December 2008 Volume 12, Number 3 Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power Author: Cynthia Lewis, Patricia Enciso, & Elizabeth Birr Moje, Eds. (2007) Publisher: New York: Routledge Pages ISBN Price Pp. v + 205 0-8058-5696-X (paper) $29.95 US In Brian V. Street's 1995 book Social Literacies, the author argues that "literacy practices are specific to the political and ideological context and their consequences vary situationally" (p. 24). Street goes on to say that we, as literacy researchers, are forced to "question whether the current framework in which such activities are conducted is the most fruitful" (p. 24). Over ten years later, the framework through which literacy research is explored is still being re-shaped to incorporate complex issues like power, identity and agency. The recent collection, aptly titled Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy, seeks to combine sociocultural and critical theory to develop a theoretical framework that is no longer narrowly defined by social context. In his foreword to Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy, Street argues that this book is unique because it uses a sociocultural lens to explore power and identity. While the authors included in the volume do succeed in making a strong contribution to this global conversation, the book fails to offer a balanced look at the relationship between theory and practice. The book is divided into two sections: the first (chapters 1-4) is called "Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks," and the authors intend here to "offer new theoretical lenses," while the second section, "Rethinking Knowledge and Representation" (chapters 5-7), is meant to look specifically at "research knowledge" (p. xii). This divide seems more like an organizational technique based on necessity rather than one which emerged out of a delineation of the content of the chapters. Within each of the two sections, some chapters offer a broad, theoretical view, while others focus on specific incidences of literacy learning. Due to this lack of a coherent TESL-EJ 12.3, December 2008 Lewis, Enciso & Moje/Finn Page 1 of 4