Adult Education in a World “On Speed”

abstract

This paper assesses the implications of globalisation for the social and cultural processes of adult education. It argues that fundamental changes in the nature of space and time in postmodemity render problematic deeply held notions about the role and purpose of adult education. Throughout modernity, emancipatory adult educators strove to resist dominating social forces by contesting their control of the space and time of ordinary people. The advent of new technologies has drastically altered the ways in which domination is effected in postmodemity. Today's enterprises do not attempt to dominate place to ensure efficient production and consumption. Rather, technologies of speed permit them instantly to control the actions of labourers and consumers without regard for distance. Adult educators who continue to understand the world using the geographic categories of modernity will be ill prepared to deal with forms of domination consolidating in the global age.