Education and Intercultural Identity: Review of Significant Monograph

“Education and Intercultural Identity”, a dialogue between Zygmunt Bauman and Agostino Portera, published by Routledge in 2021, is an essay written by two hands in which the authors dialogue on issues related to the challenges of the globalised world, starting with a shared understanding of the importance of education as a possible answer to deal with the complexity of modernity. The work follows a question-and-answer scheme in which the two author visions and reflections on the main themes emerge. The dialogue unwinds between risks and opportunities in a globalised world, religious pluralism, pollution and loss of biodiversity, and cultural identity, in a continuous exchange of opinions in which, as Mazzeo proposes in the introduction, two complementary positions intertwine. In dealing with these issues, Portera represents the optimistic view centred on opportunities and positive aspects, while Bauman emphasises the need to focus on critical and sombre aspects. The two authors' approaches can also be considered complementary from the point of view of the disciplines they pertain: sociological and analytical perspective of Bauman is combined with the educational and pedagogical perspective of Portera.