Editorial: The politics and practices of care

The notion that we are in the midst of a generalised 'care crisis' has steadily gained momentum in public discourse over the last 15 years, often acting as an index of other crises----crises of welfare reform, the pandemic and the unfolding cost-of-living crisis. As useful as this notion may be for galvanising people to act, much rests on the ideological framing both of 'care' and 'crisis'. Since crisis suggests a deviation from the norm, the notion of a care crisis can be mobilised to either highlight perenial inequalities of care or to obfuscate them. It can be mobilised to defend or critique the status quo. Given that this is the case, it is crucial to unpack not only the meaning of care itself but also to ask, 'who cares?' and 'crisis for whom'? (Dowling, 2022). This special issue of Concept explores these critical questions by providing a space for practitioners, academics and activists to explore different ways of thinking about and practising care

Coronavirus, community and solidarity

This short piece seeks to offer a sober yet optimistic speculation on the renewal of community and civic solidarity in the face of the rapidly unfolding coronavirus pandemic. Over the last forty years, social and civic solidarity have been systematically undermined by the neoliberal project. Yet over a decade ago, a global crisis of neoliberal finance capitalism presented us with an unprecedented opportunity to break away from its orthodoxies and rebuild the solidarity necessary for democratic citizenship. Instead, we lived through an astonishing period during which the ‘alchemy of austerity’ reworked the crisis as one of a bloated and inefficient welfare state (Clarke and Newman, 2012). ‘Zombie’ neoliberalism staggered on and inequality grew, as communities across the UK organised to resist austerity and ameliorate the worst effects of brutal cuts and punitive welfare reform. Perversely, a solidaristic rhetoric of ‘sharing the pain’ was invoked to justify the very policies that undermined solidarity: the reduction or closure of essential public services, youth and community centres, public libraries, as well as welfare reforms that the UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights compared to Victorian Poor Laws (Alston, 2018)

Environmental NGOs as adult learning spaces

Review articleFriends of the Earth 40th anniversary conference

Review: Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams (2015) Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

My desire to read ‘Inventing the future’ emerged after happening upon a short provocation called the ‘Accelerationist Manifesto’, also written by this book’s authors (political theorist Nick Srnicek and sociologist Alex Williams) in 2013. These are both polemical works which, whilst not directly about education, surface a number of debates pertinent to educators working for social justice. Accelerationism—a peculiar mix of sci-fi and political theory—starts from the premise that a moribund left must learn to let go of its anachronistic tendencies (the authors label these tendencies ‘folk politics’), by counter-intuitively embracing the breakneck speed of life and labour under neoliberal techno-capitalism. This, as I understand it, is a speculative response to capitalism’s ‘moving contradiction’ of labour, ‘both source of value, and squeezed out by the machine’ (Noys, 2014, p. 97), which it attempts to burst through by embracing full-automation as one necessary condition of a post-capitalist, post-work utopia