Post-structural theories of language and literacy, including the field of
inquiry known as the “new literacy studies,” regard literacy as
a sociological, as well as an educational issue. Central to this research is
the conception of literacy as a socially situated practice rather than as an
individual skill with a single meaning and definition. This position is built
from Street’s (1984) distinction between the autonomous and ideological
models of literacy. Autonomous perspectives tend to regard literacy as an individual
skill acquired through schooling and measurable through standard tests. According
to Street (2003) an ideological perspective of literacy “problematizes
what counts as literacy in a given time and place, asking whose literacies are
dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant”
(p. 75). Like Foucauldian
approaches to critical discourse analysis, this perspective is concerned with
the connections between power and knowledge and how “the ways in which
people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge,
identity and being”
(Street, 2003, p. 76). Another component of new literacy
studies is the importance placed upon social history as a force in discursive
formation, as well as the social and cultural reproduction of dominant literacies.
As noted above, the genealogical component of this study aims to integrate this
sensitivity to social history. The concept of habitus also contributes a historical
lens to the study, one that is expressed in the embodiment of everyday literacy
and mothering practices.
Habitus as defined by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) involves a system of perception,
thought, and action that becomes embodied or regarded as natural or habitual
at the levels of a social group, family, and individual. Some forms of habitus
are accorded more status than others. This difference in status can be internalized
by both dominant and marginalized groups as natural and normal. Indeed, Stuart
Wells (1997) argues that habitus is “how one’s view of the world
is influenced by the traditional distribution of power and status in society”
(p. 422).