The women's talking group featured in this article theorizes the community literacy practice of thanduk--"setting something aside"--that members practice together. Sanduk--with an s and translated as Arabic for "box"--has a long, well documented history involving informal, rotary credit and savings associations practiced among…

Using case studies of French-speaking West Africa and Southern Appalachia, this paper examines the role of traditional culture in developing regions by challenging current theories on that subject. The capitalistic and Marxist approaches that dominated well into the 1960s maintained that elimination of traditional social relations and values was…