Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 82, Issue 1 (2009-01). pp. 63-67.
Language:
English
Abstract:
On a summer day in 1995, an Indian newspaper shocked the world with news of the abduction of five foreign tourists by Kashmiri militants. Two of the tourists were eventually found dead. The body of one of them bore the name of the militant group carved in its flesh. The crime was indeed ghastly -- but it was also curious and thought provoking. What did it mean for these militants to write their name in the body of their captive? Did 'writing' on this particular body signify conquest? The act suggested a new consciousness about writing and a changed stance toward its very nature. The event prompted my exploration of the different schools of thought about writing in the past few years. Jack Goody, an anthropologist and a pioneer of the field of literacy studies, has consistently given priority to understanding the role that written communication has played within contemporary societies in the emergence, development, and organization of social and cultural institutions, i.e. religion, law, commerce, bureaucracy, and the [End Page 63] state (Goody 1977, 1986, 1987). Literacy studies following Goody have, however, branched out in many directions. In the field of language socialization, Elinor Ochs and Alessandro Duranti have shown how literacy studies are the key factor in the language socialization of young children (Ochs and Duranti 1995). Niko Besnier's ethnography has analyzed the changing concept of personhood that accompanies the acquisition of literacy (Besnier 1995). In the case of ancient Greece, Michael Herzfeld has shown that claims for civilization were closely tied to literacy (Herzfeld 1989). William Smalley's work among the Hmong community is a classic case study of politics and nationalism in literacy studies illustrating the community's quest for a new writing system in a wake of a political upheaval (Smalley 1990). The interface between literacy and gender has also been productive. Adapted from the source document.