Socio-spatial approaches to literacy studies : Rethinking the social constitution and politics of space

Attention to space and the spatiality of literacy practice is increasingly inspiring new ways of analysing literacy research, and in particular, research that describes and traces flows, networks, and connections between literacy practices within and across specific social spaces, such as school and home (Bulfin and North 2007; Nespor 1997, 2008; Pahl 2001), the library (Nixon 2003), the mall (Moje 2004), after-school contexts (Brass 2008), prisons (Wilson 2004), and virtual environments (Valk 2008). The reassertion of space in literacy studies has been referred to as the ‘spatial turn’, and can be seen as complementary and parallel to other shifts in literacy research, including the social (e.g. Gee 1992; Street 1995), the critical (e.g. Comber and Simpson 2001; Luke 1998), and the digital turn (Mills 2010b). The concept of ‘space’ in this chapter is not simply a response to the “now-fashionable attachment” of theorists “to geographical facts and spatial metaphors” (Soja 2004: ix). Rather, the first principle of sociospatial literacy studies is that language practices are distributed socio-geographically, appearing in distinct forms in certain social sites, having both similarities and distinctions to literacy practices in other social spaces. At the same time spaces such as classrooms are not considered as mere containers in which literacy practices occur. Rather, spatiality in literacy studies includes the socio-material effects and relations of space-time in relation to literacy practices, including the temporal dimension of flows or connections between literacy practices, textual artefacts, technologies for textual production, locations of literacy practices and texts, networks, social actors, and communities of practice.