Editor: Viv Edwards (University of Reading, UK)
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Volume: 15 Number: 2 Page: 178–196
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Privileged Literacies: Policy, Institutional Process and the Life of the IALS
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Mary Hamilton
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This paper argues that in order to make use of the theoretical insights offered by the New Literacy Studies we need to understand more about how institutions produce and privilege certain kinds of knowing
– and how, in this process, they devalue or re-define the local and the vernacular for their own purposes. The specific example of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) is used to show how
a powerful discourse develops and can organise our knowledge about literacy. The paper presents some theoretical tools that might help us analyse the process whereby this happens. In particular, it explores
the potential of Actor–Network Theory (ANT) as an analytical tool. The paper concludes that ANT demonstrates the contingent and precarious way in which social order is created and offers hope that
this order can be effectively challenged by alternative projects such as that offered by the NLS.
© Multilingual Matters 2001
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