CROSSING BORDERS: REVITALIZING AREA STUDIES International Institute l University of Michigan

PRAGMATICS AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN THE ANDEAN REGION
A Workshop Organized by the
University of Michigan International Institute
Cusco, Peru, July 1-14, 2001

Convenor: Bruce Mannheim, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan

The Andean Republics are complex linguistically, diverse in the languages, and diverse in the varieties of Spanish spoken in the region. Indeed, language is one of the principle vectors of social differentiation, discrimination, and conflict, shaping both national public cultures—in arenas ranging from classrooms to ethnic "comedy"—and political discourses-in the new movements of Native Andeans as much as in older framings of nationality. But political attention to language has been focused primarily on a narrow set of social domains, mainly education and law. In contrast, the grind of social conflict that is the staple of everyday life in arenas ranging from the mass media, to the market, to the plaza, to the home has largely slipped under the attention of policy-maker and scholars, perhaps because it is too routine to be noticed.

The Workshop on Pragmatics and Social Conflict in the Andean Region was designed to examine the role of real-time social interaction in the reproduction of social inequality and conflict in the Andean republics (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and the northwestern part of Argentina), comparing cases from a variety of social settings, including research on the major languages of the region (Spanish, Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Mapudungun), and across major ethnic and class divides. The workshop brought together graduate students and faculty from the University of Michigan, University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin with their counterparts and active researchers from the Andean republics to work together in identifying common empirical issues, methodological problems, and analytic approaches through controlled comparison, laying the groundwork for a new area of study in the region and for a comparative research agenda.

The workshop took place at the Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas", an education- and research-oriented NGO that specializes in social research in the Andean region. The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Michigan has an active research and training partnership with the Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, which has a conference center in urban Cusco.

This workshop was supported by a "Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies" grant awarded by the Ford Foundation to the International Institute. For further information, contact <crossing.borders@umich.edu>.

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