ABSTRACT
Literacies are legion. Each one consists of a set of interdependent social practices that
link people, media objects, and strategies for meaning making (Beach & Lundell, chap. 6,
this volume; Gee, 1990; Lemke, 1989b). Each is an integral part of a culture and its
subcultures. Each plays a role in maintaining and transforming a society because
literacies provide essential links between meanings and doings. Literacies are themselves
technologies, and they give us the keys to using broader technologies. They also provide
a key link between self and society: the means through which we act on, participate in,
and become shaped by larger “ecosocial” systems and networks (see examples in the
following and in Lemke, 1993a, 1995c). Literacies are transformed in the dynamics of
these larger self-organizing systems, and we-our own human perceptions, identities, and
possibilities-are transformed along with them.
