Reflexivity, community and education for the learning society

Abstract

In this article it is argued that the idea of a learning society is consonant with developments in the social world conceived as part of the ongoing project of reflexive modernity. This project is characterised by a dynamic process of individualisation which on the one hand results in widening opportunities for self-creation and the construction of democratic, flexible communities, but on the other is associated with new kinds of structures and cultural processes which continue to reproduce inequality whilst failing to counter the tendency to fragmentation. The idea of a learning society is a response to the dilemmas of these ‘new times’. The New Right idea of such a society is reviewed and found wanting; the particular mix of neo-liberal free market ideas and neo-conservative authoritarianism just cannot deliver the flexibility, diversity and scope for reflexivity required at the level of the self or the community. It is then argued that the most appropriate conception of the learning society is that which grasps the nettle of individualism whilst at the same time deploying an understanding of the self as constituted in practices – a model which avoids the conceptual split between the individual and society and captures the duality of persons as individuals and as members of communities. An attempt is then made to outline a curricular and pedagogical strategy appropriate for a democratic version of the learning society. This involves two aspects: First a teaching approach which focuses on the nature of commitment to and participation in reflexive communities and second, one that fosters the kind of self-reflexivity and self-knowledge required for individuals to sustain and develop their self identities in the circumstances of reflexive modernity. © 1997 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.