Learning landscapes in Europe: Historical perspectives on organised adult learning 1917-1939

In a previous article addressing the ‘social organisation of adult learning practices’ in Europe in the period 1500 to 1914, the point of departure was a critique of the ‘institutional fallacy’ in the historiography of ‘adult education’ in many countries. Historical narratives predominantly tend to focus on descriptive categories of those phenomena manifesting the ‘institutional’ structures and practices that constitute the generally accepted and ‘preferred histories’ of distinctive national traditions of ‘adult education.’ Such narratives serve to construct an historical lineage for the development of long-standing forms of ‘adult education’, often with a strong celebratory purpose. However, these ‘nationalist’ institutional narratives of ‘successful’ innovations frequently manipulate the historical record with the exclusion of ‘unsuccessful’ institutions or innovations considered as having ‘failed’. Critical historiography seeks to correct the historical record through the active recovery of contributions made by otherwise ‘unremembered’, plainly ‘inconvenient’, and simply ‘embarrassing’ phenomena. Such acts of historical recovery are significantly and systematically associated with alternative, radical, subversive, and revolutionary social groups and cultural movements. The standard work on Dutch workers’ education in the early twentiethcentury, for example, devotes one footnote among 391 pages, to the repertoire of adult learning activities organised by the Union of Social Democratic Women’s Clubs (Hake et al, 1984). This suggests that the historiography of organised adult learning practices must necessarily resort to revisiting ‘forgotten sites’ of struggle, in this case an autonomous women’s organisation, that do not sit happily with widely accepted histories of ‘workers education.’ This suggests, furthermore, that the social organisation of adult learning activities can only be meaningfully comprehended in terms of the reframing of their more complex historical articulations with broader economic, social, political, and cultural forces in society.Nel precedente articolo riguardante la “organizzazione sociale delle pratiche di educazione degli adulti” in Europa nel periodo che va dal 1500 al 1914, il punto di partenza è stato una critica della “fallacia istituzionale” nella storiografia della “adult education” in molti paesi. Le narrazioni storiche tendono prevalentemente a concentrarsi su categorie descrittive di quei fenomeni, illustrando le strutture e le pratiche “istituzionali” che costituiscono le “storie privilegiate” e generalmente accettate delle particolari tradizioni nazionali di “educazione degli adulti”. Tali narrazioni sono utili per costruire una linearità storica per lo sviluppo di forme di “educazione degli adulti” di lunga durata, spesso con un forte carattere celebrativo. Tuttavia, queste narrazioni “nazionaliste” istituzionali di innovazioni “riuscite” spesso manipolano la cronaca storica attraverso l’esclusione delle istituzioni “fallite” o delle innovazioni considerate “infruttuose”. La storiografia critica cerca di correggere la cronaca storica attraverso il recupero attivo dei contributi apportati da fenomeni altrimenti “dimenticati”, del tutto “scomodi” o semplicemente “imbarazzanti”. Tali azionidi recupero storico sono associate significativamente e sistematicamente ai gruppi sociali e ai movimenti culturali alternativi, radicali, sovversivi e rivoluzionari. Il testo base sull’educazione dei lavoratori olandesi all’inizio del ventesimo secolo, per esempio, su 391 pagine dedica una nota a piè di pagina al repertorio delle attività di educazione degli adulti organizzate dall’Unione dei Circoli delle Donne Social Democratiche (Hake et al., 1984). Questo suggerisce che la storiografia delle pratiche organizzate di educazione degli adulti deve necessariamente fare ricorso alla rivisitazione dei “luoghi di battaglia dimenticati”, in questo caso un’organizzazione autonoma di donne, che non si conciliano felicemente con le storie della “educazione dei lavoratori” ampiamente accettate. Ciò indica, inoltre, che l’organizzazione sociale delle attività di educazione degli adulti può essere significativamente compresa nei termini della ricontestualizzazione della loro complessa articolazione storica con le più ampie forze economiche, sociali, politiche e culturali della società

Mapping our way out? Critical reflections on historical research and the 1972 Faure report

Contributions to the literature have postulated an historical shift in policy narratives from the Faure report’s formulation of “lifelong education” for UNESCO in 1972 to a focus on “lifelong learning” since the mid-1990s. It has also been argued that the policy narrative articulated by de-schoolers in the early 1970s was incorporated in the Faure report. This paper critically examines the empirical foundations for such arguments and is based on a re-reading of the policy repertoire articulated by Faure’s report together with an analysis of the de-schoolers’ reception of the report in the early 1970s. Based upon a re-reading of primary texts and secondary sources from the 1970s, the analysis demonstrates that these widely accepted arguments constitute a problematic interpretation of the historical relationships between the key policy narratives in the 1970s. The conclusions identify a number of significant areas for further empirical research regarding the historical relationships between first generation policy narratives. (DIPF/Orig.

Proteomic Interrogation of Human Chromatin

Chromatin proteins provide a scaffold for DNA packaging and a basis for epigenetic regulation and genomic maintenance. Despite understanding its functional roles, mapping the chromatin proteome (i.e. the “Chromatome”) is still a continuing process. Here, we assess the biological specificity and proteomic extent of three distinct chromatin preparations by identifying proteins in selected chromatin-enriched fractions using mass spectrometry-based proteomics. These experiments allowed us to produce a chromatin catalog, including several proteins ranging from highly abundant histone proteins to less abundant members of different chromatin machinery complexes. Using a Normalized Spectral Abundance Factor approach, we quantified relative abundances of the proteins across the chromatin enriched fractions giving a glimpse into their chromosomal abundance. The large-scale data sets also allowed for the discovery of a variety of novel post-translational modifications on the identified chromatin proteins. With these comparisons, we find one of the probed methods to be qualitatively superior in specificity for chromatin proteins, but inferior in proteomic extent, evidencing a compromise that must be made between biological specificity and broadness of characterization. Additionally, we attempt to identify proteins in eu- and heterochromatin, verifying the enrichments by characterizing the post-translational modifications detected on histone proteins from these chromatin regions. In summary, our results provide insights into the value of different methods to extract chromatin-associated proteins and provide starting points to study the factors that may be involved in directing gene expression and other chromatin-related processes

Late 1920s film theory and criticism as a test-case for Benjamin’s generalizations on the experiential effects of editing

This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization that the effects of cinema are akin to the hyper-stimulating experience of modernity. More specifically, I focus on his oft-cited 1935/36 claim that all editing elicits shock-like disruption. First, I propose a more detailed articulation of the experience of modernity understood as hyper-stimulation and call for distinguishing between at least two of its subsets: the experience of speed and dynamism, on the one hand, and the experience of shock/disruption, on the other. Then I turn to classical film theory of the late 1920s to demonstrate the existence of contemporary views on editing alternative to Benjamin’s. For instance, whereas classical Soviet and Weimar theorists relate the experience of speed and dynamism to both Soviet and classical Hollywood style editing, they reserve the experience of shock/disruption for Soviet montage. In order to resolve the conceptual disagreement between these theorists, on the one hand, and Benjamin, on the other, I turn to late 1920s Weimar film criticism. I demonstrate that, contrary to Benjamin’s generalizations about the disruptive and shock-like nature of all editing, and in line with other theorists’ accounts, different editing practices were regularly distinguished by comparison to at least two distinct hyper-stimulation subsets: speed and dynamism, and shock-like disruption. In other words, contemporaries regularly distinguished between Soviet montage and classical Hollywood editing patterns on the basis of experiential effects alone. On the basis of contemporary reviews of city symphonies, I conclude with a proposal for distinguishing a third subset – confusion. This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Early Popular Visual Culture on 02 Aug 2016 available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2016.1199322

Networks in Auxology: proceedings of the 31st Aschauer Soiree, held at Aschau, Germany, June 17th 2023

Thirty-four scientists met for the annual Auxological conference held at Aschau, Germany, to particularly discuss the interaction between social factors and human growth, and to highlight several topics of general interest for the regulation of human growth. Humans are social mammals. We show and share personal interests and needs, and we are able to strategically adjust size according to social position, with love and hope being prime factors in the regulation of growth. In contrast to Western societies, where body size has been shown to be an important predictor of socioeconomic status, egalitarian societies without formalized hierarchy and material wealth-dependent social status do not appear to similarly integrate body size and social network. Social network structures can be modeled by Monte Carlo simulation. Modeling dominance hierarchies suggests that winner-loser effects play a pivotal role in robust self-organization that transcends the specifics of the individual. Further improvements of the St. Nicolas House analysis using re-sampling/bootstrap techniques yielded encouraging results for exploring dense networks of interacting variables. The D-score scale, the Infancy-Childhood-Puberty (ICP) growth model and the SuperImposition by Translation And Rotation (SITAR) technique were presented, as well as customized pediatric growth references, and approaches towards a Digital Rare Disease Growth Chart Library. First attempts with a mobile phone application were presented to investigate the associations between maternal pre-pregnancy overweight, gestational weight gain, and the child’s future motor development. Clinical contributions included growth patterns of individuals with Silver-Russell syndrome, and treatment burden in children with growth hormone deficiency. Contributions on sports highlighted the fallacy inherent in disregarding the biological maturation status when interpreting physical performance outcomes. The meeting explored the complex influence of nutrition and lifestyle on menarcheal age of Lithuanian girls and emphasized regional trends in height of Austrian recruits. Examples of the psychosocial stress caused by the forced migration of modern Kyrgyz children and Polish children after World War II were presented, as well as the effects of nutritional stress during and after World War I. The session concluded with a discussion of recent trends in gun violence affecting children and adolescents in the United States, and aspects of life history theory using the example of ”Borderline Personality Disorder.” The features of this disorder are consistent with the notion that it reflects a ”fast” life history strategy, with higher levels of allostatic load, higher levels of aggression, and greater exposure to both childhood adversity and chronic stress. The results were discussed in light of evolutionary guided research. In all contributions presented here, written informed consent was obtained from all participants in accordance with institutional Human investigation committee guidelines in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki amended October 2013, after information about the procedures used

Learning landscapes in Europe: Historical perspectives on organised adult learning 1500-1914

This paper explores the history of ‘socially organised adult learning’ in Europe. All too often, the historiography of adult learning is compromised by hagiographies of well-rememberedorganisational innovations that mark the standard national histories of ‘adult education’ in different European countries. As is the case with the history of ‘education’, as the ‘history of schools’, the history of ‘adult education’ is likewise largely narrated from the perspective of those social institutions that refer to themselves, and are recognised by others, as constituting national traditions of ‘adult education’. From the perspective of a critical history of socially organised adult learning, dominant contemporary discourse on ‘adult education’ reduces historical analysis and description to under-theorised categories of specific forms of institutionalised forms of ‘adult education’, which have developed since ‘nation states’ first engaged in the organisation of ‘education’ in the early nineteenth century. Recent interest in trans-national history has also tended to reinforce the focus on nation states as the unit of analysis concerning policy questions. These approaches have largely failed to capture cross-cultural influences at work in the historical development of organised adult learning, particularly prior to the establishment of nation statesin the 19th century, and have also failed to address the historical contributions of nonstate actors, such as political, social, and religious movements, to the organisation of adult learning.Questo articolo esplora la storia della “educazione degli adulti socialmente organizzata” in Europa. Sempre più spesso, la storiografia dell’educazione degli adulti è compromessa con le agiografie delle innovazioni organizzative ben note che fissano le storie nazionali ufficiali della “educazione degli adulti” nei diversi paesi europei. Così come nel caso della storia della “educazione”, o della “storia della scuola”, anche la storia della “educazione degli adulti” è ampiamente narrata dalla prospettiva di quelle istituzioni che si riferiscono a sè stesse, e sono riconosciute dalle altre, come quelle che costituiscono le tradizioni nazionali della “educazione degli adulti”. Dalla prospettiva di una storia critica dell’educazione degli adulti socialmente organizzata, il discorso contemporaneo dominante sulla “educazione degli adulti” riduce l’analisi e la descrizione storica a categorie teoreticamente insufficienti di tipologie specifiche di forme istituzionali di “educazione degli adulti”, che si sono sviluppate dal momento in cui gli “stati nazione” per la prima volta si impegnano nell’organizzazione della “educazione”, all’inizio del secolo XIX. Il recente interesse verso la storia trans-nazionale ha teso inoltre a rafforzare il focus sugli stati nazionali come l’unità di analisi riguardante le questioni politiche. Questi approcci hanno ampiamente fallito nel comprendere le influenze cross-culturali all’opera nello sviluppo storico dell’educazione degli adulti organizzata, in particolare prima della fondazione degli stati nazionali nel secolo XIX, e hanno inoltre mancato di affrontare i contributi storici all’organizzazione dell’educazione degli adulti offerti da attori non-statali, come i movimenti politici, sociali e religiosi

Looking forward backwards. Varieties of capitalisms, alternative futures, and learning landscapes

Critiques of capitalism have constituted the backbone of political economies addressing living, working, and learning conditions in a variety of forms of capitalism. This paper explores different approaches to representations of the future of (adult) education in capitalist Europe. It examines the 1960s and 1970s as a period when rapid technological change was addressed in studies of the future of Europe by proponents of post-industrial society, New Left public intellectuals, professional futurologists, and critics of late capitalism. These studies envisaged quite different futures for both society and organised adult learning. Attention is subsequently focused on the pan-European project Educating Man for the 21st Century during the early 1970s which envisaged the future as ‘neoindustrial / neo-capitalist society’ in the year 2000. In conclusion, the paper offers a critical account of early encounters with neoliberal politics during the 1970s and early 1980s, particularly the cultural materialist work of Raymond Williams. (DIPF/Orig.

Regulatory governance of 'training markets', 'market failure', and 'quasi' markets: historical dimensions of the post-initial training market in The Netherlands

This article examines regulatory governance of the post-initial training market in The Netherlands. From an historical perspective on policy formation processes, it examines market formation in terms of social, economic, and cultural factors in the development of provision and demand for post-initial training; the roles of stakeholders in the longterm construction of regulatory governance of the market; regulation of and public providers; policy responses to market failure; and tripartite division of responsibilities between the state, social partners, commercial and publicly-funded providers. Historical description and analysis examine policy narratives of key stakeholders with reference to: a) influence of societal stakeholders on regulatory decision-making; b) state regulation of the post-initial training market; c) public intervention regulating the market to prevent market failure; d) market deregulation, competition, employability and individual responsibility; and, e) regulatory governance to prevent 'allocative failure' by the market in non-delivery of post-initial training to specific target groups, particularly the low-qualified. Dominant policy narratives have resulted in limited state regulation of the supply-side, a tripartite system of regulatory governance by the state, social partners and commercial providers as regulatory actors. Current policy discourses address interventions on the demand-side to redistribute structures of opportunity throughout the life courses of individuals. Further empirical research from a comparative historical perspective is required to deepen contemporary understandings of regulatory governance of markets and the commodification of adult learning in knowledge societies and information economies