Paradoxes of Solidarity : Democracy and Colonial Legacies in Swedish Popular Education

• Over the years, there have been several attempts to spread the “Swedish model” of popular education, i.e. study circles and folk high schools, to countries in other parts of the world. In this article, we analyze the large-scale project of establishing Folk Development Colleges (FDCs) in Tanzania in the 1970s and 1980s, by emphasizing the ways in which Swedish popular educators have described the FDC project. Theoretically, the article is based on a postcolonial framework, highlighting the continuing importance of the legacies of colonialism in today’s society. One of the main conclusions in the article is that in the process of “exporting” the idea of popular education to other parts of the world, there is an on-going formation of national selfimages in contrast to images of the Other, where there is a constant risk of reproducing ideas from a colonial past.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

popular education

post-colonial theory

folk high schools

Sweden

Tanzania

Folk Development Colleges

Education

Pedagogik

Education

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)