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This book examines the challenges facing those who make and implement social policy at a time when free-trade economics reign supreme. It draws on linked ideas of social capital and the management of place, and presents international perspectives from a diverse range of countries, to question the domination of the economic and call for a new balance in making policy and measuring what is achieved.

Lifelong learning is said to be vital for a ‘knowledge society’ in the ‘new economy’. But looking at knowledge and the economy alone short-changes us, making economic growth not a means to happiness, but an end. The book moves from applied philosophical analysis in Canada, through debate about social capital and ‘the political’ in Australia, to consideration of governance for sustained renewal in Finland. It examines how these concepts apply as guides to action in a leading English local authority, Kent, and considers the role of universities in developing learning regions in South Africa’s Western Cape Province. It concludes with the ‘mother of all challenges’, sustainability, with which economic growth must reach a rapprochement if we are to survive.

The book should appeal to the widest possible range of social planners at all levels of government, as well as to scholars in the fields of social studies, management and administration. It is relevant to those concerned with lifelong learning as this spills over the walls of the classroom and the academy. It is also a book for all of us who, as citizens, care about how we succeed or fail to govern ourselves well, and how we learn from our mistakes.

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