Grassroots Literacy

What effect has globalization had on our understanding of literacy? Grassroots Literacy seeks to address the relationship between globalization and the widening gap between ‘grassroots’ literacies, or writings from ordinary people and local communities, and ‘elite’ literacies. Displaced from their original context to elite literacy environments in the form of letters, police declarations and pieces of creative writing, ‘grassroots’ literacies are unsurprisingly easily disqualified, either as ‘bad’ forms of literacy, or as messages that fail to be understood. Through close analysis of two unique, handwritten documents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jan Blommaert considers how ‘grassroots’ literacy in the Third World develops outside the literacy-saturated environments of the developed world. In examining these documents produced by socially and economically marginalized writers Blommaert demonstrates how literacy environments should be understood as relatively autonomous systems. Grassroots Literacy will be key reading for students of language and literacy studies as well as an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in understanding the implications of globalization on local literacy practices.

What effect has globalization had on our understanding of literacy? Grassroots Literacy seeks to address the relationship between globalization and the widening gap between ‘grassroots’ literacies, or writings from ordinary people and local communities, and ‘elite’ literacies. Displaced from their original context to elite literacy environments in the form of letters, police declarations and pieces of creative writing, ‘grassroots’ literacies are unsurprisingly easily disqualified, either as ‘bad’ forms of literacy, or as messages that fail to be understood. Through close analysis of two unique, handwritten documents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jan Blommaert considers how ‘grassroots’ literacy in the Third World develops outside the literacy-saturated environments of the developed world. In examining these documents produced by socially and economically marginalized writers Blommaert demonstrates how literacy environments should be understood as relatively autonomous systems. Grassroots Literacy will be key reading for students of language and literacy studies as well as an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in understanding the implications of globalization on local literacy practices.

This book examines how asbestos activists living in remote rural villages in South Africa activated metropolitan resources of representation at the grassroots level in a quest for justice and restitution for the catastrophic effects on their lives caused by the asbestos industry. It follows the Asbestos Interest Group (AIG) over a fifteen-year period through its involvement in grassroots research, in legal cases and in the compensation systems for asbestos-related disease. It examines how the AIG became grassroots technicians of translocal paperwork, moving texts back and forth between periphery and center, pushing documents through the textual mazeways of the courts, medical institutions, the compensation system and various government agencies. The book addresses rhetorical mobility and the extent to which, given the AIG’s position on the periphery, it has been able to enter the voices and interests of villagers into formerly inaccessible forums of deliberation and decision-making.

This book explores the involvement of nineteen women in an emancipatory literacy program conducted under the administration of Paulo Freire in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The study presents the classroom experiences of these women and the psychological, cognitive, and behavioral changes they undergo over a three-year period. Their low limited acquisition of literacy and their limited reading and writing practices are explored in the context of their circumscribed environment of poverty, living in families and societies that place definite boundaries and expectations regarding the everyday tasks they must perform. The analysis of the women's individual experiences is linked to a political and structural inquiry into the grassroots groups and the political party implementing the literacy program. In this way, contradictions, ambiguities, and antagonisms within and among social forces regarding literacy for social change are made transparent. Literacy acquisition is shown to be a process fraught with multiple exogenous demands that distance these women from the constant exposure to print required for literacy competence.

Covering a wide range of literacy topics, including literacy planning, programme implementation and literacy evaluation, the emphasis of this book is on literacy work at the grassroots. The theory and research come from rural and urban settings around the world and refer to literacy work with a variety of different learners. Written for all kinds of literacy workers and organisations, the book is an accessible and practical guide to all areas of literacy work. The themes of each chapter are listed at the beginning of the chapter, and chapters and sub-sections are self-contained so that they can be read independently.

This book aims to enhance and challenge our understanding of language and literacy as social practice against the background of heightened globalisation. Juffermans presents an ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape of The Gambia, arguing that language should be conceptualised as a verb (languaging) rather than a countable noun (a language, languages). He goes on to argue that sociolinguistics should not be defined as the study of ‘who speaks what language to whom, and when and to what end’ (as Fishman defined it), but as the study of who uses which linguistic features under particular circumstances in a particular place and time. The book is therefore in part an exercise to unpluralise language, which Juffermans argues is necessary for a more realistic understanding of what language is, what it does, and what people do with it. The book will be of interest to sociolinguistics researchers, especially those focusing on Africa and the global South.

Examines the grassroots activism of an Internet-mediated collegiate lesbian and gay organization in Turkey. Grassroots Literacies analyzes the complex issues surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender representations, technology, and grassroots activism in international contexts through the lens of Legato, a collegiate lesbian and gay association that engaged in activism in colleges and universities in Turkey from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. Using the Internet and digital media, Legato enabled students to connect with each other on campuses across the country and introduced them to new (i.e., lesbian and gay) identity categories and community activism. Serkan Görkemli presents historical, cultural, visual, and interview-based analyses of Legato members’ “coming out” experiences and uses of digital media. Members emerged as sexuality activists with the help of the Internet and engaged with negative representations of homosexuality through offline events such as film screenings, reading groups, and conferences in the challenging context of burgeoning civil society efforts in Turkey. Bridging transnational and literacy-based studies, the book ultimately traces the contours of a “transnational literacy” regarding sexuality.

Explores the existential significance of literacy. Winner of the 2017 American Educational Research Association’s Division B Outstanding Book Award Literary of the Other stages a bold psychoanalytic investigation into the existential significance of literacy. Featuring a dazzling array of novel artifacts and events, the book situates literacy in the internal fictive worlds of the self and other. This approach is designed to encourage teachers of language and literature to sustain reflexive thought in their practices of reading and writing as a means to gain insight into the psychical processes of literacy. With lucid and compelling prose, Aparna Mishra Tarc reminds us of the importance of fostering a meaningful practice of literacy in the construction of real and fictive stories by which to live well throughout our lives. Renarrating many versions of a shared humanity might develop in us all a sympathetic regard for the storied lives of others. Aparna Mishra Tarc is Associate Professor of Education at York University.