The Social Uses of Literacy: Theory and Practice in Contemporary South Africa challenges state-driven policy and provision in South Africa around the construction of a national delivery system for adult literacy that is part of a programme for Adult Basic Education. The implication is that many people who are the target of this system will be unwilling to participate at the entry point of literacy acquisition unless a reconceptualisation of the nature of literacy use by adults is made.

Using fascinating and carefully documented case-study material, this book raises vital questions about literacy and illiteracy, and about adult education. Above all, it questions the efficacy of any literacy programme which fails to acknowledge the many ways in which uneducated and so called 'illiterate' people already use reading, writing and numeracy in their everyday lives.

Drawing on the theory and methods of the New Literacy Studies, this book reveals the complexity and diversity of uneducated people's uses of literacy. It raises important questions for policy makers everywhere about how adults should be taught in relation to their own experiences and needs, and about the value of mass-scale adult literacy programmes aimed at so called 'illiterates'.