Wealth, Values, Culture & Education

Culture is non-essential…. Higher education is to train economically but not socio-politically active & engaged citizens…. Economic wealth is the most important and prominent form of individual and national assets…. Freedom is about “choices in having” but not in “ways of being and becoming” …. I consume; therefore, I am! In this catching book, Torabian offers a voyage to the shifting perceptions and values attached to wealth depicting the socio-political role of education and culture in de/reconstructing such values since the Middle Ages and across different spatial and temporal contexts. Delineating the tenets of the capitalist social contract since the 1970s, Torabian skillfully demonstrates the metamorphosed role and meaning of culture and higher education in the so-called democratic world. In pursuit of a renewed value system and social contract, a reconstruction of wealth and a revival of the essential socio-political role of education and culture in today’s world, Torabian sets forth an innovative framework, i.e., the Big Wealth Pie and proposes adapting transgressive education, resistance pedagogy and teaching ignorance. Embracing ethical, political, sociological, and academic roles, this book contributes to the construction of socially just and sustainable societies in this post-pandemic Anthropocene Age. “The book on offer here is fascinating. I do not think it is proper to classify it as ‘philosophy’ or ‘sociology’ or ‘comparative education’. It is a work sui generis. Its cultural and historical range is extraordinary. Its illustrations are themselves arresting. Its literature is well outside disciplinary conventions and ranges across a number of languages. Mirabile dictu!” --Professor Robert Cowen