Literacy or literacies?

Again we haven't had much to write about on the blog the last couple of weeks and both been busy with work, reading and some of the many administrative tasks which pops up when you are trying to go in India and Bhutan for 1½ month, especially on the financial aspects.

As the headline suggests we have moved on from the ICT4D literature and have focused on the aspects of literacy and illiteracy. As with ICT4D the literature is scattered if you are trying to pinpoint exact literature on literacy, development countries and potential benefits in combining these. Our hypotheses is that literacy is not required for development and that illiterates can develop without first acquiring competences in reading and writing. We don't object against schooling and literacy but just don't see a deterministic link between literacy and development. This is what we are trying to search for in the academic literature currently in order to shape our theory properly. The headline just suggests some of the main discussion in ethnographic and anthropological circles regarding literacy. It literacy a unique thing and/or ability or does it all depend on context/culture and so on?

Next to reading about literacy we are also in the process of shaping our theory for ICT4D and proposing a framework. With more than 60 articles and some books on the subject this is a rather time consuming task. From all of our summaries of articles and books we have now extracted and coded specific statements and will combine these to a framework. Tomorrow we will meet with Sudhanshu for a hopeful enriching discussion that properly will continue next week too.

Our field study to India and Bhutan is also getting more concrete. Right now it seems like we will leave for India right after new year and spent a couple of weeks there before moving on to Bhutan. The big question still is whether we can raise enough funds required but our first application for funds was sent this week to the Oticon Foundation so we hope for support from them. Hopefully others will continue in the next coming weeks.

I promise you that next time Thomas will write a very long and exiting post. He has been working on it for weeks now. I know that I'm looking forward to it :-)