The educational ideal of caring for citizens put to the test: The case of community organizing door-knocking through the prism of care

Abstract

This contribution analyzes the dual political and educational activity of a group of professional activists, known as organizers, during the campaigns aiming the improvement of the living conditions in social housing. Our study, carried out as part of the action course program, focuses on their activity during their first encounter with the citizens of the working-class neighborhoods they address, known as door-knocking. We document the transformation of three of their concerns and discuss these results through the lens of care. Our results show, with a view to (the) political education, the importance of the organizers' appropriation of the technical knowledge that is deployed at door-knocking as well as of an alternative conception of this encounter as a space-time of creative negotiation.

Keywords: adult education, course of action, denaturalization, emancipation, organic leaders, political education.