The Pedagogy of Radical Change: Social Movements, Resistance and Alternative Futures in Higher Education and Society

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This book discusses and compares how social movements in Brazil, Chile, Greece and England are beacons of alternative politics. It focuses on the potential of these movements to radically transform higher education and society. It explores how social movements create new forms of resistance to the ubiquity of global capitalism and new forms of thinking, acting and being in the world that are not based on exploitation and profit. Rather, they are premised on respect for diversity, commitment to equality and inclusion, solidaristic structures and multiple and equally valued (pluriversal) epistemologies. The book draws on empirical material collected over 12 years in conversation with key participants in social movements including the Brazilian Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra, Chilean and Greek Student movements, and the Black Lives Matter Movement in England. These movements confront the realist pedagogies in our lives, that is, the practices and structures that dominate the way society and education are organized. Realist pedagogies are juxtaposed with what the author calls pluriversal pedagogies, which are premised on horizontalism, democratic fellowship, solidarity, harmonious existence of humans and non-humans (a broadened sense of ubuntu) and prefigurative politics. These pluriversal pedagogies create emergent social relations that have the potential to deliver real alternatives for the majority of people in the global North and South.

Author Bio

Spyros Themelis is Associate Professor in Education at The University of East Anglia, UK.