The Ethnography of Reading

Writing, the subject of much innovative scholarship in recent years, is only half of what we call literacy. The other half, reading, now finally receives its due in these groundbreaking essays by a distinguished group of anthropologists and literary scholars.

The essays move well 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.

Filled with insights that erase the line between orality and textuality, this collection will attract a broad readership in anthropology, literature, history, and philosophy, as well as in religious, gender, and cultural studies.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.
Writing, the subject of much innovative scholarship in recent years, is only half of what we call literacy. The other half, reading, now finally receives its due in these groundbreaking essays by a distinguished group of anthropologists and literary schol