Do hope and critical pedagogy matter under the reign of neoliberalism?

There is a growing sense in the popular imagination that citizen involvement, social planning, and civic engagement are becoming irrelevant in a society where the welfare state is being aggressively dismantled (Bauman 1998). Those traditional, if not imagined, public spheres in which people could exchange ideas, debate, and shape the conditions that structured their everyday lives increasingly appear to have little relevance or political …