Towards an Economy of Lifelong Learning: Reconceptualising Relations Between Learning and Life

Lifelong learning should embrace more than instrumental purposes. Some late modern social formations threaten individual autonomy, subordinating the needs of 'agent'in a 'locality'to universalising rationality, necessary for growth in a globalized and virtualised economy. These phenomena are discussed and illustrated. Learning, now an'economic' activity, could bind individuals in heteronymously defined lifeworlds. Prerequisites of an alternative conceptualisation are examined.