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Learning, Work and Social Responsibility

Challenges for Lifelong Learning in a Global Age

  • Book
  • © 2009

Overview

Authors:
  1. Karen Evans

    1. University of London Inst. Education, London, United Kingdom WC1H 0AL

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  • Captures the contradictions and dangers of equating lifelong learning with individualisation and individual responsibility in high insecurity societies
  • Draws on more than 15 years of international research that has focused on the subjective experiences of ordinary people in the changing social landscapes of globalization and risk
  • Argues for broader and fairer forms of meritocracy, bringing work and the pursuit of broader social purposes into a better balance at all levels of the social world
  • Develops unique conceptual schema for rethinking ‘structure and agency’ in relation to learning, work and social responsibility

Part of the book series: Lifelong Learning Book Series (LLLB, volume 13)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XV
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  2. Learning for a Living: The Powerful, the Dispossessed and the Learning Revolution

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 1-28

  3. Taking Control?: Early Adult Life in Contrasting Social Landscapes

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 29-53

  4. Students Anticipating the Future

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 55-85

  5. Workers in Control of the Present?

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 87-117

  6. Living at the Margins and Finding Ways toWork

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 119-146

  7. Gender, Work and Learning

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 147-173

  8. Participation, Social Life and Politics

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 175-197

  9. Beyond Individualisation: Human Strivings for Control of Their Lives

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 199-226

  10. Systems and Societies in Transition: Challenging Inequalities, Choosing Inclusion

    • Karen Evans
    Pages 227-248

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 249-274
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Keywords

About this book

The concept of individual responsibility has taken on a signi?cance comparable to that of ‘choice’ in the global rise of neo-liberalism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The rise of neo-liberalism is most often analysed through the lenses of theory, governmentality and societal structures. There has been a tendency for an- ysis to become overly abstract with the subjective experiences of the social actors missing dimensions in the literature. This book draws on more than 20 years of international research that has focused on the subjective experiences of people as actors in changing social landscapes. These landscapes are differently positioned politically, economically and socially, in relation to the rise of neo-liberalism. Comparisons enable the differences in people’s experiences to be located, explored and explained in relation to different soc- economic landscapes, thus throwing into relief the effects of neo-liberal policies where they are found. My approach is to create an extended dialogue between ideas and evidence, starting close to home, and then extending to speci?c international comparisons and to wider explorations of the central themes of the book: human agency and social responsibility. Finally, I return to social landscapes of Britain, to review the position and potential for social change in societies that exemplify what Sennett has termed ‘Anglo-American regimes’, in contrast to ‘Rhine regimes’ as exempli?ed by Germany.

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of London Inst. Education, London, United Kingdom WC1H 0AL

    Karen Evans

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