ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that both research and education have been critically deployed in the taming of democracy. Instead of democracy being a process of representing ‘the people’ against powerful interests, democracy is inverted so as to represent powerful interest groups against ‘the people’. Democracy must be rebuilt in the places that it has been so successfully attacked: the workplace, the public sphere, education and, indeed, in politics itself. Both education and research depend upon the principle of freedom and equality for all voices in determining what is ‘real’, ‘good’, ‘desirable’, do-able’. Countervailing research, curriculum and pedagogical practices emerged during the post-war period, drawing upon democratic and critical legacies. The subversive use of ‘education’ and ‘research’ are critical to that management. Research provided the theoretical and evidential underpinnings to that process of ‘education’ or engineering, which may also be called the pedagogy of public relations.
