Literacy in (Inter)Action

Abstract

esearch on literacy over the past twenty years has often concluded that literacy is set of social and political (Brodkey 9). Criticizing narrow definitions of literacy as basic reading and writing, this research emphasizes the contexts of literacy: Lunsford, Moglen, and Slevin, for instance, call for research on inextricably embedded literacy is in culture, how context-dependent is its realization ... in the literacy practices of communities, schools, and (3-4). Many studies focusing on the contexts of literacy have been ethnographic investigations, with studies of schools and classrooms (Michaels; Heath and Mangiola; Chiseri-Strater; Rose) complemented by a growing number of studies of communities and workplaces (Shirley Brice Heath; Moss; Fishman; Taylor and DorseyGaines; Gowan; Street). This research has broadened conceptions of literacy considerably: literacy is now defined not as specific abilities but as broad-based bodies of knowledge and sets of practices, including bodies of knowledge as arcane as academic disciplines (Geisler) as well as sets of everyday practices as ordinary as reading labels on aspirin bottles (Gee). This research has also broadened understandings of the complicated relationships between literacy and structures of political power and authority: literacy is now recognized as one of the means by which educational privilege, with its associated social and economic rewards, remains unequally distributed in contemporary society, a class-based distribution which is also, as Linda Brodkey notes, confounded by race and gender (85). Research on literacy within English studies, however, typically investigates contexts in which literacy is foregrounded. Even in recent studies in community