Chapter Seven: Intercultural Voices, Political Transformations
Connects Miskitu children’s play and performance to widely circulating discourses about language, culture, and citizenship, suggesting that expressive practices at the level of interaction set the stage for broader social and political change.
Terms:
• Neoliberal multiculturalism
• Language endangerment
• Language revitalization
Questions for reflection:
1. What makes a group indigenous and how can that determination be made?
2. What are some potential consequences of purist discourses of indigenous language and identity?
3. “Social movements have often been led by youth precisely because their historical experience and future expectations are different from their elders.” (pg. 180) Can you recall instances where this is true? What other reasons can you think of for why children have such strong potential to effect societal change?
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- A toy car constructed from discarded objects. As Walter Benjamin noted, the refuse discarded by society often attracts the attention of children
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- A pretend cooking set fashioned from shells and plastic refuse from the beach, including a bottle cap and a doll’s arm. This imaginative arrangement of disparate natural and man-made objects reveals the workings of mimetic cognition.
