Cartographical Imaginations: Spatiality, Adult Education and Lifelong Learning.

Recent empirical and theoretical literature in cultural geography, feminist and postcolonial philosophy, cultural studies, and political economy, was explored in an examination of the significance of spatiality to the changes taking place in the policy, practice, and study of adult education and lifelong learning. The following were among the key findings: (1) a cartographical imagination may be helpful in modeling the experience of adult education in a world of shifting boundaries and risky journeys; (2) where educational programs are "located" not only influences their purposes and processes but also helps produce the power that participants in education exercise in society; (3) understanding the geographics of power requires understanding that knowledge, power, and space/place closely intertwine to frame social practices in education; (4) adult educators must become knowledge-power brokers and must make their position in a terrain constructed by unequal distribution of symbolic and material benefits clear; (5) Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a promising resource for theorizing lifelong learning because it focuses on how new knowledge comes to be produced; and (6) in accordance with ANT, learners' locations are defined not only in terms Euclidean space but also in terms of network space, which defines the network or actors within which learners can become knowledge producers. (23 references) (MN)