In the 1990s, the terms ‘adult education’ and ‘lifelong education’ began to be displaced by a novel discourse of ‘lifelong learning’. This learning turn in education policy affirmed ‘learning as performance’ but also discounted the established world of adult and lifelong self-development. In that moment, the meanings of ‘adult education’, ‘lifelong learning’ and ‘lifelong education’ became unclear. But what is being entangled here and with what effects on knowing and doing adult education? I use the concept of ‘analytic borderlands’ to understand change in global transitions and report on research that traced the learning turn in Australian adult education through ﻿three different historical contexts. Re-reading empirical case study research, I show how these historical contexts intersected in ways that transformed publicly provided Technical and Further Education (TAFE) into mixed economy Vocational Education and Training (VET). I argue that these three concepts of ‘lifelong learning’, ‘adult education’ and ‘lifelong education’ are historically specific forms of more general political rationalities, institutionalised spaces and necessary utopias.

The Two Sociologies

Adult Education and the ‘Learning’ Turn

Graduate programs in sociology are notedfor the excellent training they provide in quantitative data analysis and the use of large datasets. With afew notable exceptions, however, PhD programs in sociology in the United States generally fail to provide an equivalent emphasis in social theory or interpretive sociology. Mainstream American sociology has long been dominated by adherents of the positivistic tradition. The result has been an increased isolation of sociology within academe, a diminishing American contribution to the development of social theory, and a growing irrelevance of sociology to the larger intellectual trends within the humanities and social sciences. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effects of these trends upon graduate education in sociology. I argue that our graduate training programs are deficient in several ways, most especially in their narrow commitment to the positivist view of social science. The failure to develop sociology's interpretive tradition has allowed the style and intellectual creativity of sociological work to suffer as well as allowing an unproductive attitude of sociological "imperialism" to take root, thereby insuring the increased irrelevance of sociology to wider circles of intellectual discourse. I conclude with an argumentfor a greater balance in graduate training programs between sociology's two great traditions.

Revising the canon: graduate training in the two sociologies

Social analysis is structured by ontologies: framing understandings of the concepts that exist and the possible relationships between those concepts. This article details instances where whiteness has been improperly employed as a basis for the analysis of black experiences. It goes on to look at the efforts of scholars to contextualize the study of blacks in the specific social circumstances that blacks navigate in their everyday lives.

“White is Right” : The Utilization of an Improper Ontological Perspective in Analyses of Black Experiences

Recipes for the Good Society used to run, in caricature, something like this: 

1.

Take about 2000 hom. sap., analyse each into essence and accidents and discard the accidents.




2.

Place essences in a large casserole, add socialising syrup and stew until conflict disappears.




3.

Serve with a pinch of salt.

My Role and its Duties

The emergence of sociology was embedded in an existential crisis which enveloped the European continent during the eighteenth century. The medieval world -view, which was based on Christian theology, had lost its grip on European society. This crisis, which was mainly precipitated by rapid industrial and economic change, left medieval Europe groping for a viable Weltanschauung, a stable pattern of social arrangement, which could arrest the forces of disruption and disintegration. Sociology emerged as a response to this anomic situation, with the promise of mend ing and holding the disjointed segments of the social order together. The Enlightenment thinkers who offered the new solution were firmly convin ced that a stable social and moral order was possible on ly through an unflagging faith in man's creative potential to manage his affairs in a rational manner. They were wedded to a belief in the union of theory and action for social reconstruction and reform. The discipline of socio logy was offered as a new morality based on empirically established facts. Sociology, therefore, had an authentic beginning : it was not only rooted in the existential and moral crisis of eighteenth century Europe, but it also sought to overcome and resolve this crisis. It identified itself with the humanist tradition in European thought by proclaiming that the only purpose of the science of man was to help him live more freely and creatively and transcend his own limitations as well as those of his environment. Regrettably, however, as the new discipline grew in scope and professional standing, it lost sight of its original and basic perspective. In the growth and professionalisation of sociology as an academic discipline, two phases of inauthenticity may be discerned. The first phase is evidenced in the

The Two Sociologies

Citations

Adult Education and the ‘Learning’ Turn

Revising the canon: graduate training in the two sociologies

“White is Right” : The Utilization of an Improper Ontological Perspective in Analyses of Black Experiences

My Role and its Duties

Indian Sociology : Search for Authentic Identity:

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