The OECD, neoliberalism, and the learning city: promoting human capital in the guise of lifelong learning
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Date
2009-04-09T17:27:52Z
Authors
MacPhail, J. Scott
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Abstract
In this thesis I investigate the concept of the learning city; a concept which has
attracted the attention of a growing number of adult education theorists. Many of these
theorists expound the virtues of the learning city, but it is my claim that they do so
without any clear sense of how or why the notion was first postulated. I believe the
origins and underlying purpose of the concept of the learning city is largely unexamined
or taken for granted by its most avid promoters. In particular, its chief advocates rarely
locate the origins and development of the learning city in the neoliberal policy discourses
that transpired in the OECD and the EU during the 1970s to the 1990s. In this thesis I
conduct a close examination of these policy discourses which reveal that the learning city
was initially formulated and subsequently promoted to support a neoliberal policy agenda
aimed at fostering unfettered global economic development.
I argue that the notion of the learning city, linked as it has been to OECD policy and
the neoliberal agenda, has many drawbacks. Chief amongst these is the ways the OECD
notion of the learning city further exacerbates existing global inequalities amongst cities.
The neoliberal learning city competes unfairly with urban contexts in the developing
world. Rather than promoting equitable social development, the OECD learning city
strives to out compete all rivals (including those cities woefully incapable of playing the
globalization game).
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Keywords
Adult education , Continuing education , Community development, urban , Education and globalization , Government policy , Human capital