The Ethnography of Reading
Jonathan Boyarin
Abstract
Writing, the subject of much innovative scholarship in recent years, is only half of what we call literacy. The other half, reading, receives its due in these essays by a group of anthropologists and literary scholars. The essays move beyond the simple rubric of “literacy” in its traditional sense of evolutionary advancement from oral to written communication. Some investigate reading in exotically cross-cultural contexts. Some analyze the long historical transformation of reading in the West from a collective, oral practice to the private, silent one it is today, while others demonstrate that ... More
Writing, the subject of much innovative scholarship in recent years, is only half of what we call literacy. The other half, reading, receives its due in these essays by a group of anthropologists and literary scholars. The essays move beyond the simple rubric of “literacy” in its traditional sense of evolutionary advancement from oral to written communication. Some investigate reading in exotically cross-cultural contexts. Some analyze the long historical transformation of reading in the West from a collective, oral practice to the private, silent one it is today, while others demonstrate that, in certain Western contexts, reading is still very much a social activity. The reading situations described here range from Anglo-Saxon England to contemporary Indonesia, from ancient Israel to a Kashaya Pomo Indian reservation. The collection is filled with insights that erase the line between orality and textuality.
Keywords:
writing,
literacy,
reading,
communication,
cross-cultural contexts,
social activity,
Anglo-Saxon England,
Indonesia,
ancient Israel,
Kashaya Pomo
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 1993 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780520079557 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 |
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520079557.001.0001 |
