Books in the Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture series

This book challenges conventional theories about literacy, and the practices which often arise from them. It attempts to provide a new perspective through which the variety of literacy practices across different cultures can be viewed and from which the practical issues that arise in specific literacy campaigns and programmes can be approached. Dr Street first examines the explicit theories developed about literacy within different academic disciplines, on the premise that these underlie statements about literacy within development campaigns and in everyday usage. He analyses in detail arguments about the 'technical' and 'neutral' nature of literacy and its supposed 'cognitive' consequences in the work of some psychologists, linguists and social anthropologists. He claims that these amount to a coherent but flawed model that he terms the 'autonomous' model of literacy. Against this he poses an 'ideological' model, one which pays greater attention to the social structure. He attempts to bring together recent shifts in this direction in writings on literacy and to construct a coherent model for further work.

In l750, half the population were unable to sign their names; by l9l4 England, together with a handful of advanced Western countries, had for the first time in history achieved a nominally literate society. This book seeks to understand how and why literacy spread into every corner of English society, and what impact it had on the lives and minds of the common people.

The domei is a popular narrative art form among the Mende people of Sierra Leone. Although it is a traditional form, the narratives are not remembered or retold, but on each occasion the performers recreate out of a common stock of characters and plots domeisia, which are singular and sometimes brilliant expressions of a singular, and often brilliant, culture.

Sijobang - the singing of a poetic narrative about the legendary hero Anggun Nan Tungga - is a form of popular entertainment in the area around Payakumbuh, in the highlands of West Sumatra. Although the story exists as a written text, it is best known locally as drama and sung narrative, and it is its character as an oral performance that forms the subject of this book.

The Xhosa-speaking peoples of south-eastern South Africa have a long tradition of oral poetry, extending back at least two hundred years. This book, first published in 1983, was the first detailed study of that tradition. The book focuses in particular on the poetry produced by the imbongi.

This book, by one of the leading scholars in linguistic anthropology, concerns the verbal art of the Kuna Indians of San Blas, Panama. Theirs is a world in which all knowledge and information, from history and geography to the latest sport news from Panama City, is orally conceived, perceived and transmitted and Joel Sherzer demonstrates how experience is shaped by these verbal discourses.

Professor Camporesi examines what significance the body had for the obsessively religious, superstitious, yet materially bound minds of the pre-industrial age? In this extraordinary and often astounding book, Professor Camporesi traces these ideas back to various documents across the centuries and explores the juxtaposition of medicine and sorcery, cookery and surgery, pharmacy and alchemy.

In this unusual and far-ranging study, Maureen Perrie discusses the nature of Ivan's image in Russian folklore; its historical basis; its development; and the controversies which have surrounded it in pre-revolutionary and Soviet Russian scholarship.

Based on intensive fieldwork in an urban American junior high school, this original study explores the relationship between oral and written texts in everyday life by analysing tellings and retellings of local events, diaries, writings and discussions.

This analysis of the literary qualities of orally performed art is based on a body of entertaining Texan narratives collected by the author over the last fifteen years. The author's main emphasis is on the act of storytelling, not just the text. He looks at the interrelationships between the narrated events, the narrative texts and the situations in which they are narrated.

This book shows how the poetry and music of a Polynesian people, the Tikopia, can have an intimate relation with their social life.

Concentrating on the plentiful evidence from Classical Athens, Dr Thomas shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral method of communication - an insight of considerable significance for the interpretation of ancient literacy.

This collection of essays is a major contribution to the study of oral composition and ritual communication, and in particular to the use of 'parallelism' (the poetic ordering of words and phrases in alternative, duplicate form). To Speak in Pairs represents an important advance in the study of oral literature in context.

Originally published in 1987, the aim of this book is to advance a fresh perspective on the presentation, philology, analysis, and interpretation of oral literature and verbal art.

Providing a rare access to the underlying cultural traditions of Europe, all too often submerged in the survivals of literate culture, this book will be welcomed by a wide range of historians and anthropologists.

Brian Street's volume investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies, challenging the traditional view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society.

Brian Street's volume investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies, challenging the traditional view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, Elizabeth Tonkin investigates the construction and interpretation of oral histories.

This volume of essays brings together some of this recent work by social historians of Britain, France and Italy from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The authors concern themselves with the politics as well as the sociology of language.

This collection of essays is a major contribution to the study of oral composition and ritual communication, and in particular to the use of 'parallelism' (the poetic ordering of words and phrases in alternative, duplicate form). To Speak in Pairs represents an important advance in the study of oral literature in context.