ABSTRACT
A re-theorisation of traditional measures of literacy has been offered by Basu and Foster (1998), in which the measure is no longer the ‘individual illiterate’, traditionally the target of literacy programmes, the means by which international comparisons are made and the index of efforts to improve literacy rates worldwide. In an important move, Basu and Foster argue for a view that takes distribution of literacy across households into account, claiming that “a more even distribution of literacy across households leads to greater effective literacy” (Basu and Foster, 1998: 1733). Three examples of literacy needs and possible forms of engagement with written texts are provided as schematics by Basu and Foster in developing this challenge to traditional measures of literacy. These are:
A low-skilled job is available which requires the ability to read and write.
Agricultural extension workers come with information on how to plant and take care of high-yielding varieties. They leave behind brochures explaining these matters.
A medical facility is set up in a neighbouring village. The staff distributes pamphlets on methods of preventing disease and infection, as well as information on the various services offered by the facility.
Basu and Foster differentiate these and suggest that the texts in the latter two cases could be engaged with by illiterates through literacy mediation within the context of the household, and this would amount to a new unit of analysis: ‘proximal illiteracy’. While this changed unit represents an important advance, the perspective implied continues to be framed by what has been called an ‘autonomous model of literacy’ (Street, 1984, 1993, 2003), in which literacy is seen as a universal property of individual cognition, transferable and applicable across contexts at will yielding positive and uniform consequences.