Review of Literacy and the Politics of Representation by Mary Hamilton Author: Mary Hamilton Title: Literacy and the Politics of Representation Cost: £26.99 paperback 178Pages ISBN: 978041568616-7 (print)


___________________________________________________________________ Reviewed by Tara Furlong Tara has worked in both the private and public sectors, mainly in the field of education, for twenty years, in the UK and abroad. She has an ongoing interest in the relationship between contextualized, multimodal learning and abstracted learning, and its mirror in social and literate practice and language across life spheres. Tara is engaged in postgraduate studies in education with the IoE.


She can be contacted on tara.furlong@designingfutures.co.uk


Mary Hamilton condenses a lifetime's research and experience to date into an analysis of how representation through word, image, number and metaphor interacts with sociopolitical formations and change, 'since they (metaphors in this case) are used to represent aspects of reality in the particular [and] they can act in persuasive discourse to coerce, to legitimise and to rationalise arguments” (47). As she comments in the preface (p.xiii), 'I arrived early in my professional life at the view that truth is made, not found, but it has taken me a long time to figure out how this works.'


The first part of the book consists of three chapters concentrating on different ways of representing literacy (as described above, through numbers, images and autobiographical accounts). The second part shows how these resources are used in policy documents, in media reports and in student writing. The work outlines theoretical modelling for researchers and political actors, giving detailed examples and applications. While the author addresses broad themes of literacy, her methods are translatable to other fields of social enquiry, such as inclusion.


This book combines frameworks and tools from Literacy Studies (texts situated in social practice, Actor Network Theory (social 'trajectories of power and how agency is exerted within them') (13) and the theory of Social Semiotics (social practice and critical discourse analysis) to examine the diversity of often conflicting constructed public narratives and shared “social imaginaries” of textually mediated communication. Text in governance is compared with that of students' personal accounts or “testimonies”. Overt treatment of literacy in the news media is contrasted with its incidental representation within other news stories, as these contrasting narratives construct a contested understanding of literacy in society. Hamilton analyses how combinations of different narrative types and modes, such as autobiographical account with image and perhaps statistics, can create influential texts as part of larger societal discourses and power play.


In addressing these complex themes, we are led to explore the role of literacy in governance, public space, democracy and equitable society, as 'literacy… is increasingly naturalised as a central feature of the emerging global order' (3). We are shown how metaphor works in words, images and numbers. We are shown how statistics develop through the agencies of the state, and through defining groups, and we are shown their role in inclusion and exclusion. We are shown how policy is reflected in literacy education and in the news, and how student publishing disrupts dominant narratives in return. Our attention is drawn to the rapidly changing mediums through which literacy is projected especially at this time of digital technology revolution. For those


54


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62