Despite the significant interest in literacy in the past two decades, there
is still great need for detailed accounts of the everyday uses of literacy
within communities. Local Literacies offers
this through a study of out-of-school literacy among adults in
Continuing the tradition of framing literacy as a set of social practices (as done by Besnier, Gee, Heath, Street, and Wagner), the book aims to understand the social meanings and uses of literacy in a small community in the Western world, setting out this theoretical orientation in the first chapter. It historically situates the study of literacy practices by including a brief history of the area from the 17th to the late 20th century (chapters 2 and 3). Equally valuable is inclusion of ordinary people whose relationships with literacy differ—for example, adults enrolled in basic education courses, a dyslexic adult male, and a woman who writes often as part of her involvement in local community affairs. Chapter 4 details the research methodology, which is a combination of ethnography and more traditional social science surveys conducted door to door. Data from the brief surveys are treated as part of the ethnographic picture the authors create.
The centerpiece of the book is the description of literacy practices. Chapters 5–8 are devoted to extended accounts of the way four adults use literacy daily, whereas chapters 9–13 examine vernacular literacy practices across individuals. Although there are many highlights in the heart of the book, mention of a few will have to suffice. The reports of individual literacy practices underscore the situated nature of everyday literacy, the many ways in which people depend on others in their community to accomplish literacy tasks for which they are not prepared. This web of literacy is so often associated with contexts in which restricted literacy prevails that it is possible to lose sight of the everydayness of this interrelation in Western contexts. A further contribution is a consideration of private writing.
With so much attention to reading for pleasure, much less attention has been paid to the pleasures that ordinary people experience in personal writing. This is quite effectively brought to life in the case study of Cliff, whose personal correspondence with stage performers extends over decades. Another highlight is the all-too-brief discussion of the multilingual literacies of a Muslim woman who uses English, Gujurati, and Arabic for complementary although not mutually exclusive purposes. Students in the West often fail to appreciate the ways in which literacy practices in different languages organize the lives of ordinary people in Western societies. This section should serve as a corrective.
The book makes effective use of detailed "asides" (in the terminology of the book), large sections of boxed material that incorporate extended pieces of data from interviews or participant journals as well as very useful contextual information (i.e., background of a social or historical nature). These succeed in bringing to life the descriptions of literacy practices as well as giving voice to the attitudes, beliefs, and concerns of the study’s participants.
The distinction the book draws between vernacular literacies and those "regulated by dominant social institutions" is problematic; indeed, the authors acknowledge the permeability of these boundaries. Even so, the relationship between the literacy practices used within bureaucratic institutions and those used outside would have been clarified by observing that many of the literacy practices characterized as everyday are grounded in and structured by dominant institutions. For example, the many examples of numeracy observed—from betting for sport to keeping track of household accounts—grew out of the record keeping of the state and the church (Goody). Likewise, reading to gain mastery, found in the reports of reading about hobbies, no doubt has its grounding in the habits of mind developed in school-based learning.
Local Literacies is written with immense clarity using terms of theoretical importance sparingly and always with definition. It contains several appendixes that would be quite useful in classroom instruction, including one on metaphors for the research process and another on research into practice. The accessibility, conscious attention to methodological choices, and supplementary information contribute to making the book ideally suited as a text for advanced undergraduates and new graduate students.