Publishing’s Effect on Literacy: Experiences in the Pacific Islands

By:
Linda Crowl
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Historically, printing and publishing have developed where trade has developed. The Pacific Islands, remote internationally and often nationally, were among the most recent countries to have presses. Nevertheless, some Pacific Islands nations had literacy long before comprehensive development of literacy in Europe. Niche markets and short-run book publishing served their needs. Close interaction among translators, authors, editors, printers, and binders personalized products. Kin connections, small populations, and the promise of new commodities and better living standards broadened the publishers’ markets. Mission publishing had an effect upon literacy that no government or international programme has been able to duplicate. Although trade has increased, the globalizing nature of its labour and products has sometimes threatened how publishing helps to develop the capacities of small nations and their peoples. In some cases, literacy rates have declined. Elite professionalism often overrides democratic learning. Small and specialist presses can play a strong role in developing countries, particularly as other communications media are also under-resourced. Despite mixed technological prospects, narrow political opportunities, and grim economic realities, book publishing does not demand the equipment that other media do on the receiving end. Lessons from the Pacific Islands’ past may lead to strategies for their future.


Keywords: book publishing, Pacific Islands, literacy, democratic knowledge creation
Stream: Publishing
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper: Publishing’s Consequences and Possibilities for Literacy in the Pacific Islands

Linda Crowl

PhD student, School of History and Politics, University of Wollongong
Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Linda Crowl has been a budget analyst for the US Senate Budget Committee, the editor of SAIS Review of Johns Hopkins University, managing editor of The Washington Quarterly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Peace Corps volunteer, publications fellow for the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, and a research fellow at Victoria and Otago universities. Her interests are publishing and politics in the Pacific Islands. Having worked at elite and grass-roots levels, she is keenly interested in democratic creation and transfer of knowledge. In addition to running publishing programmes from commissioning to marketing, she has run workshops to encourage research, writing, and publishing.

Ref: B06P0211