Abstract

Feminist popular education has developed in recent decades, as this book abundantly demonstrates. It is an important form of social activism, in dialogue with major strands of feminist practice and theory. Drawing on and critiquing the tradition of community education and political work associated with Paulo Freire, as well as the fields of adult education and feminist pedagogy, its concerns are the education methodologies and learning strategies that lead to women's empowerment. This book is a collection of critical reflections on feminist adult education work in grassroots organizations, development projects, formal institutions and community education programmes in a wide variety of countries including South Africa, India, the United States, Canada, Malaysia, the Philippines and Australia. The contributors come from a variety of positions in the range of feminist discourses and enliven their focus on methodology with engaging shifts between personal narrative, experiential analysis, theoretical contextualization and evocative description. Their willingness to be self-critical and to experiment with new applications of concepts and practices make this book a valuable addition to an increasingly important field.