This paper connects Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, dispositions and capital with a psychosocial analysis of how Winnicott's psychoanalysis and Honneth's recognition theory can be of importance in understanding how and why non-traditional students remain in higher education. Understanding power relations in an interdisciplinary way…

Through a selective deployment of conceptualisations from subaltern studies, in particular the concepts of political (un-civil) society and an autonomous domain (or a people's politics that suggests the plausibility of dominance without hegemony), this article distinguishes a subaltern social movement (SSM) formation and related anti-colonial SSM…

Ghana has been identified as an important example of democracy in Africa, yet the story of this democratic success overlooks the crucial role social movement activism and learning have played in locally reconfiguring and deepening what democracy means. A key dimension of this overlooked-story is ongoing efforts to contest both local and global…

In the first decade of the 21st century, efforts to create alternatives to neoliberalism emerged in many parts of Latin America. Social movements across the region took to the streets, occupied abandoned factories, and started to create new democratic spaces, solidarity networks, and social economy initiatives. In one country after another,…

Social movements at universities have recently flourished as a response to the Bologna Process and austerity measures at universities, but studies on learning within these movements are still scarce. Our goal is to describe one movement which started at the University of Gdansk in 2009 and aimed at democratising the university and implementing…

In a previous ethnographic study (Sebrant, 2000) a social constructionist view of how social identity is produced among professional groups in Swedish healthcare was developed. Looking at the workplace as an important environment for identity construction suggested that these processes were conditions for learning. The purpose of this paper is to…

This article explores how planning the Botswana National Literacy Programme aided the state in maintaining its power and control over the past two decades. Using critical educational theory as the theoretical framework, it demonstrates how the planning of literacy education promotes conventional views of literacy and perpetuates state hegemony. It…

Discusses concepts and assumptions underlying actor-network theories and the new literacy studies. Identifies lessons for adult education research derived from sociological approaches to scientific knowledge, which examine power circulating in networks of human and nonhuman entities. (Contains 36 references.) (SK)

Reflects on the cultural politics of knowledge production since World War II, in which the techno-scientific knowledge base was used to dominate cultural time and space. Examines the status of liberal education and adult education research as a source of productive knowledge, as well as the selection of which knowledge is valued. (SK)

Cites the limits of organizational learning and proposes finding insights from postmodern thinking to redefine it. Explores the postmodern strategy of deconstruction as a method that induces a more critically reflective approach to learning at work. (SK)

Interpretations of truth and knowledge are contingent upon power relations. Attempts to unsettle the power-knowledge balance to include different perspectives are often resisted by appeals to the "common-sense" ideology of dominant truths. (SK)

Discussion with an African-American mental health group in Britain demonstrate the politics involved in the relationship between knowledge and power. Transformative research is seen as part of the politics of postmodernism--the shift from Eurocentrism and the influence of research on political agendas and the balance of power. (SK)

In extremely repressive situations, Freire's liberation pedagogy can support resistance; in postrevolutionary societies, it can suffer from contradictions. The perpetual tension between domestication (indoctrination) and liberation makes transformative education an ongoing process. (SK)

Explains how the feminist critique of education encompasses gender attitudes, sexist language, and the power structure. Illustrates the approaches of liberal, radical, and socialist feminism through a description of the design of a philosophy syllabus. (SK)

Study of women-only training centers established by the European Social Fund shows how they can be closed communities in which differences of race, class, or sexual preference can be identified as relationships of power, privilege, and inequality. (SK)