Of great importance for international practitioners, students, researchers, and policy makers alike, this book brings together adult learning and anthropology and introduces a picture of the world of adult literacy today. Sharing the authors' extensive experiences gained during more than twenty years of work on adult literacy and numeracy in development contexts, with emphasis on the value of case studies, the book presents literacy and numeracy as social practices. Rogers and Street explore relationships between the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy, and literacy practices in daily life. Implications for practice and policy are connected to the theoretical and research directions in the field internationally, and discussions of ethnography, literacy, learning and development issues are woven through the text.