In this Book
SAR Press
- Fixing the Books: Secrecy, Literacy, and Perfectibility in Indigenous New Mexico
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: SAR Press
- Series: Resident Scholar
summary
In Fixing the Books, Erin Debenport presents the research she conducted on an indigenous language literacy effort within a New Mexico Pueblo community, and the potential of that literacy to compromise Pueblo secrecy. She analyzes the decision to produce written materials in a historically oral language and whether that decision is at odds with the linguistically and culturally “conservative” reputation of Southwest tribes, and potentially disrupts the control of both the intra- and intercommunity circulation of cultural knowledge. Debenport concentrates on the role of literacy in the formation of groups and the ways such groups have been connected to political participation, using the case study of San Ramón Pueblo (she uses pseudonyms throughout) as a counterexample to some of the prototypical cases of textual circulation. She concludes that an apparent contradiction surrounding this pueblo’s literacy effort is actually a reflection of the often unexpected uses of texts that occur in contexts of revitalization and emergent literacy and the multiple language ideologies being utilized by community members.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-2
- 1. Introduction
- pp. 3-26
- 2. Ideology, Literacy, and Secrecy
- pp. 27-54
- 7. Conclusion
- pp. 137-142
- References
- pp. 147-156
Additional Information
ISBN
9781938645488
Related ISBN(s)
9781938645471
MARC Record
OCLC
900159205
Pages
176
Launched on MUSE
2015-05-30
Language
English
Open Access
No