Book Review: Lifelong Learning In Neoliberal Japan: Risk, Community, and Knowledge

Abstract

In this thought-provoking book Akihiro Ogawa delves into the burgeoning realm of lifelong learning in Japan, with a particular focus on the state as one of its key sponsors. Building on his earlier groundbreaking study, The Failure of Civil Society (SUNY Press, 2009), Ogawa argues that “Japan’s neoliberal state has attempted to reorganize the public sphere by the generation of a new disciplined knowledge based on a strong lifelong learning initiative” (21). He situates the rise of lifelong learning in the context of concerns about risk and risk management, arguing that this style of learning is a response to both governmental and socioeconomic risk. For state officials, lifelong learning becomes a policy tool for counteracting risks by shifting responsibility from states to markets, public to private, and collectivities to individuals, while for individuals lifelong learning emerges as a complex space in which they negotiate processes of Beckian individualization inherent in Japan’s contemporary neoliberal reality. All of this Ogawa sets against the backdrop of discussions in Japan about the so-called “New Public Commons.” According to Ogawa, lifelong learning is often discussed in terms of how it might contribute to this new communal imaginary by producing “comprehensive knowledge” among proactive, problem-solving citizens who aim to reduce risk in the public sphere. As he notes, this problem solving is meant to happen in local communities where “people cooperate to govern aspects of their own lives” (19). Show more