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Lifelong learning and social justice: communities, work and identities in a globalised world

Given the ubiquity of lifelong learning theory and policy, and the presumption of theory and policy that lifelong learning is inherently a good thing, it is appropriate to challenge the presumptions. The presumption of inherent good has flowed through many areas of policy, including welfare, employment, health, and social policy. It has become part of a repertoire of justifications for the permeation of economic rationalism throughout most areas of policy. The failure of policy and its presumptions is now being challenged by a growing public debate, reflecting society’s discontent with the current state of community, work, and identity. Nowhere is that more evident or topical than in the area of social justice. Given the significance of equity and social justice as outcomes of lifelong learning as asserted by theorists and policy-makers, that assertion warrants examination and challenge. This book does just that. As a reviewer I found it difficult, and ultimately decided it unnecessary, to read this book and write this review dispassionately. In the growing chorus challenging the current hegemonic posture of policy-makers in relation to lifelong learning and social justice, I found this book to be among those publications at the forefront of the discourse. As a reviewer one tries to avoid emotive language, but in this book’s case I must say that readers with a heart for social justice will love the 11 chapters of this book individually and collectively. In their various ways and contexts, the authors foreground the ‘othering’ effect of policy generally and, more specifically, lifelong learning theory in its currently highjacked conceptualization. They confront the evident contradiction between policy and theory’s discourse of choice and social justice and the ‘blame the victim’ nature of policy in practice. The scholarship of lifelong learning predominantly focuses on formal learning and, to a lesser extent, non-formal learning. Informal (incidental) learning is not easy to identify, explore, document, and describe with the same specificity as the other two forms. It therefore tends to be disregarded, or even dismissed, while formal and non-formal learning are deemed to be real learning. I would suggest that this book’s main contribution to the scholarship in this area is the specific demonstration and foregrounding of the linkage of the theory and practice of social justice, lifelong learning, and policy. Social justice is currently particularly topical. Society, the world of work, and people’s lives are increasingly influenced by the demise of welfare-state-type policy and its replacement by a harsher, less compassionate, economic rationalist policy Studies in Continuing Education Vol. 34, No. 2, July 2012, 225 231