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    Literacy and Literacies

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    Literacy

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    Literacy and Literacies James Collins Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 24 (1995), 75-93. Stable URL: fip:flinks jstor-org/sic sici=0084-65 70% 2819999292 3A24HICTS%3ALALG3E2.0,CO%3B2-V ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at fp (fw. jstor orglaboutitersihtml. ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless You. have obtained prior permission, you ray not download an entire issue of &joumal or multiple copies of aricies, and You may use content in the ISTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR twansmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sercen or lnted page of such transmission. Annuot Review of Anthropology is published by Annual Reviews. Please contact the publisher for farther permissions regarding dhe use of this wock. Publisher contac information may be obtained at fpf jtor-org/jourmal/anncevs hur Annual Review of Anthropology ©1995 Annual Reviews, ISTOR and the ISTOR logo are trademarks of ISTOR, and are Registered in the US. Patent and Trademase Office. For mote information on ISTOR contact jstor-info@umich edu, ©2002 STOR, up:thrwwjstor orgy ‘Thu Sep 12 10:24:28 2002 nes Be Ari (98 24 75:2 Cog 19889 Aro Re eA righ LITERACY AND LITERACIES James Collins ‘Authropology Department, Stale University of New York, Albany, New York 12222 KEY WORDS. ehnogseray, istry, power, ienty ABSTRACT "This review explores questions of power, epistemology, cultural form, and historical process, as they are raised by and developed in studies of literacy. [t begins by reviewing arguments for universalist vs situated accounts of literacy ‘and litecacies. Having discussed universalist claims and evidence, and having shown that they cannot withstand criticism, the review develaps generaliza tions shout the implications of plural literacies. It explores the relationshi among modem state formation, educational systems, and official vs popular Titeracies, by drawing on poststructuralist arguments about the role of writing in social formations and on recent historical and ethnographic research on literacy, It analy2es the role of literacies in the. formation of class, gender, and racial-ethnic identities, by focusing on the role af education in class stratifica tion, the debate about public vs private in gender dynamics, and the volatile relations between oppressed nationalities and offical literacies. INTRODUCTION ‘The study of literacy has often presumed dichotomies such 2s literate vs illiterate, weitten vs spoken, educated vs uneducated, and modern vs traditional. The title of this review itself presents a dichotomy, which the following discussion initially develogs, then complicates and reformulates More particularly, this review develops the distinction between universalist fr autonomous literacy, seen as a general, uniform set of techniques and uses of language, with identifiable stages and clear consequences for culture and cognition, and relativist or situated lteracies, seen 5 diverse, historically and (0084-6570095/1015-0075805.00 5 16 COLLINS ‘culturally variable practices with texts. The former concern with unitary lites acy is associated with the early work of historians on the technology of printing (72, 73), with the work of anthcopologists on the evalstionary conse: ‘quences of literacy as a “technology of the intellect” (87-90), and with the ‘work of comparative and historically inclined psychologists on the. cognitive divide hetween literates and nonliterates (96, 153, 148, [49, 153, 199), This concern with literacy has tended (0 assume @ clear, cumulative distinction between literacy and orality and, zs forrulated initially, that the literacy of the ‘West was somchow exceptional to all other literacies. ‘The concern with multiple literacies has focused on the diversity and social embeddedness of those ways with text we cal literacy, emphasizing the ways as much as the texts, It is associated with comparative anthcopotogical citi ism of claims made for a unitary or autonomous literacy, questioning liter -ey's causal consequences in social development (91) ar cognitive develop- ment (49, 190); with detailed ethnographic studies of inseription and dis- course, undermining the notion of separable domains of orality and literacy (20, 38, 193, 191); and with revisionist historical scholarship, reperiodizing and reframing the dehate about literacy and social development in the West (47,93, 95) ‘The arguments about literacy have been important politically because they involve claims about “Great Divides,” that i, about essential differences in humankind, in particular in the cultural and cognitive development of literates and nonliterates. Conelatively, there have been long debates about the formal differences and similarities between spoken and writen language that are supposed to underlie many educational problems, and about the role of literacy in economic betterment, whether of marginalized populations within devel- oped economics or of underdeveloped and developing nations within the post-World War Il economic order. This review examines in detail the cul- ‘ural-cognitive Great Divide. Readers interested in the spoken vs written lan ‘age issue are referred to some influential articles and collections (4, 153, 193, 194, 206) and a recent monograph systematically undercutting the spoken vs writen contrast (28). Those interested in the litersey and economic devel- ‘opment controversies ate referred (0 influential historical claims (46), original UNESCO formulations (197, 198). US Nationsl policy documents (10, 53a), ‘an brisk critical literature (79, 92, 147, 190, 200), THE GREAT DIVIDE REANIMATED: THE CONSEQUENCES OF LITERACY I is an old argument that there are fundamental differences in human intellect, and cognition, differences tied to stages of civilization, grantmatical elahora- tion, or racial order (J24, 189), and the criticisms of such, views are well LITERACIES 77 known (33,43, 123, 172). Concern with human difference remains, and, in the post-World War I era, Great Divide theories were reformulated: Fundamental differences in human cognition and human cultural conditions were attribisted not to differences in human nature ot stages of civilization but rather to literacy, conceived a5 a “technology of the intellect” In this more recent account, litercey introduces a nonrelativistic tendency into human history, 2 profound change inthe nature of knowledge and of cultural forms Proponents of the Literacy Thesis: The Consequences of Literacy Goody & Wat's clessic essay (90) argues thet momentous consequences derived from the alphabetic literacy chat first Nowered in Greece (102) and subsequently developed in medieval and modern Europe. Among the so-called consequences of literacy they depict ace hasic transformations in the nature of Anowledge and cultural tradition, in particular (a) 2 distinction between myth and history, (b} a distinction between opinion and truth (forsalizable inquiry ‘oF logic), and (c) a distinction between acceptance of received tradition and a skepticism about tradition, whieh leads Co individuation and democratic social forms. Briefly, whereas oral accouets of the past i.e. myth) ate inherently perspectival, history depends on and emerges feom a critical synthesis of differing accounts, & synthesis relying on wetten acconnts and transcending perspectives. Whereas opinion and common sense are tied to intersubjective g70up membership, formalizable inquiry and tcuth-seeking depend on deracha- bility from particular circumstances or memberships, a deachbility sided by ‘written procedures for reasoning and argument. Finally, whereas socialization ‘irough (oral) language makes us human by binding us to groups, it also inclines us to adherence to authority, received wisdom, and common senses but literacy, by providing alternate accounts, provokes snd sustains a skeptical atid to authority and a greater individvaiy ‘These claims have come under considerable serutiny and criticism in the past tee decades, and they have been variously modified, but the literacy thesis resonated with American and Canadian scholarship preoccupied with ‘communicative modalities and cognitive processes. Prominent have been the writings of classicists such as Havelock (102) and Ong (154, (55). They sought in scholarship shout the Homeric traditions, medieval monastic learn- ing, the history of print, and the nawre of electronic media to ground an account oF primarily oral and primarily literate thinking, fn the oral coluran go ‘characteristics such as memory-based, empathetic and participatory, situa- Gional, and aggregative; in the literate column go the counterparts, such as record-based, objectively distanced, ahstract, and analytic (102, 155). Ab though the details differ, shared with Goody isa central argument: Writing isa technology that transforms human thinking, relationships to language, and 78 COLLINS relationships to and representations of tradition. These themes have also been argued by psychologists throughout tie 1970s and 1980s, For example, Olson (149) bas argued that literacy, specifically alphabetic literacy, permits @ novel and fondamsental clarification of language and mesning; chat with the Protes- ‘tant Reformation, literacy established a novel textual autonomy, a detaching of ‘meaning com context; and that the modem essayist tradition establishes the procedure fac inquiry that underpins madern science. In later works, he pro- posed a specific means of cognitive cevamping in the literate tradition: the. development of metalinguistic vocabulary about thought (e.g. words such as assume. state, claim, believe, and infer), which leads to a medesa, disen- chanted separation of language and world (150, 152). Some of Goody's, Ong's, and Olson’s claims are intriguing, and they have an initial plausibility. Try teaching these claims to undergraduates, and you will discover how deeply a literate bias is pan of aur academic comrnon sense. But theic plausibility depends om how the dichotomy of oral vs literate is presented and secured. Although the literacy thesis is essentially about semi- ‘tic means, ahout a communicative modality supposedly reshaping cognitive tnd social processes, it depends on various bracketing operations to establish coniparability and provide historical trajectory. Goody, Ong, and Olson have, ‘been forced to craw distinctions between full, genuine, alphshetic lieracy, and all other uses of serigt, so-called restricted literacies, which fil to show the predicted consequences (85, 149, 155). Their arguments also require historical periodizing, setting off Classical Greck culture from all literate precursors or contentporarics, or establishing the uniqueness of Protestant Reformation ideas about textual intecpretation (100, 101). Critics of the Literacy Thesis: For Situated Accounts of Literacies ‘The large critical literature responding tothe literacy thesis has questioned the ‘central assumption that literacy can be treated as a thing-in-itself, as an autono- mous technology. Crities have asked whether literacy is not essentially embed ded, its nature and meaning shaped by, ratier than determinate of, broad ‘cultural-histarical frameworks and specific cultural practices. In an eaely and important critique, Gough (91) drew on material from Ancicat India and China, supposedly restricted literacy (editions, to challenge the literacy thesis, ‘on numiecous grounds. In particular, claims about the superior spread af alpha- belie literacy do not hold, as both Indiz and China had a similar scale of

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