Educational contexts of cultural resistance in Poland and Portugal: an introduction to research

Abstract

The goal of this article is to present the main theoretical and methodological assumptions of an international research project on the educational contexts of cultural resistance in Poland and Portugal. In this article, we will first analyse, in a resumed way, the various lines of thought related to cultural resistance, radical democracy critical pedagogy; then we will present an example of a critical pedagogy, the punk pedagogy, in order to demonstrate that the reality we describe is not only present at the abstract level; then, and finally, we proceed with the research methodology that we intend to trigger in order to analyse the educational contexts of cultural resistance in Portugal and Poland. In this article we are talking about two countries with very dissonant stories. Even today, in the context of membership of the European Union, the course of both countries seems to diverge. However, we argue that the comparison between these two distant and different countries may open new perspectives on the contexts of cultural resistance and critical pedagogy. Like the example of punk, these practices of cultural resistance can serve as a way to empower active civic and political participation, going beyond the simple act of voting every four years and promoting a radical democracy.