ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the process of untangling a conceptual framing of literacies, as the concept moved from more formalised patterns to threads that could be seen spreading out all over the place and re-forming in new ways. It discusses ways in which literacy and language practices in communities could be conceptualised through the process of collaboratively working out what the concept of literacy could be, drawing on situated, every day and community knowledge. An “artifactual” literacies approach widened the scope of how literacy was understood by linking literacy to materially situated cultures. Participatory methodologies alongside an ethnographic perspective develop insights from young people that then unsettle what literacy is and could be. Saima’s literacy was as much in the wavy motion of her hands as in the poem and in her own relationship to family, which was very strong. Rather than fixing the nature of literacy within communities, re-thinking literacy ontologies became a focus.
