Literacy in a Hunting-Gathering Society: The Case of the Diyari

• Main Author: Ferguson, Charles A
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1996
• Subjects: aleut
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195092905.003.0006; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52226732/isbn-9780195092905-book-part-6.pdf

Abstract In recent years, beginning with the often-cited article of Goody and Watt (1963), a renewed and growing interest has developed in the study of literacy as a phenomenon of human societies, and strong claims have been made about the cognitive effects of the shift from oral to literate culture (see, e.g., Goody 1977; Ong 1982; but cf. Frake 1983). Although many of the recent literacy studies are ethnographic in perspective (e.g., papers in Goody 1968; Schieffelin and Gilmore 1986), we still have very few descriptive studies of the introduction of literacy into particular nonliterate societies. One such study (Ransom 1945) appeared in the first volume of this journal. In it the anthropologist author attempted to reconstruct and interpret the sequence of events as vernacular literacy was introduced among the Alaskan Aleut by Russian Orthodox missionaries early in the nineteenth century; a valuable follow-up article appeared thirty years later (Black 1977). The present paper attempts a similar reconstruction of the nineteenth century introduction of vernacular literacy among an Australian Aboriginal group by German Lutheran missionaries. It is intended to be sufficiently detailed to suggest useful comparisons with other cases and thus to contribute to the formulation of a better theoretical framework for the study of this kind of cultural change and its implications.