ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how community-based popular education helps to shape the contours of a changing civil society sector in communities affected by political, economic, and demographic changes in Latin America. A popular education organization in the mountainous region of Michoacán in central Mexico serves as a case study for exploring the particular contribution of community-based popular education to our understanding of the role critical educational practices might play in relation to hegemonic ideologies and structures. In rural and urban communities transformed by economic migration, there is a public sphere ripe for transformation. Community-based education encompasses the struggle to develop out of such space new educator identities, altered notions of the relationship between education and politics, and a gender perspective that shifts the boundaries of public and private spheres to focus on the changing conditions of women’s lives.
