Privileged Literacies: Policy, Institutional Process and the Life of the IALS

This paper argues that in order to make use of the theoretical insights offered by the New LiteracyStudies we need to understand more about how institutions produce and privilege certain kinds of knowing – and how, in this process, they devalue or re-define the local and the vernacular for their own purposes. The specific example of the International Adult LiteracySurvey (IALS) is used to show how a powerful discourse develops and can organise our knowledge about literacy. The paper presents some theoreticaltools that might help us analyse the process whereby this happens. In particular, it explores the potential of Actor–Network Theory (ANT) as an analytical tool. The paper concludes that ANT demonstrates the contingent and precarious way in which social order is created and offers hope that this order can be effectively challenged by alternative projects such as that offered by the NLS.