Synopses & Reviews
Situated Literacies is a rich and varied collection of key writings from leading international scholars in the field of literacy. Each contribution, written in a clear, accessible style, makes the link between literacies in specific contexts and broader social practices.
Detailed ethnographic studies of a wide variety of specific situations, all involving real texts and lived practices, are balanced with general claims about the nature of literacy. Contributors address a coherent set of issues:
* the visual and material aspects of literacy
* concepts of time and space in relation to literacy
* the functions of literacies in shaping and sustaining identities in communities of practice
* the relationship between texts and the practices associated with their use
the role of discourse analysis on literacy studies
These studies, along with a foreword by Denny Taylor, make a timely and important contribution to literacy theory and suggest directions for the further development of the field. Situated Literacies is essential reading for anyone involved in literary education.
Table of Contents
Literacy practices /David Barton and Mary Hamilton --Expanding the new literacy studies : using photographs to explore literacy as social practice /Mary Hamilton --New literacy studies and time : an exploration /Karin Tusting --There is no escape from third-space theory : borderland discourse and the 'in-between' literacies of prisons /Anita Wilson --Becoming just another alphanumeric code : farmers' encounters with the literacy and discourse practices of agricultural bureaucracy at the livestock auction /Kathryn Jones --Texts in practices : interpreting the physical characteristics of children's project work /Fiona Ormerod and Roz Ivaniéc --Family literacy : a pedagogy for the future? /Kathy Pitt --Emergent literacy practices in an electronic community /Renata de Pourbaix --Respect and the pursuit of 'symmetry' in researching literacy and student writing /Simon Pardoe --Researching literacy practices : learning from activities with teachers and students /David Barton --New Literacy Studies : from 'socially situated' to the work of the social /James Paul Gee --New Literacy Studies : context, intertextuality and discourse /Janet Maybin --New Literacy Studies at the interchange /Karin Tusting, Roz Ivaniéc and Anita Wilson.