Global Pedagogies and Communities of Meaning and Hope: Education in a Time of Global Fragmentation

Abstract

It is no shock that there is a growing hunger for communities where people can feel recognized and needed (Putnam 2000; Bellah et al. 1985). This is not a problem that we face only here in the USA. It is clear that there is, in many countries and places, a yearning to feel a part of something that is larger than the very small sphere of our private lives. Whether this takes the form of a resurgent nationalism in some situations, religious communities with almost a tribal identity elsewhere, or groups that unite people behind the commonality of race, ethnicity, or geographical region, it is quite clear that our atomizing and fragmented world is producing alternative forms of human relationships that give individuals the feeling of being a part of something that transcends their own limited lives (Bauman 2001). The price of worldly success in our materialistic, consumer‐driven, competitive world is increasingly experienced, even by those who have done well by it, as being spiritually and emotionally too high.