ABSTRACT
How is literacy appropriated for local ends? In colonial, neocolonial, and diasporic contexts, how are local epistemologies asserted and new norms established for what and whose literacy “counts”?
These questions lie at the heart of the chapters in this part of the volume. Part I’s theme is inspired by Kulick and Stroud’s (1993) ethnographic study of literacy in Gapun, a rural and then “newly literate” village of about 100 people in Papua New Guinea. “[F]ar from being passively transformed” by English literacy, Kulick and Stroud (1993) state, Gapun villagers “actively and creatively [applied] literacy skills to suit their own purposes and needs,” injecting it with functions and communicative strategies used in speech (p. 3). Instead of asking how literacy affects people, Kulick and Stroud found themselves asking how people “seize hold” of those aspects of literacy that have meaning and utility in their everyday lives. (See also McLaughlin’s [1992] analysis of English and Navajo literacy, and Street [2001, pp. 8-9].)
This section explores the processes through which local, subaltern communities “take hold” of literacy. What these processes mean for communities, individuals, and the institutions in which they participate is illustrated across a broad range of settings and moments in time. The chapters contribute not only to our understanding of situated, changing, and everyday literacies (see, e.g., Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Knobel, 1999; Lankshear, 1997), but also to our understanding of the relationship of these literacies to local social organizations and to broader issues of political participation and linguistic human rights.
