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Abstract
This article looks at the methodological implications of bringing what has been termed an ‘ethnographic perspective’ on literacies, identity and social change, into the international policy discourse on education and development. Through an analysis of the UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2006, Literacy for Life, I explore how and whether ethnographic insights can be translated into a policy context dominated by an economistic paradigm of development. The difficulties lie not just in how to avoid simplifying lengthy ethnographic analysis or generalising statistically from tiny unrepresentative samples but, also, around the kind of questions for which answers are being sought from researchers. I suggest that the predominantly instrumental approach to literacy, where literacy is discussed in terms of its ‘benefits’, contrasts with ethnographic research on multiple literacies and identities: for instance the ‘illiterate’ woman who is viewed by herself and others as ‘educated’. These more complex understandings of literacy, identity and social change might complicate the unambiguous message that Literacy for Life aims to put across to national and international policy makers: that ‘Literacy Matters’. I end by reflecting on how ethnographic researchers could contribute more effectively to policy debates on literacy.
Notes
1. This is the title of UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2006, chapter 5, ‘Literacy for life’.
2. This is the fourth edition of the EFA Global Monitoring Report, which assesses progress towards the six Education For All goals. Each year, a different goal is monitored through commissioning background papers (based on secondary and empirical research) and aiming to ‘identify the key dimensions of sound policy’ (UNESCO, Citation2005: 448) to disseminate to governments and aid agencies.
3. For an example, see my account of conducting ethnographic research for a USAID-commissioned project. Though I attempted to draw on ethnographic approaches, i soon realised that ‘to ask what are the links between women's literacy and health is essentially a question posed by a policy maker rather an ethnographer’ (Robinson-Pant, Citation2001a: 168).
4. As Kell pointed out in the context of literacy strategies for EFA, the conflation of adult literacy and adult education is also problematic: ‘literacy provision needs to be separated conceptually from the provision of adult basic education and different approaches and methods need to be developed’ (Kell, Citation2004: 9).
5. The ‘dark side to literacy’ approach, developed from numerous Southern authors in Shikshantar (Citation2003), argues that ‘literacy legitimates and reproduces the capitalist economic order’ and that ‘literacy has a negative impact on language/cultural diversity’ (Fransman, Citation2007: 4).
6. This is also the title of chapter 5, the section of the Global Monitoring Report which draws directly on our group's background papers on ‘The benefits of literacy’.
7. The New Literacy Studies (NLS) have developed theoretical understanding around literacy as a social practice, as opposed to defining literacy as a set of neutral skills: ‘what this implies is a belief that literacy functions in all contexts in different ways guided by different discursive practices’ (Pahl and Rowsell, Citation2006: 4). From Street's (Citation1984) critique of the traditional ‘Great Divide’ (Goody, Citation1968) between oral and literate societies and people, there is now the recognition that ‘literate’ and ‘illiterate’ people all engage in a variety of oral and literacy practices. NLS researchers use the concept of a ‘literacy event’ (Barton, Citation1994) to analyse the variety of oral practices also involved in an activity such as filling in a tax form (which may also require speaking on the phone).
8. The term ‘situated literacies’ refers to the central idea within the New Literacy Studies that ‘reading, writing and meaning are always situated within specific social practices within specific Discourses’ (Gee, Citation2000: 189).
9. See Dyer's paper about the Rabaris' view of adult literacy programmes.
10. Similarly, I am aware that in this paper, I have tended to polarise policy makers and ethnographers, and assumed that policy makers are a homogeneous group.
11. Literature has also been found on ‘development as discourse’ (Escobar, Citation1995; Grillo and Stirrat, Citation1997), useful for conceptualising the relationship between ‘developer’ and ‘developed’.
12. This refers to the courses followed in higher education institutions: Intermediate in Arts and Bachelor of Arts.