Bolivia: Multiculturalism, Globalization, and Social Change

Program Overview

Explore how identities, cultural processes, and resources determine who controls and benefits from development in Bolivia.

The program includes field excursions to Bolivia’s tropical lowlands and the altiplano, including spectacular Lake Titicaca and the world's highest capital city, La Paz. Homestays and intensive Spanish language instruction allow students to become deeply immersed in urban and rural Bolivian communities.

Through the program’s thematic seminar, students consider the country’s contemporary economic development challenges, particularly among Bolivia’s large indigenous populations.

Major topics of inquiry include:

  • Historical foundations including features and contributions of major indigenous groups; historical development of Bolivian political systems; roots of the current economic situation
  • Andean and Amazonian culture and cosmovision including an analysis of contemporary sociocultural landscapes; meaning and construction of culture in the Bolivian context; indigenous and feminist issues; roles of cultural identity and cosmovision in the formation of social movements, music, and art
  • Development models and practice including the role of private/public sectors, transnational corporations, NGOs, and social movements; resistance to globalization and neoliberal reform; women and development; urbanization; informal economy; natural resource management; coca/cocaine economy, alternative development, and the US "drug wars"

Stretching from the Amazon to the Andes, Bolivia's landscapes and multiethnic population offer remarkable contrasts—as well as significant challenges to development. Bolivia boasts the highest percentage of indigenous citizens in the Americas and the lowest per capita income in South America. The Aymara and the Quechua peoples have wrested increasing control and have recently been able to influence policy and politics in powerful ways. 

The Bilingual Children's Literature Reciprocity Project
The Bilingual Children's Literature Reciprocity Project is a series of bilingual children's books researched and written by undergraduate students on SIT Study Abroad's Multiculturalism, Globalization, and Social Change Program in Bolivia. This project contributes to the production of affordable books celebrating Bolivian reality and serves to raise international awareness about Bolivia's rich cultures and pressing social issues. The project was created in 2008 by Academic Director Heidi Baer-Postigo.

Topics in this series include daily life and customs of indigenous Quechua and Guarayo communities; how migration affects Bolivian families; children who work in the streets; and how modernization and global warming are changing the traditional cultivation of quinoa, the ancient grain of the Incas.

Read more about what alumni of the Bolivia: Multiculturalism, Globalization, and Social Change program are doing
Read about Academic Director Ismael Saavadra's work on social justice and documentary filmmaking.
Watch documentary video projects on YouTube made by SIT Study Abroad students from the Bolivia: Lens on Latin America and Bolivia: Multiculturalism, Globalization, and Social Change programs
Browse this program's Independent Study Projects/Undergraduate Research