Irreducibly Social: Rethinking Adult Education as a Common Good

This chapter conceptualises adult education as a common good. It demonstrates the ‘irreducibly social’ character of adult education and argues that the extent to which adult education is accomplished as a common good reflects its accessibility, availability, and affordability, as well as the commitment of society and all its influential actors towards this goal. We empirically analyse the social embeddedness of the accomplishment of adult education as a common good in two aspects—temporal (socio-historical) and spatial (socio-structural)—and develop a composite index which measures the extent to which adult education as a common good is implemented in a given country.