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Abstract
This paper examines how multi-disciplinary research
can inform our understanding of the ways that literacy
contributes to poverty reduction and wellbeing. Multi-disciplinary
research involves significant epistemological and methodological
challenges, and radically contrasting models of literacy.
The paper nevertheless argues that in literacy research
qualitative-quantitative collaboration is necessary
to make sense of data, and to inform more robust models
of the causal processes and the mechanisms involved.
The first part of the paper examines the case for multi-disciplinary
research in the literacy field, discussing models of
literacy in economics and anthropology. The paper suggests
that while ethnography provides a strong theoretical
foundation on literacy as a social practice, ethnographic
models are not sufficiently in-depth to enable understandings
of causal mechanisms or to appraise contrasting hypotheses.
The paper then proposes a theoretical framework that
would enable more in-depth examination of such mechanisms
and support multi-disciplinary research in this field.
*This paper was originally
presented at the international seminar on ‘Literacies,
Identity and Social Change’, at University of
East Anglia, April 2006. I would like to thank the seminar
participants, particularly Subbu Subramanian and Kaushik
Basu for their comments on the conference paper, and
to Anna Robinson-Pant, Kunal Sen and Frank Ellis for
further suggestions on this revised version.
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