A Structurational Conceptualization of Information Literacy: Reflections on Research in Rural South Africa

This paper draws upon Giddens’s Structuration Theory to provide a conceptualization of information literacy, which conventionally has been limited to librarian and educational studies, and usually perceived at the level of individual skills. The structurational conceptualization expands it to be more integrated with social, cultural, and institutional dimensions. An empirical study in two remote rural hospitals in South Africa is then presented and analyzed under this conceptual framework. The research is completed with an attempt to answer the “so-what” question. Further discussion on the cultivation of information literacy is based on insights of “agency” from the structuration theory. The paper makes a contribution to the research of information literacy and enhances its relevance to current social studies of information systems.