Concept (E-Journal)
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A Personal Experience of Political Song
Full text linkAs the world careers into perpetual destruction fired by a greed for power and land leading to war, violence, hunger and pollution of the planet, people are marching across the world in horror and incredulity at the unimaginable suffering of Palestinians - as well as many Israelis of course. Every decade brings its own struggles, accompanied by strikes, demonstrations, rallies, protests, sit-ins, flash mobs, whatever. Over our lifetimes I, and countless others, have lost count of the number of demonstrations we have participated in to make our voices heard. We are used to hearing speaker after speaker (often male) blowing their own trumpets and making stirring speeches with which the majority of us agree. However, organisers of protests would do well to think seriously about ways in which to include music and song in marches and rallies. Why? What is the purpose of political song? I firmly believe in the necessity of political song as an integral part of public protest; to uplift and inspire the cause and, in so doing, enrich our culture. I\u27d like to think that younger musicians, as artists, feel strongly enough to acknowledge and support popular struggles through their music and song. I witnessed how cultural events flourished during the Scottish Independence campaign leading up to the Referendum in 2014, when the National Collective was active and bursting at the seams with young people entertaining us. Makes you think
To Hell with Culture
Full text linkAny word that stretches from a Petrie dish of toxic chemicals mixed up by scientists in a lab, at one end of the spectrum, to the complete works of Shakespeare at the other is bound to suck in plenty of bullshit in between. So, should we abandon the word ‘culture’ as far too vague to be meaningful or pare it back to see what we really mean when we use it? In desperation the poet, Ezra Pound, junked it in favour of ‘Kulchur,’ meaning, for the most part, he did not think it meant anything useful at all. And the sculptor Eric Gill said: ‘When will revolutionary leaders realize that ‘culture’ is dope, a worse dope than religion; for even if it were true that religion is the opiate of the people, it is worse to poison yourself than to be poisoned…To hell with culture, culture as a thing added like a sauce to otherwise unpalatable fish’. The Greeks did not have a word for it, according to Herbert Read, since for them they just had a good way of life that encompassed everything and definitely did not need a separate commodity called ‘culture’ to make it taste better. The term appears to have been first coined by the Romans, who turned culture into that commodity, ‘Roman Culture’, and then dumped it onto the unsuspecting peoples they conquered and absorbed into their empire, whether they liked it or not. The British did much the same a millennium and a half later
Review Article: The Cost of Living
Full text linkIn the Epilogue to her latest book, Nancy Fraser highlights Covid 19 as \u27a textbook example\u27 of the perils of global capitalism: \u27the point where all cannibal capitalism\u27s contradictions converge\u27 (2022, p.160). As she sees it, this \u27lethal binge\u27 has also produced profound consequences for care, turning \u27already destabilised ... social reproduction into an acute care crunch\u27 (p.162).  
The Benefits of Community- Based Adult Learning
Full text linkIntroductionThis article aims to summarise research that demonstrates the positive impact of community- based adult learning (CBAL), especially in creating a more equitable education. The last decade has seen a considerable reduction in funding for CBAL internationally (Zhang & Perkins, 2022). One reason for this may be that its effectiveness as a way of reducing inequalities is not well-understood by policy makers (Webb et al., 2019). I hope that this short article may enable practitioners to provide evidence of the positive difference that participating in CBAL can make
Towards an Inclusive, Critical Feminist Pedagogy
Full text linkFor as long as I have been involved in adult education, this has overlapped with a commitment to feminism; in fact, my first paid job in adult education (after ten years working as a nurse) was to set up a consciousness-raising women’s group in North Dublin in the 1990s. This was one of hundreds of women’s group that emerged across the Island of Ireland from the 1970s onwards. Bríd Connolly (2001, p, 1) described these as spaces for “women to see themselves as active participants in Irish society, women who might otherwise, through socialisation, perceive themselves as operating within the private sphere only”. Women’s participation in Irish society had been severely curtailed up to this time, in the main by a deeply sexist, church-state coalition that culturally and legally carved out a post-colonial ‘Irishness’ where the ideal for a woman was to be married, a homemaker and largely silent (Fitzsimons and Kennedy, 2021)
A paradigm shift: Anarchism has entered the chat
Full text linkIntroductionResponding directly to Mayo’s (2022) article Covid-19 and Mutual Aid: prefigurative approaches to caring? published in Vol.13(3), this reflection seeks to further the conversation on the ways that ‘mutual aid’ has entered community development discourse in the aftermath of the global pandemic. It does so by drawing on the extensive legacy of the practice to suggest some of the limitations of sharing individual experiences, stressing the ways in which mutual aid rejects capitalistic self-importance (Roxburgh, 2021; Spade, 2020b)
\u27Speak up, Speak out: Communities and the Cost of Living Crisis\u27
Full text link“Tackling child poverty is a national mission - it is not something the Scottish Government can do alone, and it takes all of us to deliver the change needed” - Nicola Sturgeon MSP, former first minister
The current Poverty and Inequality Commission was created by the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. MSPs of all parties voted unanimously for its creation, and the adoption of statutory targets to reduce child poverty. The Commission came fully into being in July 2019, when it replaced the previous, non-statutory, Commission in place between 2017 and 2019. The Commission are, in government parlance, an \u27advisory non-departmental public body\u27
Covid-19 and Mutual Aid: prefigurative approaches to caring?
Full text linkThe growth of mutual aid has been amongst the more positive outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic. So much for the neoliberal view of humans as rational individuals, focused on the pursuit of their own self-interests, whatever the needs of others. The phenomenal growth of mutual aid initiatives has not been confined to Britain either. On the contrary, in fact. Tens of thousands of mutual aid networks and projects have emerged throughout the world. Whilst recognising and warmly celebrating their achievements, this article sets these within the framework of wider debates about civil society and the future of the Welfare State, within the context of increasing marketisation.
 
Chains of interruption: Political pedagogies of representation in women’s and gender museums
Full text linkMy interest over the past two decades has been the gendered nature, politics, and pedagogies of museum practices or representation. Practices of representation consist of language and symbols as well as visuals and objects. They are important because they are pervasive and resilient; we are embedded in and propagate multiple forms of representation on a daily basis. Practices of representation do not simply reflect the world; they shape and bring it into being. They are how we make meaning and sense of and articulate differences in environments, cultural traditions, communities, and other people. In particular, representations are how we forge our own identities and sense of place in the world (Hall, 2013; Kidd, 2015)
Men and Masculinity: A Philosophical Dialogue Approach
Full text linkThis article describes a project where philosophical dialogue was introduced to male community leaders to support them in a critical reflection on the meaning of masculinity.
While it might seem unusual to apply an open-ended philosophical approach to a subject like masculinity, given its natural home in anthropological and sociological domains, this paper aims to show that the practice of philosophical dialogue provides a uniquely productive and fruitful way to engage men in discussion about masculinity