ABSTRACT
The concept of literacy has an important role in theories of social and human development. The development studies literature has consistently described illiteracy as a pervasive characteristic of poverty and human vulnerability, and literacy as a necessary component in poverty reduction and wellbeing. Illiteracy, as Amartya Sen has argued, is a ‘focal feature’ of capability deprivation and social injustice (Sen, 1999: 103). This argument is supported by an extensive literature which observes a strong correlation between literacy and other determinants of wellbeing such as income, women's labour-force participation and health (Sen, 1999). The perceived importance of literacy in human development is illustrated by the central position of adult literacy rates in the Human Development Index and in wider measures of wellbeing. Despite this, there are a number of unresolved problems in the field of literacy studies. While literacy has an important evaluative position in theories of development, there is no ‘theory of literacy’ that can adequately capture and predict its complex role in processes of social change, and account for the role of literate (and illiterate) identities and practices in shaping social relations, capacities and aspirations. Such an understanding is however required if we are to make sense of the pervasive role of the literate in globalised material, institutional and bureaucratic cultures (Riles, 2006), in conceptions of schooling and citizenship, and in the analysis of inequality.
