Education for a 'counter-hegemonic ' citizenship

This paper explores orthodox and unorthodox, or hegemonic and counter-hegemonic (Gramsci, 1971) conceptions of the global economy/economics and the individual as represented in selected educational materials and literature, relating these to differing conceptions of citizenship. On the hegemonic side, I look at literature which deals with, principally, orthodox economics ’ conception of the individual in the economy. On the counter-hegemonic side, I contrast this literature with selected popular and labour education curricula and resources dealing with issues of the global economy, again highlighting conceptions of the individual within these texts. By extension and as a summative exercise, I link these differing representations of economy, global economy and globalization with distinct modes of education for citizenship, where I conceive the popular and labour education materials analyzed to be representative of an ‘education for counter-hegemonic citizenship’. Throughout this comparison and analysis, I keep in mind- in the spirit of Freire’s (1968, 1973) critical pedagogy- a ‘generative theme ’ of ‘globalizations ’ to serve as an integrating idea for the research as a whole. This generative theme draws on the framework offered by Brecher et al (2000) of ‘globalizations ’ from ‘above and below’. These writers, as well as others who share thi