Adult Education and Civil Society

It is necessary to recognize that what is meant by civil society is both historically specific and ideologically contingent. Indeed, part of the interest lies in how adult education can be used in the struggle to contest and control what civil society means. In this respect, it can be shown how, in adult education policy and practice, the idea of civil society has been represented variously in the discourses of social capital, deliberative democracy, and the struggle for hegemony. In addition, the notion of a global civil society has now become the focus of the international movement to show that another world is possible. For some adult educators, this is the seedbed of a renewed radicalism and reconceived social purpose.