1st Edition

Higher Education in Liquid Modernity

By Marvin Oxenham Copyright 2013

    Based in sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity, this volume describes and critiques key aspects and practices of liquid education--education as market-driven consumption, short life span of useful knowledge, overabundance of information--through a systematic comparison with ancient Greek paideia and medieval university education, producing a sweeping analysis of the history and philosophy ofeducation for the purpose of understanding current higher education, positing a more holisitic alternative model in which students are embedded in a learning commutity that is itself embedded in a larger society. If liquid modernity has left a vacuum where, according to Bauman, the pilot’s cabin is empty, this volume argues that no structure is better positioned to fill this vacuum than the university and outlines a renewed vision of social transformation through higher education.

     

     

    Part I: Exordium  1. Higher Education and Change  Part II: Narratio: The Definition of Liquid Education  2. Liquid Modernity  3. Liquid Education  Part III: Confirmatio: The Reality of Liquid Education  4. Liquefied Authority  5. Liquefied Culture  6. Liquefied Reason  7. Liquefied Structure  Part IV: Reprehensio: The Inferno of Liquid Education  8. Introducing the Inferno  9. Emaciated Education  10. Education in the Empty Agora  11. Consuming Education  12. Educational Anxiety  13. Responding to Liquid Education 

    Biography

    Marvin Oxenham is in the Education department at Kings College London, UK.