Since the times of the Spanish Conquest, the indigenous populations of Andean Bolivia have struggled to maintain their textile-based writings. This fight maintains this present day, either in colleges and in the higher tradition. The Metamorphosis of Heads explores the historical past and cultural importance of Andean cloth writings--weavings and kipus (knotted cords), and their severe contrasts in shape and construction from ecu alphabet-based texts. Denise Arnold examines the subjugation of local texts in want of eu ones in the course of the imposition of homogenized curricula through the tutorial Reform legislations. As Arnold unearths, this fight over language and schooling at once correlates to long-standing conflicts for land possession and tool within the sector, because the majority of the extra prosperous city inhabitants is Spanish conversing, whereas indigenous languages are spoken essentially one of the rural negative. The Metamorphosis of Heads recognizes the important value of latest efforts to take care of Andean heritage and cultural history in faculties, and exhibits how indigenous Andean populations have integrated parts of Western textual practices into their very own textual activities.

Based on wide fieldwork over twenty years, and old, anthropological, and ethnographic study, Denise Arnold assembles an unique and richly assorted interdisciplinary learn. The textual conception she proposes has wider ramifications for reviews of Latin the US ordinarily, whereas spotting the in particular nearby practices of indigenous struggles within the face of country construction and monetary globalization.