Paulo Preire and Donaldo Macedo invite us to re-examine the literacy crisis. They see literacy not merely as a technical skill to be acquired but as a form of cultural politics. Literacy is viewed as a set of practices that either empowers or disempowers people, and is analysed according to whether it serves to reproduce existing social formations or serves as a set of cultural practices promoting democratic change.

In Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, they present not only a reconstructed theory of literacy, but concrete historical analyses of campaigns for literacy in regions such as Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, and Guinea-Bissau. They also give a critique of old views of literacy, with pointers to new alternatives. In earlier works such as Pedagogy oftbe Oppressed and The Politics of Education Paulo Freire has shown how language and power are inextricably intertwined; in this new book he and his co-author expand our definition of what it means to read and, describing actual techniques used by Freire in his literacy campaigns, point the way not only to worldwide literacy but to real social transformation