Constructing experience

Charles Bazerman's newest book, a selection of both his published and unpublished essays from recent years, ranges from pedagogy to research to theory, exploring how all three areas are motivated by common concerns and how they are integrated through similar concepts and approaches. From this integrative perspective, Bazerman reveals his lifelong inquiry into the nature of language - why it exists and what place it holds in the social world. Presenting a powerful, action-oriented view of language that finds meaning in local circumstances and local uses, Bazerman divides his essays into four parts, beginning with an examination of the classroom experience. In describing the dynamics of the classroom and the relationship of the classroom to surrounding social arrangements, Bazerman notes how reading relates to writing, how interpersonal relations influence and structure acts of reading and writing, and how reading and writing are themselves forms of social action. He goes on in parts 2 and 3 to explain how larger forms of social structure are in dialectic with local acts of literacy, how experience of the world influences both everyday writing and empirically driven research, and how