Abstract:

Introduction:
The article presents the results of an empirical study taking place in the 2020-2023 period within a project focused on the ongoing transformations in Bulgarian villages. The research perspectives identifies the local community as a subject of ‘practical strategies’ (Bourdieu) oriented to acquiring key competences related to life-long learning, to improving the public, cultural and social environment and the life conditions in the Bulgarian village. Our thesis is that this happens by forming personal identities adequate to the current condition that is marked by the processes of globalization, transition to knowledge-based economies, imprevisibility, risk, need of individual flexibility, adaptivity, self-reflexivity, formation of skills and readiness for lifelong learning. The main research question is: what are those personal competences, acquired throughout life but often staying unconscious, that turn into conditions of possibility of the deployment of ‘transformations’ in villages? Can some of the key competences of lifelong learning be discovered as attitudes and basic skills of social actors who constantly, transforming themselves, actively work for the transformation of Bulgarian villages?

Methodology:
The study is based on qualitative methodology. Еmpirical data were collected by in-depth interviews to trace the dynamics of lifelong learning. A socioanalytic interview was conducted with a person able to be identified as a ‘bearer of change’ whose biographical experience is marked by numerous life transitions and hence by different forms of employment and personal engagement.

Results and conclusions:
In the article we will show in what way biographical choices are linked to the presence of key predispositions, attitudes and competences allowing a positive, flexible and adaptive attitude not only to the desired changes and life transitions but also to the objectively imposed ones: mobilizing existing social knowledge and skills; drive for personal self-development and self-improvement by acquiring new knowledge and skills in unfamiliar spheres; initiative and entrepreneurial stance for resolving current problems of the people and the village etc. In our analysis, we will dwell on the structural coercions that weigh upon the studied person, and hence – with an accent on reflexivity, individualism and identity – also on the conditions of possibility of the person’s action that turn the person into a ‘bearer of transformations’ in a contemporary Bulgarian village in need of positive transformation.

Keywords:

Life-long learning, life transitions, key competences, Bulgarian village, life story.