Close, yet so far apart: Bridging social movement theory with popular education (original) (raw)

While the study of popular education has thematic proximity to the social movement literature, it is not a terrain of systematic research and theorising by social movement scholars. On the other side of the equation, while scholars of popular education may frequently invoke terms such as ‘social movement’ and ‘activism’, the tools of social movement theory are rarely put to use within this literature. That these two literatures are so close, but so far apart is rather astonishing given their overlapping concerns for issues of resistance, solidarity, democratisation and social transformation. In this essay, I address the gap between social movement studies and popular education studies, and then proceed to engage in some initial bridge-building work by discussing the concept of ‘free space’.