ABSTRACT
Suresh Canagarajah, in a review of a previous book on Literacy and Development (Street, 2001), laid down some criteria for such a volume. He was especially concerned that it should not simply consist of academics reflecting on the problems in their particular field or indulgent postmodern reflexivity about relationships between research and researched. He argued in particular for a ‘critical engagement’ with local communities that transcends ‘naive romanticism’ rather than just being self-indulgent as he believed some accounts in the earlier volume were being. And he believed the researchers should also engage practically in local projects, ‘offering suggestions for more effective literacy pedagogies’. How to do this without abandoning the critical reflexivity that is now obligatory in such research is a challenge that the authors in the present volume have also taken up.
