Anders Burman

This article examines the Swedish debate on Bildung from the early nineteenth century to the present, treating Bildung as a fundamentally contested concept whose meanings have been repeatedly redefined. Drawing on books, scholarly journals, government reports, educational policy documents, and press materials, the study combines intellectual-historical contextualisation with a conceptual-historical approach. The analysis focuses on three periods in which debates on Bildung have been particularly intense in Sweden: the era of idealism and neo-humanism in the early nineteenth century; the period of social movements and national romanticism around the turn of the twentieth century; and the contemporary context shaped by neoliberalism and right-wing populism since the 1990s. Across these phases, Bildung has been mobilised by different social groups and political actors as an academic ideal, a civic and popular project, and a conservative or nationalistic programme. The article argues that, despite persistent disagreements over its meaning, Bildung has recurrently functioned in Sweden as a critical counter-concept to instrumental and utilitarian understandings of education, thereby reflecting broader European intellectual conflicts over culture, education, and politics.

From texts first published in 1972 up to her most recent work, this volume consists of seven articles that discuss Martha Nussbaum's work focusing on her treatments of ancient philosophy, civic education and liberal humanism. The volume provides a general overview of these three aspects of Nussbaum's philosophy and raises some concerns and critical questions about specific parts of her work. In addition, the volume is thematically organized; some articles deal with Nussbaum's readings and uses of ancient philosophers--specifically, Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, respectively--while the others examine her views on liberal education, cosmopolitanism, human rights and aging.

Drawing on his anthropological field work in Bolivia in the midst of profound social and political change, the author examines the attitudes of various interlocutors toward knowledge, and in particular the important differences between “hegemonic theories of knowledge and indigenous epistemologies, between propositional and non-propositional knowledge, between knowledge of the world and knowledge from within the world, or between representationalist and relational ways of knowing.” He stresses that there is “no absolute dividing line,” no “clear-cut dichotomies after almost 500 years of asymmetric and colonial intermingling of epistemologies and knowledge systems from different traditions.” Nonetheless, relational ways of knowing and indigenous traditions of thought continue to be systematically treated as inferior. However, they are still present and are currently making themselves felt at the university.