-France Patte, and Melissa Rinehart, argue that for revitalization activities to succeed, various social, cultural, economic, and historical factors should be taken into consideration. Otherwise, those activities will be doomed to failure. The main theme of Part 3, “Effects of sociohistorical processes,” is the role of individual and community agency in language maintenance. Mark A. Sicoli argues that because agency is facilitated or constrained by the macro structures of geography, religion, and nation-state insertion, the specific context where agency is studied is of great significance. Lars von Karstedt's study on the German island of Amrum, for example, shows how free-market real estate pricing, coupled with the beauty of the land and the German one-nation, one-language ideology, work against the Öömrang-speaking community, with the result that the people cannot afford to live on their own land, causing the fragmentation of the community and language shift.

This volume is a valuable source for those interested in the investigation of language endangerment and the factors involved in such a complex process. The accessible material provides the reader with a holistic picture of the many language contact situations. The book is a valuable companion to Teresa L. McCarty's edited volume Ethnography and language policy (Routledge, 2011), providing informative and tangible examples for researchers.