Subsumption, alienation, and questions of meaning in informal sector skills training

Abstract

Traditionally, skills for the informal sector have been acquired informally, in family and community settings. Within these settings, the acquisition and utilisation of skills entails (a) active, improvisational engagement with materials and local ecologies; (b) induction into ethical or normative frameworks; and (c) connection to a community of practitioners and the assumption of socially meaningful identities. In recent decades, formal training programmes have emerged in relation to skills in the informal sector, as have attempts to integrate informal learning for informal sector skills within formal qualifications frameworks. Given the corporate dominance of much of the TVET sector in the..