Public reason, adult education and social imagination

Abstract

Communities of publics where citizens together develop informed opinion as basis for political decisions is crucial to democracy; and adult education can contribute vitally to such communities. This was argued by two critical social scientists, Charles Wright Mills and Oskar Negt. Researching and writing in different situations and drawing on different traditions, they voiced many of the same concerns about the inequalities and contradictions of modern capitalist societies. Mills and Negt argued that citizens and publics need to grasp the interrelations between society at large and individual lives and troubles. It is also necessary to transgress the immediate reality and its options, to imagine how societies and lives could take different turns, both in negative and positive directions. This article makes a case that imaginative fiction literature can help critical social science and adult education in promoting such social imagination.

Keywords

• adult education
• democracy
• liberal education
• science fiction
• sociological imagination
• trade union