Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T08:37:09.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hot Literacy in Cold Societies: A Comparative Study of the Sacred Value of Writing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

R. W. Niezen
R. W. Niezen
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The argument that the presence or absence of widespread literacy constitutes the central criterion to distinguish “savage” from “domesticated” society, presented by Goody in a number of works (1968, 1977, 1986, 1987), makes close associations between alphabetic literacy and the growth of knowledge and between restricted literacy and traditional societies. In this essay, I will challenge these associations by presenting material from medieval Europe, in which the milieu of restricted literacy is creative, and from Muslim Africa, in which widespread literacy does not lead to criticism or the revision of basic religious tenets. Second, I will deal with some of the reasons for the vitality of Islamic reform in West Africa, concerning myself principally with the impact of Western education on village society and the response of reformers through the promotion of Arabic literacy. A consideration of Western education and acculturation is vital for an understanding of scriptural reformed Islam's appeal. The latter issue will emerge from the material to be presented, but I will deal exclusively with the literacy debate for the moment.

Type
The Powers of the Written Word
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 225 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aston, Margaret. 1976. “Lollardy and Sedition, 1381–1431,” in Peasants, Knights and Heretics, Hilton, R.H., ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erich. 1965. Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Brenner, Louis. 1984. West African Sufi. London: C. Hurst and Company.Google Scholar
Brenner, Louis 1988. “Medersas au Mali: Transformation d'une institution islamique.” Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Clanchy, M.T. 1979. From Memory to Written Record. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Colonna, Fanny. 1975. Instituteurs algériens, 1883–1939. Alger: Office des Publications Universitaires.Google Scholar
Deanesley, Margaret. 1920. The Lollard Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eickelman, Dale F. 1978. “The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and its Social Reproduction.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20:4, 485–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, Jack, ed. 1968. Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1986. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1987. The Interface between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack; and Ian, Watt. 1968. “The Consequences of Literacy” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, Jack, Goody, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Government of Mali. 1983–1984. “Medersa au Mali.” Bamako: n.p.Google Scholar
Hiskett, Mervyn. 1960. “Problems of Religious Education in Muslim Communities in Africa.” Oversea Education, 32:3, 117–26.Google Scholar
Hiskett, Mervyn. 1984. The Development of Islam in West Africa. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ibn Sulaiman, Muhammad. 1976. Mubadi al-lslam. Medina.Google Scholar
Kaba, Lasine. 1974. The Wahhabiyya; Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa. Evanston, I11.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Kaba, Lasine 1976. “The Politics of Quranic Education among Muslim Traders in the Western Sudan: The Subbanu Experience.” Revue Canadienne des Etudes Africanes, 10:3, 409–11.Google Scholar
Lambert, M.D. 1977. Medieval Heresy. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Launay, Robert. 1982. Traders Without Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leff, Gordon. 1967. Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
LéVi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
McFarlane, K.B. 1953. John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity. London: English Universities Press Ltd.Google Scholar
Niezen, R.W. 1990. “The ‘Community of Helpers of the Sunna’; Islamic Reform among the Songhay of Gao (Mali).” Africa, 60:3, 399–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parry, J.P. 1985. “The Brahmanical Tradition and the Technology of the Intellect, in Reason and Morality, Joanna, Overing, ed. New York and London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Reeves, Marjorie. 1969. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schildkrout, E. 1978. People of the Zongo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scribner, Sylvia; Michael, Cole, eds. 1981. The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Street, Brian. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, C.C. 1973. Islam and the Social Order in Mauritania. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Thomson, J.A.F. 1965. The Later Lollards, 1414–1520. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trimingham, J. Spencer. 1959. Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar