Abstract
Literacy and Literacies offers a unique, comprehensive survey of both classical and current (mainly anthropological) literature in the field of literacy studies, combined with in-depth critical discussion of particular cases. It explores questions of power, cultural form, and historical process as they are raised by and developed in studies of literacy, and draws on the history of literacy, critical education studies, and the anthropology of literacy, to develop a new synthesis. James Collins and Richard K. Blot argue that neither the generalizing, universalist claims of the ?consequences of literacy? thesis, nor the contextualizing, situated studies of the ?New Literacy? offer satisfactory approaches to the phenomenon of literacy. Through their analysis of two domains, that of literacies and power and that of literacies and subjectivity. Collins and Blot reveal important historical processes associated with literacy practices while also challenging received assumptions about literacy, intellectual development, and social progress.
