The Word and the World: The Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil

Why do international literacy policies, Freirean critical literacy teachers, and literacy students hold markedly dissimilar beliefs about literacy, and what difference does that divergence make in a literacy classroom? How are the supposed consequences of literacy, such as economic development, political empowerment, and human development more broadly, shaped by these understndings, as well as other factors? Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in Brazil, the author examines how cultural politics hape the teaching, learning and uses of literacy.