Statehood, scale and hierarchy aims to investigate ideologies of language and nationalism in contemporary Indonesia at both the institutional and individual level. This new addition to Multilingual Matters’ ‘Encounters’ series is a solid introduction to Indonesia's linguistic ecology, bringing together a wide range of existing literature and contemporary ethnographical findings.

Zentz's book is organised thematically, with theoretical frameworks and methodologies introduced in the preface and chapter 1, before looking in turn at Bahasa Indonesia (hereafter, Indonesian), Javanese, and English. The author builds on Sinfree Makoni and Alastair Pennycook's ‘postmodern performative’ approach to language (14), Salikoko Mufwene's ‘glocal’ and Jan Blommaert's and Pennycook's ‘local contexts’ (13) as well as Blommaert's notion of ‘scales’ (16–18). She uses these concepts and frameworks to explore ‘local, national and global norms for appropriateness and of correctness’ (18) and to explore how language forms (and beliefs about them) relate to institutional voice and symbolic power. Although she points out that these postmodern terminologies of accounting for ‘languaging’ ‘are not necessarily new ideas’ but simply ‘non-modern’ (8), this point is only explicitly referred to once in the rest of the book, as one of her students and her mother struggle to reconcile each other's understandings of the student's lack of use of kromo (the formal Javanese register) (129–31).

Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of the ‘engineering’ of Indonesian, from a ‘pure orientalist artefact’ (56) to a ‘fact of life’ (51) and an integral part of ‘growing neoliberal discourses’ of national youth (93). Using official policy pronouncements, language planners’ statements, and existing literature, it contrasts spontaneous and planned development of Indonesian as well the gap between official ‘creation’ and dissemination.

Both chapters 2 and 3 discuss the forging of unity and ‘acceptable diversity’ through the definition of and relations between Indonesian and Javanese. Nation-building entailed both the historical erasure of Chinese (76) and the daily erasure of ngoko (the informal Javanese register, spoken in daily life but not recognised as a ‘language’) (98–102). Questions around the essentialisation and reification of local languages and traditions are analysed through the notion of re-scaling, and Zentz points to the creation of new spaces of communication (texting, Facebook, Google searches, etc.) and new ways of using linguistic repertoires, some of which are closely linked to the diaspora and their language uses (135–40), although this is not investigated in detail.

English in Indonesia, like in many postcolonial settings, is both a threat and a symbol of lesser morals, and a purveyor of prestige and economic benefits (chapter 4). Zentz explores throughout the book the fact that ‘English per se has frequently been synecdochically mistaken for access to wider educational opportunity and the wealth and privilege’ that enable it (204), but also hints at complex processes whereby English comes to embody a set of soft skills (190–91), and demands a certain performance of masculinity (191–94).

In conclusion, Statehood, scale and hierarchy is highly recommended to scholars working on language policy and planning, the role of English in postcolonial states, and the relation between discourses and practices around named languages.