"The book on offer here is fascinating. I do not think it is proper
to classify it as 'philosophy' or 'sociology' or 'comparative
education'. It is a work sui generis. Its cultural and historical
range is extraordinary. Its illustrations are themselves arresting.
Its literature is well outside disciplinary conventions and ranges
across a number of languages. Mirabile dictu!" Professor Robert
Cowen How have modern societies arrived at assuming: * Culture is
non-essential! * Higher education is to train economically but not
socio-politically active & engaged citizens! * Economic wealth
is the most important and prominent form of individual and national
assets! * Precariousness and socio-economic gaps are due to
individuals' skills and capacities but not the failure of legal,
political, and social systems! * Freedom and equality are about
"choices in having" but not necessarily about "ways of being and
becoming"! Torabian argues these assumptions have not been
constructed overnight and that COVID-19 has simply revealed their
long-term fabrication and impact since the 1970s. This book is a
fascinating voyage from the Middle Ages to today. It travels across
different socio-cultural and political contexts drawing on arts,
literary works, music, philosophical thoughts, economic and social
concepts. It explores value systems and perceptions of wealth,
poverty, and inequality and depicts the mutual impact and shifting
role of (higher) education and culture and societies- particularly
when related to social revolutions, political participation, and
collective quests for equality and justice across time and spaces.
Examining instrumentalisation of culture and education by the
powerful elite, Torabian delineates mechanisms through which values
are fabricated and imposed on the masses. Drawing on some catching
examples, she explains the authoritarian elite do so through
visible rewards and punishments, while in capitalist societies
power remains invisible and indirect. In both contexts, though, she
skilfully demonstrates, the powerful groups transform the role and
meaning of culture and higher education to facilitate normalisation
and internalisation of their fabricated value system among the
masses. Consequently, Torabian celebrates the recently accelerated
quest for socio-ecological justice and sustainability across
societies as a fortunate cosmopolitan shift. This, she believes,
announces a rupture with the dominant capitalist ideology that has
reigned the world since the 1970s through celebrity culture, media,
propaganda, and by reducing higher education to an economic
activity. The pursuit of a socio-ecological contract based on
fairness, justice, and participation, Torabian argues, requires a
renewed value system in which the socio-political role of culture
and higher education can be revitalised. To this end, she
introduces an innovative framework, i.e., the Big Wealth Pie (the
topic of the author's upcoming book in this series) and proposes
using transgressive education, resistance pedagogy, and teaching
ignorance. She reckons such a social contract can be a global
reality if "being" replaces the capitalist ideology of "having"; a
process that can be started and reified by questioning what is or
is not essential in socio-ecologically just societies. The book is
thought-provoking and timely in questioning values and social
institutions that have normalised precariousness, inequality, and
poverty within a consumerist logic.
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