Abstract
This paper examines the Swedish popular education in a historical perspective with particular focus on how its ideology and practices contribute to a transformation of the individuals involved and society. Popular education is part and parcel of modern Sweden's identity. The story of popular education is actually the story of a poor and deeply conservative country , which developed to a modern, democratic and affluent society through education of the people by the people. The essence of popular education's pedagogy iscommunication, reflection, discourse and deliberation. The narrative of popular education's successful struggle for the enlightenment of unprivilegedgroups and the emancipation from arbitrary and oppressive power structures,such as the state apparatus and the state church, is predominant in the Swedishresearch literature. It cannot be excluded that the positive and partially self-fulfilling myth of modernity's blessings includes also popular educationanthropology as an essentially transformative power. This transformation, ascomplex and contradictory as it might be, was mainly carried out by social movements and it was thoroughly accomplished within the tenets of socialdemocratic consensus. We tentatively use a variety of concepts from the theoretical tradition of transformative learning to argue that popular education's contribution to Sweden's transformation into a well-functioningsociety can be attributed to high social capital and trust , which are but prerequisites of societal and institutional reflexivity. Reflexivity is characteristic of learning citizens and collectives and an expression of aspecific mentality. Mentalities are culturally shaped, and at the same time theyshape culture. They appear in the communication, are refined incommunication and manifested in both individual and collective habits of mind, points of view, experiences, reflections and action.