Social Inclusion and Intercultural Dialogue

The paper reviews the intercultural dialogue European and international context and it discusses it in relation to issues of social inclusion and transformative learning. It argues that the matrix of thought that provides the dominant frame of reference and world view rooted in Western European thinking is a sense of the world that views nature as a mechanism that is enmeshed in mechanical forces, a prevailing attention for the individual over the collective dimension. This is visible in mainstream economics have reduced the variety and wealth of social agency to two types of individuals, docile bodies and strangers, neither of whom is fit to sustain a social practice based on knowledge as emancipation. A key dimension of critical resistance education concerns what Paolo Freire called a submerged state of consciousness.We are dealing with an unprecedented saturation of information although our knowledge does not necessarily make us conscious. Information is often disconnected from usefulness. Information diversity becomes as critical to our long term survival as biodiversity. The critical examination of hierarchical power is another essential dimension of critical transformative learning addressed by the paper.