IN FROM THE MARGINS

IN FROM THE MARGINS Adult Education, Work and Civil Society Edited by Ari Antikainen Päivi Harinen Carlos Alberto Torres University of Joensuu University of Joensuu University of California Finland Finland USA

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM / TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Paperbound ISBN 90-77874-46-1 Hardbound ISBN 90-77874-47-X Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://www.sensepublishers.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2006 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

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CONTENTS

Preface

ix

Contributors

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Introduction

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PART I CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES AND THE MARGINS 1 Adult education policy and globalization

Carlos Alberto Torres

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2 In whose interests? Interrogating the metamorphosis of adult education Ian Martin

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3 Critical and cultural orientation in radical adult education. Rauno Huttunen and Juha Suoranta

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4 Lifelong learning and the low-skilled Knud Illeris

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5 Defending the radical margins of university adult education Jim Crowther, Rennie Johnston, Ian Martin and Barbara Merrill

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6 Keeping the coals glowing. A case study of the Certificate in Education (Participatory Development) Zamokwakho Hlela and Sandra Land

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PART II ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP AND PARTICIPATION 7 Citizenship and participation in lifelong learning

Lawrence J. Saha

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8 Immigrants entering civil society in the European context Agnieszka Bron

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9 Civic participation. An opportunity of integration for young multicultural adults? Päivi Harinen

101

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10 Dual citizens and education: active participants or at the margins of their own countries? Jussi Ronkainen

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11 Participation in adult education in a Nordic context Ari Antikainen

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12 Participation and non-participation in lifelong learning. A study of the learning divide in Hong Kong Shui Kin Chan

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13 Lifelong learning in civil society organisations. The great equaliser? Marion Fields

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14 The effectiveness of state intervention in integrating excluded groups. A British Case John Wallis

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PART III ADULT LEARNERS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS 15 In the margins, or not? The case of business women in the Finnish

countryside Leena Koski

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16 Education society’s dissenters? The relation to education among working-class women trained as cleaners Mari Käyhkö

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17 Reaching the non-participant. Why many adults do not participate in formal learning opportunities? Jane Elliott

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18 Education of older adults in Portugal. Characterisation and discussion of policies Esmeraldina Costa Veloso

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19 Too old to rock’n roll? Adult students’ study progress, learning experiences and drop-out in university Juhani Rautopuro and Pertti Väisänen

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20 Museums and the unbearable lightness of inclusion. A short analysis of misunderstood words (pace Kundera) Sotiria Grek

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CONTENTS

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21 School and special education. Impact on identity and life trajectories Christian Quvang

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22 Self-taught life. Learning outside institutions but not “at the margins” Liisa Korhonen

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PART IV CHALLENGING DIGITAL DIVIDE 23 The challenge and practices for bridging digital divide in Taiwan

Yu-Hua Chen and Wen-Yin Chien

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24 Postgraduate study by e-learning in Greece. Addressing social and geographical marginalisation Marios Vryonides, Chryssi Vitsilakis and Ilias Efthimiou

315

25 Overcoming digital divide. Local lessons about transferring of models Jukka Oksa

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Subject index

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Author index

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CONTENTS

ix

PREFACE

We would like to thank the contributors for fine collaboration, the Finnish Ministry of Education for providing financial support to our conference and this publishing project. The Editors Ari Antikainen, Päivi Harinen & Carlos Alberto Torres

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CONTRIBUTORS

Ari Antikainen Department of Sociology Centre for Social and Cultural Research on Education University of Joensuu Agnieszka Bron Department of Education Stockholm University Shui Kin Chan School of Continuing and Professional Studies The Chinese University of Hong Kong Yu-Hun Chen Department of Agricultural Extension National University of Taiwan Wen-Yin Chien Survey Research Center of United Daily News and National University of Taiwan Jim Crowther School of Education Higher and Community Education University of Edinburgh Ilias Efthimiou School of Humanities University of Aegean Jane Elliott Department of Adult Continuing Education University of Wales Swansea Marion Fields Research Unit for the Sociology of Education University of Turku

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Päivi Harinen Department of Sociology University of Joensuu Zamakwakho Hlela Centre for Adult Education University of KwaZulu-Natal Rauno Huttunen Department of Education University of Joensuu Knud Illeris Learning Lab Denmark The Danish University of Education Renny Johnston Freelance Researcher Liisa Korhonen Department of Education University of Tampere Leena Koski Department of Sociology University of Joensuu Mari Käyhkö Department of Sociology University of Joensuu Sandra Land Centre for Adult Education University of KwaZulu-Natal Ian Martin School of Education Higher and Community Education University of Edinburgh

CONTRIBUTORS Sotira Grek School of Education Higher and Community Education University of Edinburgh

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Jukka Oksa Karelian Institute University of Joensuu Christian Quvang CVU VEST University College, Esbjerg & Ribe National Centre of Excellence for Inclusive Practice (NVIE) University of Southern Denmark Juhani Rautopuro Department of Applied Education University of Joensuu Jussi Ronkainen Department of Education University of Tampere Lawrence J. Saha School of Social Sciences Australian National University Juha Suoranta Department of Education University of Tampere Carlos Alberto Torres Graduate School of Education and Information Studies Paulo Freire Institute University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Esmeraldina Costa Veloso Department of Education and Psychology University of Minho Chryssi Vitsilakis School of Humanities University of Aegean Marios Vryonides School of Humanities University of Aegean

CONTRIBUTORS Barbara Merrill Centre for Lifelong Learning University of Warwick

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John Wallis School of Education University of Nottingham

CONTRIBUTORS Pertti Väisänen Department of Applied Education University of Joensuu

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INTRODUCTION

This book is greatly indebted to international collegial collaboration in the fields of educational research and sociology. In May 2005, around a hundred researchers and experts from all over the world gathered to discuss the theme “At the margins of adult education, work and civil society” at the University of Joensuu, which is the easternmost university in the European Union zone. The Conference was supported by the International Sociological Association (ISA) Sociology of Education Research Committee and the European Society of Research into the Education of Adults (ESREA) Networks Active Citizenship and Access. The objectives of the Conference were as follows:

• to analyse the issue of participation vs. non-participation • to focus on those sections of the adult population that are easily excluded

from research dealing with active participation in learning or active citizenship, i.e., those whose participation in adult education and other activities in civil society is marginal or non-existent

• to consider the challenges that non-participation/low participation poses for research and planning

• to discuss the relationship between marginalisation and (non)participation in education and learning.

While reading the article manuscripts for this book, mostly based on Conference papers, we found that many researchers were not content with factual analysis, but also tended to present critique and recommendations on how to resolve problems, if not actual visions on how to make the world a better place. The range of cases and experiments is wide, from informal learning to university education and from Africa to Asia and Europe. Consequently, the title of the book changed from 'At the margins’ to ‘In from the margins’. During the editorial work, we became acutely aware of signs of a new era. The culture war brought about by the Mohammed cartoons in a Danish newspaper exemplified the new position held by the media in the globalising world village. Relocations of units and jobs of large multinational companies from Western countries, especially to China and India, reflect the power of the long and swift arm of the markets and greed of shareholders in quartile capitalism. In education, even the Nordic countries were clearly undergoing a transition to an age of restructuring (Lindblad, Johannesson & Simola 2002). Knowledge economy, neoliberalism and performativism are major attributes of the new era. The articles in the first section of the book, ”Critical Perspectives and the Margins”, take different perspectives in looking at new millennium society, which has inherited the old millennium dilemmas while at the same time undergoing rapid change (Torres & Antikainen 2003). Dialectics of the global and the local provide different opportunities in different places and dispositions to seek ways of hearing and empowering the repressed or the silenced. In this part, the tradition of

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meaningful for the present, seemingly undefined and diverse multitude of the oppressed? The second part of the book, “Promoting Active Citizenship and Participation”, deals with the interrelations of education, civil society and culture. The concept of citizenship is ancient and produced particularly by Enlightenment. Globalisation, migration and the processes of cultural differentiation and homogenisation are shaking up old dispositions and identities. Is civic participation an answer to accumulating societal problems, and is participation in adult education a part of labour market citizenship in a ‘knowledge-based’ economy (cf. Wildemeersch, Stroobants & Bron 2005)? Participation/non-participation in adult education and state intervention into participation are under detailed investigation. The articles in part three of the book, ”Adult Learners in Different Contexts”, take a diversified view of social groups and forms of adult education meeting the challenges of the new ‘learning society’, characterised by differences and inequalities, but still with a belief in enlightenment and empowerment. Life history and narrative analysis are also applied. The articles in the fourth part of the book, “Challenging Digital Divide” give rich description and analysis of how to challenge the digital divide in three different or even opposite contexts, in Taiwan, in the islands of the Aegean Sea and in the sparsely populated province of North Karelia in Finland.

REFERENCES

Lindblad, S., Johannesson, A. & Simola, H. (2002) An Inevitable progress? Educational restructuring in Finland, Iceland and Sweden at the turn of the millennium. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 46, (3), 325-339.

Torres, C.A. & Antikainen, A. (2003) Introduction to a sociology of education: Old dilemmas in a new century? Torres, C.A. & Antikainen, A. (eds.) The international handbook on the sociology of education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Wildemeersch, D., Stroobants, V. & Bron, M. (eds.) (2005) Active citizenship and multiple identities in Europe. A learning outlook. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

critical pedagogy and adult education and its applicability to the new situation are analysed. Where might a ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ be found, one that is

INTRODUCTION

PART I CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES AND THE MARGINS

A. Antikainen, P. Harinen & C.A. Torres (eds.), In from the margins; Adult education, work and civil society, 1–9.

© 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

CARLOS ALBERTO TORRES

ADULT EDUCATION POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION

INTRODUCTION

Adult education policy was not a priority for most governments in the twentieth century, and there is no reason to believe that this tendency will be reversed in the twenty-first century, particularly when confronted by the globalization process. This article discusses key policy issues for the field of adult education, offers reflections on the central questions raised by the current context of globalization and, finally, discusses implications and speculations for the future.

As I have documented in my researchi adult education policyii was never a

governmental priority in the twentieth century. There are numerous reasons for this. First and principally, adult education serves a poor, politically underrepresented, and consequently weak clientele, one limited in its ability to manipulate the social services of the State. Second, adult education institutions and programs are those of the least prestige in the hierarchy of formal and informal education, in part, due to the nature of their clientele and, in part, because, in the majority of cases, they do not offer prestigious academic credentials. Third, connections between education and work are always allusive and, consequently, subject to multifarious political machinations and theoretical debates. Debates about the connection between adult education programs and the labor market are quite complex. Thus, discussions about the choices of investments in the area of education question the impact of adult professional training programs versus technical training at the job site. Many people argue that the investment in adult education has had limited impact as far as twentieth-century industrial production is concerned. The changes in the twenty-first century toward what is called a “knowledge-based” society are not diminishing. And this gives such questions particular relevance. Fourth, policies having to do with adult education have always been implemented by the State in the area of social services. It follows that the model of such a State bears directly on the conditions for investment and the expansion of policies in the area. Fifth, there are a variety of ideas and arguments that justify adult education policies. Some of these ideas are contradictory. Below, I will discuss six theoretical constructions that explain existing policies. Despite the existence of a dominant

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idea among policy-makers, there is no simple, non-contradictory, integrated idea that defends investments in programs. Finally, adult education, contrary to the majority of educational programs, is not a field easily manipulated and controlled by bureaucracies. There is a community component in most adult education programs that usually makes them different. Moreover, there are usually a number of social movements and NGOs linked to these programs, as was the case, for example, with the experiments in Education for Liberation, in Popular Education, and in Educational Philosophy undertaken by Paulo Freire. Social movements and some NGOs tend to be radical and, as such, difficult for governmental institutions to control; adult education policies and programs, in cases like these, could threaten the status quo.

ADULT EDUCATION POLICY DILEMMAS. UNDERSTANDING RATIONALITIES AND THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTIONS

With a basis in Critical Theory, I would like to propose the existence of six rationalities in studies applied to adult education. They are: constitutional recommendations, human capital investment, political socialization, compensatory legitimization, international pressures, and social movements. A legalistic perspective would be based on constitutional recommendations to the effect that it is the right of every citizen to be literate and educated. Non-literate citizens, or those who have not completed primary school, should have the opportunity to do so. The argument has the following logic: 1) on the one hand, adult education is a fundamental instrument in the consolidation of citizenship (as opposed to the constitution of an elite); 2) on the other hand, basic education is a component part of the general welfare of all citizens; 3) finally, adult education should be provided by the State as one of its policies of assistance. Such policies aid the sharing of democracy. There is no doubt that legal arguments can be criticized for seeming very formal and apolitical when it comes to identifying the motivation behind such policies and, what is more, they fail to guarantee the application of these policies - in other words, they maintain the distance between legal norms and practice. Adult education, as an investment in human capital, offers an economist’s vision. In this vision, it is argued that adult education stimulates economic development in different ways: a) it increases the productivity of people who have recently become literate and/or educated; b) it increases the productivity of people who work with the recently educated; c) it expands the diffusion of generalized knowledge for the individual (important in terms of health) reducing the cost of transmitting useful knowledge; d) it stimulates the demand for technical and vocational training; e) it functions as an instrument of selection for more able workers, broadening their occupational mobility and emphasizing economic incentives, in other words, reinforcing the tendency of people to respond positively to a pay raise based on personal effort. The economic argument can be criticized in several aspects. First, the economic benefits of literacy training and of basic education for adults in the developing

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countries are not properly documented. For instance, there is one school of thought that claims that literacy is more important from a cultural standpoint than an economic one. Second, there is the problem of what might be called “the certification disease.” Considering the excessive number of credentials in modern capitalist education, courses conclude without being able to guarantee salary increases. In this context, employers begin to create new selection criteria that lead, in turn, to an increase in the number of credentials. Finally, neoclassic arguments about how it makes sense to have homogeneous markets notwithstanding, the majority of labor markets are segmented rather than homogeneous. Markets that might be affected by adult education tend not to facilitate stability since their social benefits are scarce or non-existent and the available workforce is largely unqualified. These facts make training programs for adults seem less attractive in terms of economic returns. Consequently, there is a growing disparity between the mechanisms of employability and the levels of qualification offered by adult education programs. Training in citizenship is often considered a central point in the socialization process of adult education. People who are just learning to read, to write, and to calculate remain limited and marginal citizens. In this way, reading and writing become prerequisites for the exercise of the basic rights of citizenship and, occasionally, a source of rebellion or revolt.iii However, confident belief that more education for adults will result in their making better use of citizenship does not ameliorate the following scenarios. Citizenship could be manipulated by a series of educational activities that are nothing less than indoctrination. The reverse is also possible; adult education programs could promote postures of resistance to the basic organizing principles of the political status quo, as was the case in many educational programs aimed at the working classes and organized during the twentieth century. On the other hand, the idea of promoting education for citizenship is sometimes based on the idea of a shared consensus, something that has proven to be highly questionable in contemporary societies. In a different scenario, adult education may be seen as a way for the government to gain legitimacy, in the context of increasingly ungovernable and pluralistic societies. In this sense, adult education could be considered an instrument for the promotion of symbolic participation in the political system. In other words, as part of a strategy of compensatory legitimacy, including leveraging academic experience for the planning, participation and support of the judicial system (legalization of educational politics) in the constitution of a social order affected by a crisis of legitimacy.iv Moreover, adult education politics can be seen as a response on the part of the State to the pressures of the international system. For example, the indicators of international prestige consider levels of development and of literacy crucial. In the same way, progress in women’s education is seen as an indicator of more balanced distribution. In this way, a reawakened interest in literacy on the part of many societies in the last century became a way to avoid international embarrassment. For instance, the literacy plan announced by the Secretary of State of Canada at the

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end of the 1980s allocated 110 million Canadian dollars to be used throughout the country for five years. This is a mere drop in the bucket in terms of a contribution to the literacy problems of Canadian native peoples, of the disadvantaged and poor, and of the legion of foreign immigrants who come to Canada year after year. Nevertheless, such a policy was translated as a “fine gesture,” emblematic of the Canadian government’s commitment to social politics. Finally, adult education can be seen as part of a new social movement. Few adult education programs have contributed to human liberation or served as a mechanism of social and political participation. Few have tried to put education and knowledge at the service of the least favored social strata. Fewer still have attempted to experiment by making adult education an initial stimulus to more encompassing social movements. v Adult education as a pedagogy of opposition is an honored tradition in radical education.vi In spite of all these rationales and as a result of my own research, I am convinced that the dominant ideology among policy-makers, particularly in advanced industrial capitalism, is based on technocratic thinking oriented by a mixture of populist traditions and conservative politics. I agree with Habermas’s analysis, that adult education has been guided to a large extent by an instrumental rationality. Instrumental rationality is governed by technical rules based on empirical knowledge and suggests the ability to forecast events likely to produce action. In other words, it is governed by technical rules seeking precise control of social and physical events. Thus, instrumental rationality involves a substantive purpose of domination—although one exercised as Marcuse has suggested, through methodological and scientific calculations and control. There are still many questions about the future of adult education as an instrumental rationality in the globalization process. Will globalization open a window for alternative rationalities in adult education? We will turn now to a discussion of globalization.

GLOBALIZATION OR ANTI-GLOBALIZATION?

The anti-globalization movement had its first fatality in Genoa, Italy.vii On the sunny afternoon of July 20, 2001, in the Piazza Alimonda, a young Italian demonstrator, Carlo Giuliani, son of a Roman labor union leader, was killed by a policeman. Then the police car ran over Giuliani’s body while trying to leave the site. This reiterated killing was constantly replayed on the TV networks and the internet. Bloodshed and violence stained the meeting of the G-8 nations in the ancient port of Genoa, forever changing the way proponents of neoliberalism and of globalization broadcast their arguments to the world at the annual meetings of the G-8. The international anti-globalization and justice/equality movements seem to bring together active spirits, among whom important voices of dissent are beginning to appear. The cast of characters includes ‘strange bedfellows,’ from Pope John Paul II, who before the meeting began was asking that the debts of the

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Third World countries be pardoned and beseeching the leaders of the wealthy nations to pay more attention to the problem of poverty in this neoliberal age, to the well-known French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, an esteemed professor at the Collège de France, who guided educators at the beginning of the 1970s with his work on education as social reproduction. Bourdieu, in a pessimistic tone, compared globalization and neoliberalism to the most infamous disease of the twentieth century: AIDS. Unwavering in his position in respect to the G-8 nations meeting in Genoa, Bourdieu claimed that “the violence of the masses is useful in one way at least: it forces the leading actors of neoliberalism who like to appear calm, serene and rational, to demonstrate their own violence.”viii The end of the Cold War witnessed the transformation of the world into a new global economy, characterized by rapid technological advances, with increasingly agile financial transactions in deregulated capital markets. Job mobility also increased, justifying the thought of a Los Angeles journalist that “borders are convenient political lines – lines that are crossed if history demonstrates that it is necessary.”ix The Genoa debacle revealed new political and intellectual realities to the globalizing world. On one hand, it proved that a multinational social movement of disparate allies, including factions of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches, Greenpeace, groups defending the rights of local communities and the rights of feminists, and a panoply of anarchist and socialist movements from the advanced countries were not afraid to confront the Chiefs of State of the eight most industrialized nations on the planet. Russian representatives also attended, invited at the last minute for political motives rather than as the emissaries of an industrial power comparable to the rest. It also showed that when these leaders are confronted by anti-globalization movements, they have less control than they do over the world economy. It is this fact that has led some analysts to argue that we are witnessing a corporate take-over of the world rather than its globalization.x Similarly, Brazilian sociologist Octavio Ianni was struck by the notion of the difference between globalization, as an ineluctable historical process, and globalism, as a process articulated by neoliberalism and coordinated by global corporations.xi The European Union is an example of national borders supplanted by economic realpolitik. Postmodern mass-media cultures are coming face to face with local communities and traditional cultures, and new movements founded in cosmopolitan democracies and based on human rights programs are being confronted by fresh outbreaks of ethnic nationalism. What is more, business analysts like Keinichi Ohmae denounce the Nation-State as something from the past, arguing that the main creators of wealth are being constructed in Regional States.xii From his neoliberal perspective, Ohmae adds to his devastating criticism of the Nation-State a critique of liberal democracies, the targets of growing popular demand for minimal public services they are no longer able to satisfy. Ohmae’s argument might be considered a right-wing version of what O’Connor calls the “fiscal crisis of the State”xiii and Jürgen Habermas sees as a “dilemma of legitimation.”xiv

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It has become a moot point to argue the relevance of such questions for adult education since “particularly during the twentieth century, educational systems and practices were maintained, prepared, organized and certified by the State. In fact, public education is a State function not only in terms of legal order or of financial support. The specific requirements for certification, the requirements and basic qualifications of teachers, the definition of textbooks, and obligatory courses in the basic curriculum are controlled by official agencies and defined by specific State policies.”1 In the neoliberal model of globalization, educational policies are internationally promoted according to agendas defined by multinational and bilateral organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, or the IDB (Interamerican Development Bank), as well as some agencies of the United Nations. Such agendas include a tendency to favor the privatization and decentralization of public education as part of an attempt to deregulate State activities and, eventually, to ‘downsize’ government, allied to a movement to standardize academic performance, as defined by tests. Said movement wants to regulate the way schools function, as well as teacher training and academic achievement, particularly insofar as they influence the performance level of higher education. Globalization is having an impact on educational politics throughout the world and, thus, it comes as no surprise that such a movement is also affecting the politics of adult education.

CONCLUSIONS: IMPLICATIONS AND SPECULATIONS

Adult education as compensatory legitimation, as a legalistic perspective and/or as training for citizenship and socialization can lose relevance in terms of policy rationality. Changes in social policies and public restructuring point to less investment in the political legitimacy of the State which, in turn, has resulted in a process of privatization of public services. It has been some time since adult education was abandoned by the State as training for the traditional (industrial) workforce. Many programs remain in the hands of the business community. Technological advances with powerful implications are diminishing the number of well-paid and qualified jobs as well as the level of trade unionism (which usually applies pressure for more worker training), and reinforcing the tendency for employment in the service sector which will drastically change the model of adult education proclaimed by the “old economy,” based on technical training and jobsite training. Adult education will continue to jockey for space with new social movements which are being inserted in the globalization process. Eventually, the adult education policies (like those practiced in Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil) or informal programs (like people’s libraries for the unemployed, in Argentina) are part and parcel of emerging social movements of protest, opposition and resistance,

1 Carlos Alberto Torres, Democracy, Education and Citizenship: Dilemmas of Citizenship in a Global World. Lanhman, Maryland, Rowman and Littlefield, 1998, p. 14.

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NOTES

like those involved in the confrontation in Genoa. This process will reinforce the tradition of adult education as a tool for the political organization of disadvantaged populations, a notion well represented in the field of popular educational philosophy discussed today. Even the dominant logic coming from the standpoint of technocratic thinking and influenced by a mixture of populist traditions and conservative politics in the area of adult education will not be adequate in the context of globalization. This fact will be of greater consequence in countries of the Third World where the latest wave of poverty and social difficulty has swollen to tsunami proportions. On the level of compensatory politics, investment options recommend a flow of direct aid to oppressed populations affected by economic restructuring, unemployment, and poverty. As far as educational measures are concerned, particularly in the poorer countries, basic and elementary education for children continues to dominate the attention of policy-makers who will continue to demand as much attention as they did in the twentieth century, reducing the chance of any initiative in the area of adult education. Finally, the implications of the “knowledge society” for adult education are still unclear. More empirical research is needed. In the meantime, if we may hazard an opinion: the argument that we need to train adults for the job market is not going to be as convincing in the context of the “knowledge society” as it was in the “old” national economy. The fact is that the highest-paying jobs go to people with more education and that new jobs tend to be concentrated in the service sector, some of which require more sophisticated knowledge which is more likely to be acquired through practice rather than through formal training. This is apparent in the rarefied atmosphere of Southern California’s more sophisticated sectors (such as ‘personal trainers’ for Hollywood movie stars) as well as in other less complex areas (child and elder caretakers, gardeners, etc.). There is no reason to believe that globalization will offer new opportunities for governmental politics in the area of adult education. However, there is sufficient evidence, on a global level, that social movements could persist in the tradition of struggle, reinforcing a fierce level of commitment in support of and on the part of the disadvantaged classes. So the struggle continues.

i Torres, C. A. “Adult Education for Development” in Saha, L. Editor International Encyclopedia of Sociology of Education, edited by J. Lawrence. Oxford, England: Pergamon, an imprint of Elsevier Science, 1997; Torres, C.A. “Alfabetização e educação de jovens e adultos em países industrializados: Uma reflexão crítica sobre a experiência norte-americana.” In Seminário Internacional Educação e Escolarização de Jovens e Adultos, vol.1, Instituto Brasileiro de Estudos e Apoio Comunitário (IBEAC). Brasília, Brazil: Ministério de Educação e do Desporto (MEC), 1997; Torres, C.A , and D.A Schugurensky. “A Comparison of the Political Economy of Adult Education in Canadá, México, and Tanzania.” In Towards a Transformative Political Economy of Adult Education: Theoretical and Practical Challenges, edited by P. Wangoola and F. Youngman. DeKalb, Illinios: LEPS Press, 1996; Torres C.A “Estado, políticas públicas e educação de adultos.” In Educação de Jovens e Adultos. Teoria, prática e proposta, edited by M. Gadotti and J. E. Romão. São Paulo, Brazil: Cortez Editora and Paulo Freire Institute, 1995; Schugurensky, D., and Torres, C.A “Adult Education and Political

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Education: Lessons from Comparative, Cross-National Research in Cuba, México, Nicaragua, and Tanzania. “In Aspects of Globalization and Internationalization of Political Education, edited by B. Claussen. Hamburg, Germany: Krämer, 1994; Torres, C.A “Adult Education for National Development”. In International Encyclopedia of Education Research and Studies, Second ed., 14 volumes, edited by T. Husén and T.N. Postlethwaite. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1994; Gadotti, M., and C.A Torres. “Introdução. Poder e desejo: A educação popular como modelo teórico e como prática social.” Editor’s Introduction in Educação popular: Utopia latino-americana (ensaios) edited by M. Gadoti and C.A. Torres. São Paulo, Brazil: Cortez Editora and Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1994; Torres, C. A “Educação de Adultos e Educação Popular na América Latina”. In Educação Popular: utopia latino-americana (ensaios) edited by M. Gadotti and C.A Torres. São Paulo, Brazil: Cortez Editora and Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1994; Torres, C.A “Adult Education as Political Education: Settings and Rationalities in Dependent Capitalist Societies.” In Political Education: North American Perspectives, edited by M. W. Conley and C. A Torres. Hamburg, Germany and Paris, France: Kraemer, 1993; Arnove, R.F. and C. A Torres, “ Adult Education and State Policy in Latin America: The Contrasting Cases of Mexico and Nicaragua” Comparative Education, 1996; Torres, C.A, and D. Schugurensky. “Therapeutic Model of Adult Education in Canada: Skills and Academic Upgrading Programs in the Province of Alberta.” International Journal of Lifelong Education, 1995; Torres, C. A, and D. Schugurensky. “La economía política de la educación de adultos desde una perspectiva comparativa: Canada, México y Tanzania.”. Revista Latino- americana de Estudios Educativos 23, no 4, 1993; Torres, C.A, and D. Schugurensky. “The Politics of Adult Education in comparative Perspective: Models, Rationalities, and Adult Education Policy Implementation in Canada, Mexico, and Tanzania.” Comparative Education 30, no 2, 1994; Torres C.A . “Cultura política de la alfabetizacion. Descripción y análisis de las relaciones entre educación de adultos y sectores populares urbanos em México.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos 3, 1993; Torres, C. A. and D. Schugurensky. “ A Comparision of the Political economy of adult Education in Canada, Mexico and Tanzania.” The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education/la Revue canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation des adultes 7, no. 1, 1993; Torres, C.A. “Participatory Action Research and Popular Education in Latin Amercia.” International journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 5, no. 1, 1992; Torres, C. A.”Estado, políticas públicas e educação de adultos: Entrevista” by Elie Ghanem, CEDI – Centro Ecuménico de Documentação e Informação. São Paulo, 1992; Torres, C.A “ The State, Nonformal Education, and Socialism in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada.” Comparative Education Review 35, no. 1, 191. Translated and published in Spanish by Desarrollo Económico. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 31,31, no 124, January-March, 1992; Torres, C.A “A Political Sociology of Adult Education: A research Agenda” Education,The University of Malta 4, no 1, 1991; Torres, C. A “Adult Education, Popular Education: Implications for a Radical Approach to Comparative Education.” International Journal of Lifelong Education 9, no 4, 1990. ii In this article, Adult Education is understood as literacy-training, primary and secondary school equivalency courses for adults who were unable to attend or complete school, professional training courses and on-the-job training. Since they have different dynamics, I am not discussing Technical Education for Adults in this paper. iii See, for example, I. Creppell, “Democracy and Literacy,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 30, 1989; J. Markoff, “Literacy and Revolt” American Journal of Sociology, 92, 1986, pp. 323-349. iv See, for example, H.N. Weiler, “Legalization, expertise, and participation: strategies of compensatory legitimation in education policy,” Comparative Education Review, 27, 1983, pp. 259-277. v The experience of Paulo Freire as Secretary of Education of the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, 1989-1991, constitutes a clear example of this tendency. See, for example, O’Cadiz, P., P. Lindquist Wong, and C.A Torres. Democracy and Education. Paulo Freire Educational Reform and Social Movements in Brazil. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998; O’Cadiz, M. P., and C. A Torres. “Literacy, Social Movements, and Class Consciousness: Paths from Freire and the São Paulo Experience.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 25, nº 3, 1994. vi H. Giroux, Theory and Resistence in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition. Bergin and Garvey, Massachusetts, 1983; Apple, M., R.Morrow, and C.A Torres. “Education, Power and Personal Biography: An Interview with Michael Apple.” Phenomenology + Pedagogy 8, 1990. Reprinted in Official Knowledge. Democratic Education in a Conservative Age, edited by M. Apple, New York: Routledge, 1993; C.A Torres, Education, Power and Personal Biography. Dialogues with Critical Educators. New York, Routledge, 1998

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vii See (…) I draw from my editorial in the November 2001 issue of the Comparative Education Review. viii Pierre Bourdieu, “O Neoliberalismo é como a sida”, interview by Romain Leick. Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 21 July 2001, p. 18. ix Ruben Martinez, “The Ties that Bind Latinos”, Los Angeles Times, 5 August 2001, séc. M, p. 2. 10 R. Burbach, Globalization and Postmodern Politics: From Zapatists to High-Tech Robber Barons. London: Pluto Press, 2001; N. C. Burbules and C. A. Torres, “Globalization and Education: An Introduction,” ed. N. C. Burbules and C. A. Torres, Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 1-26; D. Kellner, “Globalization and New Social Movements: Lessons for Critical Theory and Pedagogy, “ed. N. C. Burbules and C. A. Torres, Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 299-321; S. Slaughter and D. L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); R. Went, Globalization: Neoliberal Challenge, Radical Responses (London: Pluto Press, 2000); Robert A. Rhoads, Globalization and Resistance in Mexico and the United States: The Global Potemkin Village. Los Angeles, UCLA, Paper submitted to Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning. xi José Eustéquio Romão, Globalización o Planetarización. Las Trampas del Discurso Hegemónico. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire, 2001; Octavio Ianni, A era do globalismo. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1996; Octavio Ianni. A sociedade global 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1993. xii Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked World Economy. New York, Harber Business, 1990; Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies. New York: Free Press, 1995. xiii James O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of State. New York, St. Martins Press, 1973 xiv Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, edited and translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston, Beacon: 1975. Carlos Alberto Torres Graduate School of Education and Information Studies UCLA

A. Antikainen, P. Harinen & C.A. Torres (eds.), In from the margins; Adult education, work and civil society, 11–26. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

IAN MARTIN

IN WHOSE INTERESTS?

Interrogating the metamorphosis of adult education

PREAMBLE: LEARNING LIBERATION ON ROBBEN ISLAND

In certain circumstances a lot of learning can go on at the margins. On the wall of a prison cell on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and his comrades were incarcerated for so many years, is a small printed notice:

We started education on the island with cement bag paper. Those prisoners who built the harbour and the new prison stole empty cement bags for our education inside the cells. We used the cement bag paper to make books. Sometimes the criminals who worked for the warders smuggled in paper or lead pencils in exchange for tobacco. The warders would search our cells and take all our books of brown papers and burn them in a drum. So if you were teaching in one of the cells, I would write down the sentences on cement paper and carry it with me. The next day we would sit together, crushing quarry stones. I would put my brown paper in front of you and you would teach me. If the warders came near, you would hide the papers under the stones. After years of complaining, they allowed us to buy stationary. Johnson Mambo would divide the stationary and would break a pencil into four pieces, one for each section. Slowly they became less desperate, especially after Colonel Willemse arrived. He told them: ‘You cannot deal with these political prisoners by using force against them. They are cleverer than you. You must study.’ Things started to change because of Willemse. We started teaching the warders who were doing the same subjects as ourselves. Even that Delport, the cruel fellow of the quarry. So the foundation of education on Robben Island was brown paper cement bags. You finished your Standard Ten and then moved into C section - that became the University of Robben Island.

MARKING THE MARGINS

One thing that it is interesting about the title of this book is that it is about ‘adult education’, not ‘adult learning’ or ‘lifelong learning’. The focus on adult education

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suggests that part of adult educators’ interest should be in themselves, in their changing identity and, in particular, their agency as educators - their capacity to choose, to act, to make a difference. I am also interested in the idea of ‘margins’ and how it applies to adult educators (as well as those we may wish to work with). There are three preliminary points to make about this. First, radical traditions of adult education have always been ‘at the margins’, at the edge of both academic institutions (especially universities, perhaps) and respectable society in general. It is important to emphasise that this is precisely where some of adult educators want to be and think they should be. Second, sometimes the whole picture becomes clearer from the margins. At the margins there may be a stronger sense of perspective, relationships, connections and contradictions. Third, margins are, of course, dangerous and precarious places. It is all too easy to fall off them, and simply disappear and become invisible. I want to suggest that this may be what is happening to a certain kind of adult education today. My argument develops from a UK frame of reference, but I hope it will be possible for others to connect with it in one way or another. To some degree, we all experience the same broad context of globalisation, and live out its costs and benefits. For example, as I was preparing this article Gunter Grass, the German writer, published an article called ‘The high price of freedom’ in the British newspaper The Guardian in which he argues that the diminution of the public space of politics through the supra-political exercise of corporate power is the key threat to democracy in the newly united and emancipated Germany (Grass, 2005). We all know and experience this threat in one form or another. On the other hand, it is also true that millions of ordinary people across the world are actively learning their politics in social movements of protest and resistance against precisely these forces of neo-liberal globalisation. This book is about the constituency of adult education, the boundaries of its field, and who include in it and exclude from it. In particular, I think we should be interested in who is being excluded, intentionally or unintentionally, from adult education (or, indeed, by adult education) as a direct consequence of the current priorities of policy and research: the ‘disappeared ones’ of adult education, those who have been ‘invisible-ised’.

I also want to suggest that it may be useful to be reflexive about this idea of being ‘at the margins’, and to apply it to adult educators, their own kind of work and institutions they do it in. Could it be that a certain kind of adult education, which has traditionally been concerned with developing what Paulo Freire called a ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ with marginalised and disenfranchised groups, is itself becoming increasingly marginalised, in danger of falling off the edge of policy, research and practice? It is always necessary to enter the caveat that there are different kinds of adult education. These are constituted of distinctive traditions, positions and arguments which have evolved historically in different cultures and contexts. Incidentally, I think adult educators would do well to try to understand their differences more clearly and learn from each other in process - rather than using terms like ‘lifelong

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learning’ or ‘education for citizenship’ as a way of pretending that they all agree with each other, or even that they are necessarily interested in the same things. It is not reasonable to expect adult educators all to agree about everything, and for good reason: they have very different histories, experiences and interests. For example, in the ‘new Europe’ some of them will see the market as a problem whereas others will see it as a solution (or at least part of a solution). Some of them may think the ‘free’ market has something to do with democracy; others will vehemently deny this. Similarly, they may see the state and civil society in quite different ways, largely because they have quite different national and historical experiences of them. Some of them will regard their relationship as symbiotic whereas others will see it as antagonistic. Maybe the aim should be to cultivate what Freire described as a ‘dialogue of differences’ - and when that does not work, to replace dialogue with dialectic.

DOES ADULT EDUCATION STILL MATTER?

Does adult education still matter? Indeed, does adult education still exist? Could it be that adult education, as we once knew it, has been the victim of its own success; that it has, in effect, done itself out of a job? It could be argued that adult education, as such, no longer matters precisely because the seeds it sowed and nurtured have grown to flourish and thrive in pastures new: the transformation of access studies into mass higher education; the expansion and diversification of tertiary education; the development of new forms of qualification and credit transfer; the translation of lifelong learning from rhetoric into policy; the now widely acknowledged significance of political literacy and education for citizenship; the thrust towards more systematic pedagogy in higher education; the democratising potential of information and communication technology; the customised flexibility of the educational marketplace. Does all this mean that adult education no longer matters because what mattered to adult educators now matters to everyone? Of course, we live in a world that is radically different - politically, intellectually, culturally, materially - from the world in which adult education emerged and evolved. Globalisation, reflexive modernisation, detraditionalisation, the risk society and individualisation are some of the familiar, if slippery, shorthand ways in which we assign significance to the great transformations we are living through. The question is whether these transformations now render that particular kind of adult education which was traditionally conceived as part of the Enlightenment Project little more than an irrelevant anachronism. Does all this mean that adult education no longer matters because the world in which it mattered no longer exists? On the other hand, is there still a different kind of argument to be made? Could it be that the words of the great British adult educator Raymond Williams ring as true as ever?

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... this is a social order which really does not know in what crucial respects it is ignorant, in what crucial respects it is incompletely conscious and therefore in what crucial respects this collaborative process of Adult Education is still central. (Williams, 1993, 264)

If there is, indeed, a different kind of argument to be made, we need to think critically and carefully about adult educators and their work - in particular, our notions of ontology and vocation, changing concepts of efficacy, accountability and ‘performativity’, and discursive shifts in the language of educational policy, theory and practice. We may also need to heed Zygmunt Bauman’s words as a warning:

What most conspicuously marks off the present-day thought of the knowledge classes is its self-referentiality (…) and the increasingly uncommitted stance it takes towards other sectors of society. (Bauman, 1999, 129)

THE SOCIAL PURPOSE TRADITION

The social purpose tradition remains an important, if unfashionable, way of thinking about adult education, and why educators choose to do it. It is, essentially, a way of making a particular kind of politics pedagogical. Social purpose adult education has always stood for purposeful educational intervention in the interests of progressive social and political change: change towards more social justice, more equality and more democracy. We need it in these muddled, ‘postmodern’ times as much as we ever did. Briefly, social purpose adult education can be characterised as follows:

• Adult students/learners are citizens and social actors • Curriculum reflects shared social and political interests • Knowledge is actively constructed to advance these collective interests • Pedagogy is based on dialogue rather than transmission • Adult education exists in symbiotic relationship to social movements • Critical understanding leads to social action and political engagement • Education is always a key resource in the broader struggle for democracy.

In this adult education of social and political engagement students come to the educational encounter as ‘knowing subjects’ who, as citizens, have a particular, equal and indivisible political status. The curriculum is constructed, partly at least, from the intellectual and personal resources as well as the social and political interests they bring with them. They are social actors - not empty vessels, deficit systems, bundles of need or, indeed, primarily producers or consumers. Moreover, their educational interests and aspirations are shared and collective. This is the starting point because it is what they have in common as citizens (although more individual and idiosyncratic patterns of personal development may well follow). Learning is essentially about making knowledge which makes sense of their world and helps them to act upon it, collectively, in order to change it for the better. As

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such, groups of students in this kind of adult education may be properly said to constitute ‘epistemological communities’ (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, adult learning grows in and out of such communities, or social movements, as they exist in the ‘real world’ struggling and striving outside the walls of the classroom and the gates of the academy. Adult education's relationship to these movements is a symbiotic one (Welton, 1995).

This kind of ‘rooted’ adult education exists in most popular histories and cultures (called, variously, ‘radical’, ‘popular’, ‘critical’) - in both the rich world and the poor world, North and South (see, for example, Kane, 2001; Crowther, Galloway & Martin, 2005). Yet in many so-called ‘developed’ – now ‘post-industrial’ – societies it seems to have all but disappeared. Moreover, as we move from the allegedly bounded, modernist ‘field of adult education’ to the supposedly open, postmodern ‘moorland of adult learning’ (Usher, Bryant & Johnston, 1997), so, it seems, has the adult educator. Why is this? Does it matter?

METAMORPHOSIS: SOME CURRENT TRENDS

In pursuing the radical project in adult education today, we confront a variety of difficulties, obstacles and contradictions (Martin, 2000). These inhere in what is increasingly - and, in the context of globalisation, pervasively – expected of adult educators. The danger is that as they do their work, so they come to discipline themselves within the terms of an alien and alienating discourse. They become, in short, the agents of their own surveillance and self-censorship. I would point to ten particular trends in current adult education policy, theory and practice which have the effect of de-radicalising adult educators’ work and divorcing it from popular struggles:

1. Adult educators are increasingly exposed - and expected to conform – to the hegemony of technical rationality and narrowly conceived and economistic forms of vocationalism and competence.

2. To a greater or lesser extent, adult educators are forced to operate in an educational market place in which knowledge becomes commodified and credentialised and educational institutions and agencies exist in relationships of competition rather than co-operation or collaboration with one another.

3. This market place - and, in particular, its workers - are subjected to the rigours of the new managerialism, enforcing an accountant’s view of the world in which we seem to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

4. The construction of the ‘self-directed learner’ as consumer or customer puts the emphasis on the non-directive ‘facilitation’ of individual and individualised learning - as distinct from purposeful educational intervention (and adult educators as agencies).

5. There is a growing and seductive tendency to celebrate the authenticity of personal experience rather than test its social and educational significance.

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6. The ‘postmodern turn’ in the current theory of much European and North American adult education seems all too often to cut if off from its historical roots in social purpose, political engagement and the vision of a better world.

7. Rhetorical assertions about the importance of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘social capital’ in the ‘learning society’ take little or no account of the material realities of context, contingency and differentials of power.

8. Despite its undoubted potential, the enthusiasm for information technology as the medium of instruction in adult education/learning raises crucial, if widely neglected, questions about the authority of the text, the privatisation of knowledge, the control of learning and the autonomy of the learner.

9. In the increasing professionalistion – and what I would call the ‘respectable-isation’ - of adult education there is growing evidence of a culture of hierarchy and deference and an unhealthy preoccupation with status and seniority.

10. Educational policy and practice, aided and abetted by research, is once again transforming structure into pathology by ascribing the contradictions of context to the supposed characteristics of individuals.

Taking up the last point, in particular, the British researcher Kathryn Ecclestone (2004; 2005) detects the emergence of a ‘therapeutic culture’ in contemporary educational policy and research. This is essentially concerned with helping individuals, especially marginalised individuals, to cope and survive rather than changing the structures which oppress them. The consequence is two forms of demoralisation. First, there is ‘demoralisation’ in its usual common-sense sense of loss of morale and self-belief. Second, and more insidious, there is ‘de-moralisation’ (with a hyphen) which refers to a deeper, existential process of ‘stripping out morality from our lives that leads to a loss of purpose … the loss of belief in what might yet be possible’ (Ecclestone, 2004, 124). This is a deeply pessimistic mind-set, which ultimately leads to the denial of moral capacity because it focuses on the individual’s psychological and emotional state rather than the wider structural context. The result is a diminished view of the autonomy and agency of both adult students and their educators. Ecclestone argues that managerial ‘performativity’, understood as the bureaucratic regulation of professional life around imposed targets, outcomes and sanctions, demoralises teachers in both senses. To sum up in the language of the radical tradition in British adult education, educators may be in danger of becoming the compliant purveyors of ‘merely useful knowledge’ (i.e. knowledge that is constructed to make people productive, profitable and quiescent workers) as distinct from the active agents of ‘really useful knowledge’ (i.e. knowledge that is calculated to enable people to become critical, autonomous and - if necessary - dissenting citizens) (see Johnson, 1979).

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THE IDEA OF THE ‘EMBODIED ARGUMENT’

For some time now I have been thinking about the idea of a book about how people got into adult education and why they stayed there or why they left (Martin, 2004). The task would be to re-historicise adult education through the biographical experience of its practitioners in relation to changes in policy and politics and the fluctuating climates of intellectual debate. The central concern would be to do this in a way which helps us to understand some of the problems and possibilities of the present condition of adult education as well, perhaps, as its competing intentions and aspirations for the future. This would mean reconstituting a different kind of ‘research’ which suggests that there is a need of time, not to find out more ‘facts’, but rather to understand more clearly what we already know in the field of adult education, and to look for it in adult educators. It seems to me that a rich but neglected source of ‘data’ lies in adult educators’ own intellectual, political and professional trajectories: what they have worked for and lived through, and what this has done to them.

The methodological approach broadly reflects the current interest in life history and biographical research. The ‘story’, however, is simply the vehicle for the argument, and the argument is both historical and ontological. In this sense, the personal acts as the lens of the political, and the focus of interest is in how the argument of adult education has been ‘embodied’ (adopted and adapted, sustained and changed) in working lives and changing contexts - and, crucially, about what that argument now is. The subject matter, therefore, is not life histories as such, but rather in the situatedness of biographical experience and personal endeavour. The key questions are: What is the relationship between argument and biography? How has argument influenced biography, and vice versa? What can adult educators learn about themselves and their work by reflecting on this process? In short, what have adult educators learnt from their own experience? The Scottish-born philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre (1985; 1988), has characterised institutions - and, by extension, vocations - as ‘embodied arguments’:

Every institution is marked by the moment of its foundation as the embodiment of a historical argument and the expression of a set of values. Institutions survive by a continuous adaptation of their argumentative base, a continuing fulfilment of their original argument in a new context; the history of an institution is the history of its development of the argument on which it was founded and the strength of the argument is reflected in the institution’s ability to continue to sustain its fundamental values in changed conditions. At some point, of course, an argument may become redundant or irrelevant and the institution founded on it will itself become redundant or will have to reorganise itself around a different and more relevant position. (Craig, 2003, 177)

The values and purposes which constitute these arguments and the institutions and identities that embody them are the products of particular historical moments and social movements. Such arguments can only be sustained if their embodiment is

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continually reworked and renewed as times change. If and when this process of redefinition and adaptation no longer happens, the arguments wither and die - to be replaced by others which are perceived to be more relevant, apposite, in keeping with the times. What is the embodied argument of adult education? How has it been worked out and sustained – or jettisoned and replaced – in the lived experience of its practitioners? And what does this tell us about where adult education is today, in the brave new world of lifelong learning - and where it has come from and where it is going? Such arguments, of course, have theoretical, moral and political dimensions. It is to these that I now turn.

THE PROBLEM OF THEORY

I believe that in this moment of our history we have something of great import to accomplish by exercising an optimism of the intellect in order to open up ways of thinking that have for too long remained foreclosed. (Harvey, 2000, 17)

The question is: Do we still have the theory to sustain the embodied argument of adult education? More specifically in relation to the subject matter of this book, does the concept of marginalisation implicate us in some attempt to understand, theoretically, what this process means and how it occurs – and to whom? To what extent does the currently fashionable interest in identity, diversity and difference divert our attention from the basic theoretical task of explanation and analysis? Do different cultures and traditions ask and answer such questions in different ways? For teaching purposes (Martin, 2005), I have found the problem of theory most clearly expressed by the English feminist scholar Fiona Williams in an early paper called ‘Somewhere over the rainbow: Universality and diversity in social policy’ (Williams, 1992). The date of publication, 1992, is significant because it marks the point at which Williams was moving from what was essentially a modernist analysis to a more postmodern account. What she seemed to be grappling with at the time, was the attempt to stretch her own thinking about social policy to take into account the demands and struggles of particular groups of ‘new welfare subjects’ in a way that was not inconsistent with her own theoretical and ideological grounding in a materialist, marxian political economy. This intellectual stretching and grafting process is represented in two forms: what I call the structural paradigm (a sort of modernised modernism) and the difference paradigm (a sort of postmodernised modernism). One of the things we need to think about is how these paradigms relate to the process of marginalisation, and how this affects adult educators. On the other hand, they may have very different ways of doing this. Williams' paper originally came to my attention at a particular time in my teaching. Feminist and black students, always distrustful of the cleverness of theory, were, quite rightly, demanding to ‘see themselves’ (i.e. to be de-marginalised) in the theory we deployed. At the same time, we were all becoming

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increasingly conscious of the potential evasions and elisions of an over-determined and reductionist class analysis. Williams appeared to offer a coherent and convincing way of dealing with this problem by showing how the divisions of class are related to the divisions of gender and race:

Figure 1. The structural paradigm (Williams, 1992, P. 211)

This seems to be a particularly comprehensive and satisfying account of the social relations of welfare within late capitalism. Above all, it demonstrates clearly, and in a historically defensible way, the symbiotic relationship between key social institutions and the major divisions of power in the western society. Class analysis is stretched and properly shown to be systematically both gendered and racialised. In this way, political economy is modernised without being compromised. I would

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argue that we ignore at our peril the meta-narrative of globalising capital which now actively constructs the daily reality of most people’s lives. While this remains the case, we need the theoretical apparatus to address this reality. At the same time, however, we must recognise that all theory is contingent and provisional: it’s only as good as the answers it gives. In ‘advanced-welfare-capitalism’ we have to start with the politics of class (which is, of course, a process as well as a position) and the centrality of work (including non-work), production and profit. In addition, we need to understand how this creates a dialectics between the needs of capital to generate surplus value and the struggle of working people to improve their condition (and, indeed, where adult education and marginalisation fit into this dialectic). It seems to me that as long as we have capitalism, we need class analysis. And if it is sometimes difficult to find the working class (working) today, it is worth looking in the sweatshops and mines of the so-called ‘Third World’ as well as remembering how effectively big business acts as a globalised class (at the same time as progressive politics has become so atomised and fragmented). On the other hand, this analysis must be extended and refined in order to demonstrate the (originally suppressed) significance of gender and ‘race’. We don’t simply work within the socio-economic relations of a capitalist system; we live within a systematically patriarchal and racialised capitalist society. Thinking about the U.K. society in particular, the explanatory power of Williams’ account lies in the causal inter-relationship it posits between differences of identity, divisions of power and the institutions of production and social reproduction. Moreover, it has historical validity: it shows how things have happened in terms of the historical development of welfare (including education, and now lifelong learning) within a mature capitalist society. In addition, this account can be internationalised - in terms, for example, of the relationship between imperialism (or neo-colonialism) and migrant labour. What are its weaknesses? That depends on what claims are being made. In all the meta-narratives of so-called grand theory there is, of course, the danger of both reductionism and determinism. This account is obviously not very sensitive to the more subtle, complex and nuanced modalities (to use a postmodern word) of identity and diversity. It must also be conceded that what people actually feel about themselves may often - perhaps increasingly - be located primarily within a politics of identity as distinct from a politics of position. This is a crucial point to take into consideration in certain kinds of educational work. It could also be said that this account is strong on exploitation and weak on oppression. As such, it may help us to understand the politics of ‘old social movements’ (although ‘old’ does not mean they have gone away) better than the politics of ‘new social movements’. Certainly in the post-9/11 world we now live in we can hardly ignore issues of identity and difference based on culture, ethnicity and belief. So the question must be: Who is excluded, hidden or marginalised in this account? It was this kind of question which suggested to Fiona Williams the need to look for a ‘more complex and multifaceted approach’.

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Figure 2. The difference paradigm (Williams, 1992, P. 214)

The modernist triangle, expressing a politics of position within an essentially Marxian account of power, is replaced by a postmodernist polyhedron, expressing a politics of identity and difference within a more dispersed Foucauldian account of ‘new axes of power’. The movement of the argument is from structure to culture - although it is not at all clear what the nature of the relationship between them is. For instance, there is no Gramscian sense of how culture is rooted in structure. The impetus is, however, important and urgent: it is to show how new welfare subjects and subjectivities, new struggles, new forms of agency and resistance are being expressed in the cultural politics of pluralistic communities of difference (sometimes called, rather vaguely, the ‘politics of voice’). We certainly get a more complex (and complicated) picture here – and, of course, the categories of age, sexuality and disability are simply intended to be illustrative of a much wider and more diverse postmodern politics of identity and difference. It is important to note that in some respects this account seems to make more sense descriptively because it is more representative of the layered and shifting multiplicity of identities we now feel we inhabit. But does it make more

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sense of this analytically? As my art teacher keeps reminding us, what makes a picture is the relationship between objects, not the objects themselves. The relationship between these categories of interest and identity is not clear. This account may capture something of what Williams calls the ‘moment’, but does it really help to explain the context within which the moment occurs? Perhaps the key question is not so much about who is included or excluded but rather what is lost here. The answer seems to lie in the explanatory power of the original formulation and, in particular, the causal relations which exist between particular axes of power (which is never randomly distributed). It is not that the politics of identity is not important, but what kinds of account can this give us of the wider context in which this politics occurs? On the other hand, we can show how difference is structured in such a context: how class, for example, mediates identity. This difference paradigm speaks to experience, but does it make experience make sense? These are all important and meaningful categories of identity, oppression and affiliation, but they are not equivalent in theoretical terms, i.e. in terms of their explanatory power. It seems that the original structural paradigm of class, gender and ‘race’ must be reinstated at the centre of this one in order to understand the relationship between identity, difference and context. ‘Advanced-welfare-capitalism' is not simply a set of variables: it is the particular and specific material context in which practically everything else happens. As such, it helps to explain why certain groups, identities and differences are disparaged, devalued and marginalised. A whole series of subsidiary questions follow:

• How is the ‘big picture’ explained (assuming we still think it necessary to do this)?

• What can be done, theoretically, to prevent this kind of account dissolving into mere ‘category politics’ where no proper discrimination is made between different differences? What are the differences that make a difference?

• When does particularity slip into relativism? Are all types of power really equal?

• In what ways do false equivalences reduce public policy simply to ‘managing diversity’?

• Finally, as Anne Phillips (1999) asks, which equalities matter? Indeed, which equalities matter more than others, and which matter most?

In response, Williams concedes: ‘It may well be that some [forms of power and oppression] have greater significance than others’ (Williams 1992, 215). This is precisely the point: we need the kind of theory that tells us the difference. Writing from an Australian perspective, Helen Meekosha sums up the problem:

The concept of difference has become a substitute for more critical concepts such as privilege, conflict of interest, oppression and subordination. Difference can avoid discussions of power. For example, the experiences of Aboriginal women, immigrant women, black women, women with disabilities, are not simply different; they are part of overall power relations

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and at the same time intersect with and influence each other. (Meekosha, 1993, 180)

What are the implications of all this? Crudely speaking, we still need the modernism of a certain kind of adult education to pick the way rather cautiously through the complexities and contradictions of the postmodern condition. Nowhere is this more evident than in the discussion of justice, which is what this book is really about.

THE PROBLEM OF JUSTICE

On the way to the ‘culturalist’ version of the human right to recognition, the unfulfilled task of the human right to well-being and a life lived in dignity falls by the board. (Bauman, 2001, 88)

The problem of justice arises as the moral and political consequence of the theoretical problem I have just outlined – and, as I see it, if adult education is not about justice, it is about nothing. In thinking about marginalisation and justice, it is as well to remember Paulo Freire’s stricture:

…. the oppressed are not marginals …. living ‘outside’ society. They have always been inside – inside the structure which made them ‘beings for others’. The solution is not to ‘integrate’ them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become ‘beings for themselves’. (Freire, 1972, 48)

Perhaps we should begin by confronting some of the disingenuous obfuscations that characterise the changing language of adult education. It is necessary, for example, to emphasise that:

• individual ‘choices’ (small ‘c’, plural) are not the same thing as collective ‘Choice’ (capital ‘C’, singular)

• social capital is not the same thing as social justice • inclusion is not the same thing as redistribution • cohesion is not the same thing as equality • and, indeed, that learning is not the same thing as teaching.

In an important paper, called significantly ‘Class relations, social justice and the politics of difference’, David Harvey (1993) asks: 'How can we talk about “justice” without presupposing in some sense a concept which is universal and "true"?' The answer is necessarily complicated and difficult:

The effect of the postmodern critique of universalism has been to render any application of the concept of social justice problematic. And there is an obvious sense in which this questioning of the concept is not only proper but imperative …. But this does not imply that the concept is useless or …. has no more force than some localised and contingent complaint. (Harvey, 1993, 95)

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These complications and difficulties need to be confronted if justice is to mean something worth having to everyone, especially perhaps those who are ‘at the edge’:

The application of any universal principle of social justice across heterogeneous situations is certain to entail some injustice to someone, somewhere. But, on the other hand, at the end of a road of infinite heterogeneity and open-endedness about what justice might mean, there lies at best a void or at worst a rather ugly world. (Harvey, 1993, 103)

We need some ‘big idea’ of what justice means, and we need to pursue it in the educational work – especially ‘at the margins’. A more recent attempt to grapple with these issues is the debate between the American Nancy Fraser and German Axel Honneth, both philosophers, about the competing claims of equality and difference (Fraser & Honneth, 2003). Their focus of interest is, in particular, on the causes and consequences of the ‘widespread decoupling of cultural politics from social politics’. The argument is essentially about the pros and cons of material redistribution, on the one hand, and the cultural recognition of difference, on the other. Again, it seems to me that this is an argument we need to be having more of in contemporary adult education and lifelong learning. Fraser insists that if we are interested in justice in today’s world, we cannot have one without the other, and that combining redistribution and recognition together in public policy requires the avoidance of not only ‘vulgar economism’ but also ‘reductive culturalism’. This entails:

…. a two-dimensional conception of capitalist society …. [reflecting] two analytically distinct orders of subordination: class stratification, rooted primarily in economic mechanisms, and status hierarchy, based largely on institutionalized patterns of cultural value. (Fraser & Honneth, 2003, 218)

Class subordination leads to ‘maldistribution’ whereas status subordination leads to ‘misrecognition’. Both need to be radically ameliorated, if not eliminated, for justice to be done in the kind of unequal and pluralistic societies we now live in. What are required, therefore, is both an old fashioned materialist politics of redistribution and a newly forged culturalist politics of recognition. It is part of the postmodern condition that these should be seen as distinct yet connected.

CONCLUSION

The question is: How would such a dualistic politics apply to those who are ‘at the margins of adult education, work and civil society’ in the era of lifelong learning? This is one of the questions worth to be asked and argued about. What we are looking for is not so much a theory of diversity (if such there could be) but for a new understanding of the dialectic between the universal and the particular. In a sense, this is about how subject/agency and context/structure, and the relationship between them, are conceived in adult education and lifelong learning. This is now,

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I would argue, an urgent theoretical task and an important educational purpose. In short, in order to work ‘at the margins’ we need to recover and reconstitute a theory and pedagogy of justice for adult education. If we cannot do this, we may have to get used to a Kafka-esque sense of metamorphosis when we wake up in the morning, still knowing who we are but finding it difficult and disquieting to recognise ourselves:

Gregor gave a start when he heard his own voice …. ; it was unmistakably his own voice as of old, but mixed in with it, as if from below, was an irrepressible, painful squeaking; and this only left the sound of the words clear for a moment, before distorting them so much that one could not tell if one had heard them properly. (Kafka, 2000, 78)

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Martin, I. (2005). Reflections on the diversions of diversity. In P. Coare, P. Armstrong, M. Boice, & L. Morrice (Eds.) Diversity and difference in lifelong learning: Proceedings of the 35th Annual SCUTREA Conference. Sussex: University of Sussex.

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Ian Martin Department of Higher and Community Education University of Edinburgh