Citizen Learner Discourse and Emergent Global Knowledge Societies

This chapter locates learning, as an increasingly lifelong commitment and a lifewide endeavour as societies adjust to living and working within turbulent, often surprising, and always dynamically complex, evolution of an increasingly technology-dominated world. Absolute and global rather than relative national standards of excellence and skills are what count in this interconnected world according to UNESCO, OECD, WEF, EU, China, Japan and USA authorities. So those without current and continually updated credentials to compete in the global market face a steady decline in income and social inclusion. Your curriculum vitae or “Brand you” (Peters, 1997) is the ticket to enter the global marketplace. The Higher Education sector exists to provide the means to get a better ticket and improved position for “brand you” in the age of the gig economy and portfolio workers. Critical Cosmopolitanism (Delanty,2006) and complexity theory are used to discuss emergent scenarios of transformation in personal and business commitment in knowledge societies.