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 edited volume examines what the classic text The Ethnography of Reading (Boyarin ed., 1993), and the diverse ethnographies of reading it helped inspire, can offer contemporary scholars interested in understanding the place of reading in social life. The Ethnography of Reading at Thirty brings together new research and critical reflections from an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who have kept their ears tuned to the voices in and around the texts they encountered and constructed in the process of bringing the ethnography of reading into the twenty-first century. Rather than operating from universalist assumptions about how people interact with and make meaning from written texts, each of the present contributors draw in one way or another on the theoretical, methodological, and creative legacies of The Ethnography of Reading. Under the broad umbrella of ethnographic reader studies, they collectively explore new relations between texts, social imagination, and social action.

"A very satisfying, diverse treatment of a topic that has been ignored because it has been hard to treat."—George E. Marcus, Rice University

This book presents a model for analyzing and evaluating ethnographic arguments. It examines the relationship between the claims anthropologists make about human behavior and the data they use to warrant them. Jacobson analyzes the textual organization of ethnographies, focusing on the ways in which problems, interpretations, and data are put together. He examines in detail a limited number of well-known ethnographic cases, which are selected to illustrate basic theoretical frameworks and modes of analysis. By advancing a method for assessing ethnographic accounts, the book contributes to the current debate on the role of rhetoric and reflexivity in anthropology.

How to Read Ethnography is an essential guide to approaching anthropological texts. It helps students to cultivate the skills they need to critically examine and understand how ethnographies are built up, as well as to think anthropologically and develop an anthropological imagination of their own. The authors reveal how ethnographically-informed anthropology plays a distinctive and valuable role in comprehending the complexity of the world we live in. This fully revised second edition includes fresh excerpts from key texts for analysis and comparison along with lucid explanations. In addition to concerns with argument, authority, and the relationship between theory and data, the book engages with the purpose, value, and accountability of ethnographic texts, as well as with their reception and usage. A brand new chapter looks at the kinds of collaboration between informants/consultants and anthropologists that go into the making of ethnographic writing.

Provides a practical guide to the critical reading of ethnographic studies: discussing in detail how to identify the main arguments and what is involved in making an assessment of such studies.

Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities showcases innovative research at the interface of religion and multilingualism, offering an analytical focus on religion in children and adolescents’ everyday lives and experiences. The volume examines the connections between language and literacy practices and social identities associated with religion in a variety of sites of learning and socialization, namely homes, religious education classes, places of worship, and faith-related schools and secular schools. Contributors engage with a diverse set of complex multiethnic and religious communities, and investigate the rich multilingual, multiliterate and multi-scriptal practices associated with religion which children and adolescents engage in with a range of mediators, including siblings, peers, parents, grandparents, religious leaders, and other members of the religious community. The volume is organized into three sections according to context and participants: (1) religious practices at home and across generations, (2) religious education classes and places of worship and (3) bridging home, school and community. The edited book will be a valuable resource for researchers in applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, socio-linguistics, intercultural communication, and early years, primary and secondary education.

Reading Scripture is a spiritual practice at the very heart of the Christian faith. But how is it possible to encounter God in reading the words of the Bible? Does reading the Christian Bible require a different approach from how one may read other texts or writings? What is required of the spiritual reader to read well? Seeking to answer such questions, Angela Lou Harvey provides a theological exploration of the idea of "spiritual reading" in the context of the Western church today. Drawing upon insights of theologians such as Karl Barth, Henri de Lubac, and Ellen F. Davis, the author suggests that the particulars of Christian belief profoundly shape the distinctive practice of the spiritual reading of the Bible.

Ethnography is a way to tap the deep undercurrents in a community through a process of gathering, analyzing, and sharing data. Fully revised and updated for this second edition, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice has quickly become the go-to textbook for those in or training for ministry who want to discover how they can use ethnography to help them hear the stories of those to whom they minister. Setting forth the case for ethnography’s ability to galvanize aspirations and heal communal hurt, this book presents the helpful pastoral practice of ethnography in a clear, step-by-step manner and includes many compelling case studies of transformational leadership. Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice invites us to open our eyes, ears and hearts to those in our congregations.

The primary objective of Studies in Educational Ethnography is to present original research monographs based on ethnographic perspectives, and methodologies.