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It then explores how resistance to dominant “truths” can emerge through democratic, local, face-to-face educational communities that foster rigorous critical reflection, particularly amid social and economic crisis in adult and community learning.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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\nThe question of power is central to our understanding of social life. But what is power and how does it operate? At one level, there is a divide between social classes, reproduced by the state through it laws and policies, the way it distributes resources, and the way it enforcesit achieves legitimacy through the media, education and religion (Althusser, 1971) . But, as Foucault (1994) reminded us, power is not simply about class and the state and the various apparatuses that legitimate and maintain its power. It exists in the way we think, in how we see, read and interpret the world, and in discourses and practices that create disciplined, well-controlled bodies. Foucault turned the relationship between knowledge and power upside down. He argued that it was not so much that knowledge makes us powerful but, rather, that power in the form of expert discourses – he focused particularly on human sciences – creates knowledge which masquerades as truth. For example, we live in a world capitalist system that produces economic truths that we cannot survive without limited corporations and the pursuit of profit. It was the same economic discourse that announced that there was no necessary econometric rationale for the boom togo bust; that we cannot do without private banks; that there is no other option to the free market.  \nThe question, then becomes whether it is possible to think outside the box of truths that are taken as gospel? When, where, how and among whom is there resistance to these taken-for-granted truths? I am not convinced that resistance can emerge within the education system, particularly at third level, within philosophy, sociology or the human sciences. I think it can only come through a form of educational practice that is embedded in local face-to-face democratic communities. It is through a rigorous practice of learning together of rigor-  \nPrevious Back to contents Next  \nous critical reflection about the way power distorts the search for truth, that organic intellectual communities can be fostered and developed.  \nI argue that the resistance against the grand narratives or universal truths of our age is best achieved through the cultivation and development of local narratives and truths which are subject to continuous debate and critical reflection within a democratic learning environment. I believe that the opportunity to create such a learning society is particularly strong within communities that have been brought to the brink of destruction through high unemployment, poor housing, discrimination, crime and drugs. It is through resisting power at local level that a new lasting theory and understanding of power can be developed. It may well be that a time of economic recession, in which the legitimacy of institutions such as the Catholic Church, the banks, the state and the market are beginning to be questioned, there is an opportunity for those involved in adult and community education to generate a new debate about power, to develop new ways of learning, to create new truths. There is a need, I believe, for a new agenda for adult learning. My aim in this article is to tease out some of the issues involved in fulfilling this agenda. We are in a new period of ideological turmoil which, as in the past, provides an opportunity for thinking and acting differently.  \nThinking and acting outside the box  \nLooking back over the last fifty years in Ireland, we can identify periods of what Swidler (1986) calls relative ideological calm and other periods of contestation and conflict. In the heydays ofthe Catholic Church’s domination of Irish culture–up to the end of the 1960s–everything seemed settled. There were subaltern, alternative forms of culture, but itwas difficult to act or even think outside the Catholic box. In the 1970s many Catholics, particularly women, began to develop a new image and sense of who they wer","cbCaidluVz6wPQ3o","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidluVz6wPQ3o","pdf",108805,15,"English","# The question of power\n## Knowledge, power, and expert discourses\n# Resistance and learning beyond universal truths\n## Democratic local narratives\n# Thinking and acting outside the box\n## Ideological calm and turmoil in Ireland","[{\"question\":\"How does the article describe the relationship between power and social life?\",\"answer\":\"It explains that power operates through state reproduction of class, the distribution and enforcement of resources, and legitimization via media, education, and religion.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the article say Foucault changed about how to think about knowledge and power?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that power, through expert discourses (notably in human sciences), creates knowledge that disguises itself as truth, reversing the idea that knowledge alone makes people powerful.\"},{\"question\":\"Where does the article claim resistance to dominant truths is most likely to emerge?\",\"answer\":\"It suggests resistance is unlikely to grow within formal education systems alone, and instead is fostered through educational practice embedded in local democratic communities.\"}]","Power, Pleasure and Community in a Learning Society | PDF",1792066999,38]