Full Description
Workers' Education in the Global South explores the historical development of radical workers' education in South Africa as one particular strand within the broader tradition of radical adult education. Drawing on the theoretical resources of Activity Theory, Gramsci, Freire and others, it investigates the key features of workers' education as a form of pedagogy with a unique history and logic of practice, and explores how it has been shaped by its location within labour and other social movements as well as its 'southern' location within the global political economy. Successive chapters explore its counter-hegemonic but contested purposes, its knowledge practices that seek to overcome the historical divide between intellectual and manual labour, and a pedagogy which often assumes didactic forms but which retains a democratic character through its embeddedness in working class experience. It illustrates the rich processes of experiential learning that happen through day-to-day organising, in workers' cultural activity as well as through mass action. It argues that this tradition of workers' education currently stands at a crossroads, as global neoliberal market policies and post-apartheid education and training policies threaten to undermine its radical social vision, and concludes by offering ideas on how this tradition of radical workers' education might be renewed.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms
1 Introduction: A Workers' Education Event in 1980s South Africa
1 Reclaiming the Radical Tradition
2 Defining Workers' Education
3 A Brief History of Workers' Education in South Africa
4 Framing the Book Theoretically and Methodologically
5 Concluding Comments
2 'The Sun Shall Rise for the Workers': The Contested Political Purposes of Workers' Education
1 Introduction
2 Conceptualising the Purpose of Workers' Education
3 Key Lines of Ideological Contestation in Workers' Education
4 Workers' Education at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Radical Resistance, Pragmatic Accommodation
5 Gathering Contradictions: A Possible 'Breakthrough into Learning Activity'?
6 Conclusion
3 'Healing the Breach' between Intellectual and Manual Labour: The Epistemology of Workers' Education
1 Intellectual and Manual Labour and Hierarchies of Knowledge
2 Radical Approaches to Knowledge
3 Knowledge in South African Workers' Education
4 Views on Knowledge in SAMWU
5 Views on Knowledge in the Workers' College
6 Emerging Tensions and Contradictions
7 Conclusion
4 What Is 'Really Useful Knowledge' in Workers' Education?
1 The South African 'Knowledge Wars'
2 Knowledge Use in SAMWU
3 Gramsci on Organic Intellectuals and Knowledge Production
4 Knowledge Differentiation in Workers' Education
5 Organic Intellectuals: 'Braiding' New Knowledge
6 Tensions and Contradictions in the Knowledge Practices of Workers' Education
7 Conclusion
5 The Pedagogy of Workers' Education: Conscientisation or Indoctrination?
1 Introduction
2 'Visible' and 'Invisible' Pedagogy
3 Non-Formal Workers' Education Programmes under Apartheid
4 SAMWU's Pedagogy: A 'Mixed Pedagogic Pallet'
5 Conclusion: Holding the Tension - A Complex 'Balancing Act'
6 Informal Learning: Workers' Education as Praxis
1 Learning through Organisational Praxis
2 Workers' Education and Cultural Praxis
3 Workers' Education and Mass Action
4 Conclusion
7 'Democracy Has Become Institutionalized' Workers' Education and the Formal System
1 The Apartheid Labour Market and Skills Development
2 Transition to Democracy - But Also to Neo-Liberalism
3 Unions and Post-Apartheid Education and Training Policies
4 What Went Wrong?
5 Navigating the Accreditation Terrain
6 Conclusion
8 Reinventing Workers' Education1
1 Distinctive Features of Workers' Education as an Activity System
2 The Contribution of Radical Workers' Education to Our Knowledge Archive
3 Radical Workers' Education at the Crossroads?
4 Finding a Way Forward: Re-Inventing Workers' Education
5 Rethinking 'Workers' Education' - Rethinking 'Work'
References
Index
