ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is an apt example of Volosinov’s (1930/1973) oft-quoted line that the sign is a “site of struggle.” It challenges the meaning of “participant” and “researcher” and offers fresh ways of enacting these roles that move the production of knowledge about literacy in new directions, while calling attention to the complexities of understanding one another’s histories and interests. The book reveals the ways in which power circulates to afford degrees of agency that resist structural constraints, and, at times, lead to transformative practices. It reconsiders concepts such as “activity,” “history,” and “communities of practice,” that are central to sociocultural research. The book demonstrates how research on literacy practices complicates these concepts by making visible the ideological underpinnings of language and representation that often remain unexamined in sociocultural research.
