Life Chances, Education and Social Movements

Lyle Munro

Description

A study of how education and social movements can enhance the life chances of individuals and disadvantaged groups

'Life Chances, Education and Social Movements' explains the sociology of life chances; the opportunities and experiences of different generations in Australia, the United States and the UK; and how the differential distribution of life-enhancing opportunities affects our well-being. Ralf Dahrendorf’s life-chances theory is used to support the theoretical and empirical arguments in Lyle Munro’s book. For Dahrendorf, education is arguably the most important option individuals can utilise for improving their well-being and for overcoming social and economic disadvantages. While there are countless sociological accounts of inequality, Munro’s study takes a different and novel approach based on Dahrendorf’s model, according to which education and social movements and their networks function to enhance the life chances of individuals and social groups respectively.

Introduction; Part I The Sociology of Life Chances; 1. Life Chances in Theory and Practice; 2. Generations and Life Chances; 3. The Inequality Spectrum; Part II Education Institutions and Movements; 4. The Necessity of Education; 5. The Widening Participation Movement; 6. The Lifelong Learning Movement; Part III The Transformative Power of Social Movements; 7. Social Justice Movements; 8. Risk Movements against Existential Threats; 9. Student, Worker and Citizen Movements; Conclusion; Index.

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• EDUCATION
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Political opportunity
• Advocacy

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783089963
• Langue: English

Extrait

Life Chances, Education and Social Movements
Life Chances, Education and Social Movements
Lyle Munro
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © Lyle Munro 2019
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-994-9 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-994-6 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Part I The Sociology of Life Chances
Introduction
1 Life Chances in Theory and Practice
2 Generations and Life Chances
3 The Inequality Spectrum
Part II Education Institutions and Movements
4 The Necessity of Education
5 The Widening Participation Movement
6 The Lifelong Learning Movement
Part III The Transformative Power of Social Movements
7 Social Justice Movements
8 Risk Movements Confront Existential Threats
9 Student, Worker and Citizen Movements
Conclusion
References
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
1.1 The Main Determinants of Life Chances over the Life Course
2.1 Coming of Age during the Wars of the Twentieth Century
3.1 The Inequality Spectrum
4.1 The Cycle of Disadvantage
5.1 Different Cohorts of Students at Sydney University from the 1850s to the Present
8.1 A Selection of Global Existential Threats
Tables
2.1 The Historical Setting of the Harvard Grant Study Birth Cohort
2.2 Young Female Workers’ Occupational Aspirations Compared to Their Actual Destinations in the Three Most Popular Industries
3.1 Contrasting the Well-being of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians in 2005
4.1 Liberal and Vocational Characteristics
7.1 Correspondence between Various Perspectives on Social Movements
7.2 Structures of Domination and the Four Giants of Inequality
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to record my sincere thanks to a number of institutions and individuals for their assistance in writing this book. When I first began to think about the topic, Monash University and then Federation University Australia provided the necessary facilities without which the book would not have been completed. These facilities included a room with a view at the attractive Gippsland campus in regional Victoria and access to the excellent library resources at both Monash and Federation University; the latter also facilitated access to the extensive collection of library materials at the University of Melbourne. I am especially grateful to the librarians of these universities who were consistently willing and able to offer their services, especially Myles Strous at Federation University whose professionalism and expert understanding of online research and computer software saved many hours of research time for which I am very grateful; Myles also provided much welcome relief from the frustration involved in dealing with computer hiccups in the final stages of the production. Roberta West, Research Officer in the School of Arts at Federation University, was always ready to lend assistance on administrative and research matters.
I would like to thank a number of individuals from a variety of professional and academic fields who have been most helpful in responding to my requests for comments on the contents of the book. Les Hardy and Geoff Clark were enthusiastic and critical readers from the beginning, offering detailed comments from different academic perspectives. It was a challenge to accommodate their sometimes conflicting views, but as for all the other comments on the various chapters by different readers, I take responsibility for the choices I made. Those who offered useful comments and encouragement for which I am grateful included the following individuals: Alistair and Diana Carr, Martin Elliot, Lindsay Fitzclarence, Cynthia Karena, Chris Lord, Ebonnie Lord, Rex McGowan, Michael Stolz, Richard Webber and Keith Wilson. Thanks also to Michelle Prezioso for the design of the front cover and to Kate Zizys and her colleagues Irene Proebsting and David Hollis who provided the badge design for the back cover.
It will be clear to the reader that I have been influenced by the work of a number of sociologists, most of whom have been cited in the book. The most important of these is the late Ralf Dahrendorf, the distinguished academic, university director and politician whose monograph on Life Chances, published exactly 40 years ago, inspired the writing of the book.
To Anthem Press I offer my thanks to Tej Sood, Anthem’s publisher and managing director, who initiated and supported the project from the beginning. Thanks also to the several editorial assistants I had the pleasure to deal with; they have all been patient and professional in their communications during the production process. I especially want to thank the copy editor whose thorough checking of the manuscript greatly improved the text.
All authors need a good editor and apart from Anthem’s staff, I was very fortunate to have one living under the same roof. Jennifer Barlow, to whom this book is dedicated, has applied her highly developed writing skills and keen eye to making stylistic improvements in every chapter. Danke Schatz.
Part I
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LIFE CHANCES
INTRODUCTION
There are three parts to the book as implied in the title. Part I explains the ‘sociology of the life-chances’ concept based on Ralf Dahrendorf ’s reworking of Max Weber ’s original idea and its relationship to the well-being of individuals and generations. Part II describes the transformative power and necessity of education in the lives of individuals and the role of education movements , specifically the widening participation movement and the lifelong learning movement. Part III focuses on social movements (SMs) aimed at improving the life chances (LCs) of human and non-human animals; the chapters include the social justice movement, risk movements against threats to the planet and movements instigated by students, workers and citizens. The book mainly centres on Australia, with comparative examples and case studies from the UK, Europe and the United States.
Dahrendorf ’s monograph Life Chances: Approaches to Social and Political Theory – published four decades ago – provides the theoretical spine of the book’s structure. He argued that LCs were a function of options and ligatures, where options were defined as choices or structural opportunities, and ligatures as linkages or networks. I argue that education via formal institutions and informal groups in the community provides the most important opportunities for enhancing individual LCs. I propose that the linkages in Dahrendorf’s thesis are SM networks of advocates and activists whose campaigns are designed to improve the lives of an increasing number of disadvantaged groups in affluent countries. These are people, perhaps a majority, whose lives continue to be blighted by forces allegedly beyond their control.
A simple way of describing how the three parts of the book are linked is shown in the formula LCs = f (O, L) , where LCs are described as a function ( f ) of options ( O ) and ligatures ( L ). In Chapter 1 of Part I , the theory and practice of LCs are explained including the difference between the ubiquitous term ‘lifestyle’ and – what is arguably of greater importance in the lives of most people – the less developed, life-chances concept or Lebenschancen, as coined by Max Weber and reinterpreted by Dahrendorf in his above-mentioned monograph. Chapter 2 focuses on the LCs of different generations from the early twentieth century to the present. The experiences of these cohorts are documented in several exemplary longitudinal studies in the United States, the UK and Australia. Chapter 3 begins with what I call ‘the inequality spectrum’, along which people’s lives are experienced as positive (defined by their general well-being) or negative (defined by levels of disadvantage). As in the previous chapter, the testimonies of individuals reported in longitudinal studies are used to shed light on the lived experiences of people from different walks of life and from a variety of economic and social circumstances.
The title of Part II on education institutions and SMs is meant to convey the notion of education as a formal social institution (i.e. schools, universities, colleges.) and as a field of SM activity (e.g. widening participation, lifelong learning and community movements). The key idea in Chapter 4 is that a good basic education is a necessity if people are to achieve a decent standard of living, a reasonable quality of life and a healthy level of general well-being. While there are plenty of successful individuals who have not had a formal education , there are few who are able to enjoy a comfortable life if they lack the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and an ability to communi