Literacy, Emotion and Authority Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll [Paperback]

This 1995 book is a study of the development of literacy in the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae.Using a contemporary perspective that emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context, this study analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society.Using a contemporary perspective that emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context, this study analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society.In this study Niko Besnier analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society, using a contemporary perspective that emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual.1. Introduction; 2. The ethnographic context; 3. The domains of reading and writing; 4. Letter writing and reading; 5. Letters, economics and emotionality; 6. Between literacy and orality: the sermon; 7. Literacy, truth and authority; 8. Conclusion. ...exceptionally rich in its fine reviews of both theory and case material in the anthropology of literacy, in its deep treatment of the situation on Nukulaelae, and in its demonstration of the way in which attention to literacy permits engagement with major anthropological issues about the construction of person and society. The book is well produced, with glossary and index, and is illustrated with maps and photographs....it would be appropriate in a wide range of upper-division and graduate courses. Journal of Anthropological Research ...Besnier has given us a rich appreciation of how literacy interacts with social categories and communicative processes on Nukulaelae and beyond. Sarah LlãI