This paper has argued that literacy concerns the historically and culturally conditioned relationship among three processes, no one of which is sufficient alone:
 (i) the symbolic and material representation of knowledge, culture and values; 
(ii) the diffusion of interpretative skills and abilities across a (stratified) population; and 
(iii) the institutional, especially, the state management of the power that access to and skilled use of knowledge brings to those who are ‘literate’.