Literacy and “The Forgotten Estate”: What They Haven’t Got?

Abstract

This chapter presents a portrait of the estate as a location for the research that informs the book. Through a focus on the welfare provision and philanthropic investment that is a feature of literacy in the public life of the estate, the chapter explores how this reflects a wider discourse which frames estates, and the communities who live on them, as deficient in skills and knowledge, and in need of state intervention as a result. Drawing on a long history of research in the field of literacy studies which challenges a model of literacy as something people “have” (or not), this instrumental view of its role in everyday lives is examined, along with the implications of this model for social justice.