Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy [Paperback]

An investigation into the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies.Investigation of the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies reveals that accounts of literacy practices vary from one context to another, and challenges the view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning within a modern society.Investigation of the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies reveals that accounts of literacy practices vary from one context to another, and challenges the view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning within a modern society.Brian Street's volume investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies. These largely ethnographic essays bring together anthropological and linguistic work written over the past ten years by anthropologists and sociolinguists. Accounts of literacy practices vary from one context to another, and challenge the view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society. The conclusions reached will be crucial for future researchers, and of interest to educators, developers and practitioners in the field.Introduction: the new literacy studies Brian Street; Part I. The Incorporation of Literacy Into The Communicative Repertoire: l. Conceptions and uses of literacy in a Papua New Guinean village Don Kulick and Christopher Stroud; 2. Literacy and feelings: the encoding of affect in Nukulaelae letters Niko Besnier; 3. The uses of schooling and literacy in a Zafimaniny village Maurice Bloch; 4. Arabic literacy and enlightenment among the Mende of Sierra Leone Caroline Bledsoe and Kenneth M. Robey; Part II. Local Literacies and National Politics: Ethnicity, Gender and Religion: 5. Literacy and cultural identity in the Horn of Africa: the Somali case I. M. Lewis; 6. Gender, language and the politics of literacy Kathleen Rockhill; 7. Literacy, development and ethnicity: lcO