In her passionate call for consensus and inclusiveness upon which to move the field, in Tom Sticht’s (2000) phrase, "from the margins to the mainstream," Merrifield’s strong ideological position is somewhat muted in "Contested Ground." Yet the views expressed in Life at the Margins, Literacy, Language, and Technology in Everyday Life is evident, though more cautiously stated, in the NCSALL policy study as subtext, which will be teased out and expanded upon in this review.

Merrifield’s overall focus is the centrality of "performance accountability" through which ABE "must demonstrate its success in terms of student and societal outcomes" (p. iv), although her more fundamental topic is the conflicting perspectives that shape the politics and pedagogy of adult literacy education. The central challenge, according to the author, is the need for the "system" to work out a coherent synthesis among conflicting agendas given an uneven distribution of power among the field’s stakeholders and highly divergent epistemological assumptions among practitioners, students, policymakers, and researchers. Through this, Merrifield seeks a system of "mutual accountability. " This is a daunting task in an era of market globalization, welfare reform, mass immigration, a back to basics revival in education, and the emergence of a neoliberal/neoconservative political climate with the concomitant deconstruction of the liberal Democratic politics of the New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society. Nonetheless, "Contested Ground" is premised on the assumption that it is only in rising to the challenge of achieving consensus based on "mutual accountability," that ABE/adult literacy can survive the otherwise hopeless fragmentation and marginality that currently dominates the field.

Merrifield provides a superb overview of tensions facing the field and avenues, though no quick fixes, in ways by which to move forward. Whether or not and/or the extent to which the issue of "value" can be coherently articulated within a broad-based consensus on "what we want adult basic education to be and to become" (p. 2) within the current political, socio-economic climate, is far from resolved in "Contested Ground." This is so in no small part because the "we" of any potential consensus represents the diverse and often conflicting stakeholders who span the power and knowledge structure of contemporary American life.

Chapter One, "From Campaign to System: The Historical Context," provides a schematic overview of key societal, economic, governmental, and educational trends from the 1960s to the 1990s. The differences, according to Merrifield, are striking and there is little doubt about her general support of this shift:

Campaigns have…a sense of urgency and crisis; a focus on short term results; a willingness to push funding to its limits by incorporating volunteers; and a concentration on action rather than accountability—on recruitment and instruction rather than retention and results. Systems, in contrast, focus more on the long haul. They are characterized by professional staffs, an institutional base, funding for capacity-building…,a focus on quality, and the development of accountability mechanisms to measure effectiveness (Merrifield, 1998, p. 4).