ON DEMOCRATIC ADULT EDUCATION: NAVIGATING THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN CONSENSUS AND DISSENSUS IN CONTEMPORARY MULTICULTURAL COMMUNITIES

Abstract

In this article the author explores possibilities for democratic adult education understood as “citizenship as practice” in contemporary multicultural communities that are characterised by pluralism and difference. Priority is given to the political dimension of education and learning and to the concept of democracy, which is inevitably linked to the open space of debate, disagreement, struggle and “conflict” because these represent the raison d’être for democratic practices. Beginning with Habermas’s notion of deliberative democracy and the public sphere, the author demonstrate how this notion of democracy fails to adequately address the issues relating to power and difference that are crucial in today’s multicultural communities. By drawing on Mouffe’s and Rancière’s notion of “the political” and “politics” he rather argues that democratic citizenship is perceived to be a democratic practice in which all potentially affected members of a community can actively participate and speak as equal members regardless of their (legal) status, and where democratic practices can be experienced as learning opportunities. In the conclusion, conceptualisation of adult education and how it relates to democratic citizenship in the contemporary multicultural world is presented.