Belonging in a learning community: The re-imagined university and imagined social capital

Abstract

The notion of learning community has assumed an important position in discussions about the education of adults. The vision of a network of learning communities each producing forms of social capital is actively promoted as the key to lifelong learning. Universities are increasingly being positioned within this network. This article explores and critiques the notion of learning community and how it is deployed as an agent of regulation and incorporation. It argues that Iris Marion Young's ideal of the ‘unoppressive city’ is more helpful in understanding how universities are being experienced and re-imagined than are other visions of learning communities. The paper draws on UK-based and international research on women and belonging in the university to explore the significance of imagined communities and to stress the importance of the university as a space of fantasy. It argues that such imagined communities produce a significant form of social capital: imagined social capital. It concludes that this process can offer mutuality without incorporation, thus recouping the notion of community further than Young's critique would allow, but providing something very different to the idea of the learning community, as it is usually espoused.

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