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Reviewed by:
  • Global Issues and Adult Education: Perspectives from Latin America, Southern Africa, and the United States
  • Stephen Brookfield (bio)
Sharan B. Merriam, Bradley C. Courtney, & Ronald M. Cervero (Eds.). Global Issues and Adult Education: Perspectives from Latin America, Southern Africa, and the United States. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. 460 pp. Cloth: $48.00. ISBN: 0-7879-7810-8.

Globalization is the new alienation—the very existence of its concept and process contested and its supposed causes and effects challenged. As John Holst, a contributor to this volume argues, a considerable debate rages between Marxists and [End Page 199] civil societarians about whether globalization is just the influence of capital writ large or whether it represents a qualitatively new phenomenon calling for qualitatively new categories of analysis and educational and political responses (Holst, incidentally, argues that both analyses are true).

Global Issues and Adult Education is a substantial piece of work, the record of the Kellogg Foundation's Houle Scholars Program (named after Cyril O. Houle, the late American adult educator) that funded 45 emerging adult education scholars in Latin America (10), southern Africa (10) and the United States (25) to research aspects of globalization in adult education. The program set out to challenge the North American hegemony on adult education scholarship, for which it is to be commended.

Most edited volumes are something of a curate's egg, but I found this book displaying considerable thematic unity, which is an undoubted reflection of the editorial team's skill. The book is organized around the themes of a 2004 Global Issues Seminar held in Salzburg, Austria, at which the Houle Scholars presented aspects of their research. The themes are globalization and the market economy (chaps. 1–7), marginalized populations (8–16), environment and health (17–23), community empowerment (24–30) and lifelong learning and educational systems (31–38).

It is gratifying to me to see a section on "Marginalized Populations" (a section title which implies that someone, somewhere, has power and influence sufficient to marginalize others) rather than "Marginal Populations" (which implies that those on the margins are somehow partly to blame for their lack of influence and power). I found this section unusually intriguing for the breadth of its concerns. Of particular interest were the chapters by Monica Arboleda Giraldo on women facing internal armed conflict which focuses on adult education's response to women who have been raped, displaced, murdered, and conscripted in countries plagued by internal war; Mantina Mohasi's analysis of the learning of, and adult education for, the herdboys of Lesotho; and Tonette Rocco's essay on disability (ableism being an ideology usually displaced by racism, sexism, and classism).

Carolyn Clark's chapter, "He Hits Me and My World Shatters" explores adult education's response to domestic violence as manifested in spouse battering, female genital mutilation, dowry murders, forced suicides, and honor killings. Clark's chapter is in the section on environment and health but, as with many of the chapters here, could have appeared in another section. This is not to criticize the editorial organization of the book but rather to acknowledge the undoubted truth that, just as globalization reaches into every corner of individuals' lives, so any mutually exclusive classification of its effects will always be artificial.

What ties the diverse contributions of the book together is the strong emphasis on the activist role of adult education and adult educators. In their different ways, all the authors featured explore their understanding of how adult educators can help limit—even in some cases to overturn the most destructive effects of globalization. They also tend to acknowledge that globalization is sometimes a force that potentially contains the seeds of its own downfall; these days many analysts talk convincingly of international civil society, and revolutionary movements across the globe are now able to coordinate their actions and learn more speedily from each other than ever before. The final chapter tries to address this dynamic by proposing responses to globalization embedded in the book's contributions—to create space and listen to voices, to adopt a critical stance, to attend to policy, develop partnerships, and foster collective learning and action.

It is this last dynamic that...

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