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This chapter explores the biopolitical ‘effects’ of ESD interventions in terms of the subjectivities and conceptions of sustainable lifestyles that they produce in different socio-economic and geographical contexts. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the empirical material alongside some reflections on methodological challenges involved in studying biopolitical ‘effects’. The chapter then proceeds with a comparative biopolitical analysis of such effects in discrete socio-economic and geographical ESD settings. This analysis brings attention to the different conceptions of sustainable lifestyles that are produced among students and how they understand their everyday lives, and constitute themselves as agents, in relation to sustainable development. Attention is further drawn to the notions of responsibility that are produced and where responsibility for sustainable development is located. Thereafter, the analysis closes in on the students’ engagement with democratic decision-making within ESD activities, and how they think about themselves as shapers of sustainable development through these initiatives. Finally, attention is drawn to how students situate themselves geographically in relation to sustainable development and how they engage with the key rationale of ESD suggesting that the local community is the most promising arena for transformative action.
This final chapter concludes the book. The first part of the chapter summarizes and discusses the main findings and themes of the book. Contributions to previous research and missing pieces are also brought to the fore. The second part of the chapter seeks to intervene in the world of ESD policy and practice by raising issues around what affirmative alternatives there might be to current modes of biopolitical differentiation in global ESD implementation – that is, alternatives that take seriously UNESCO’s vision of a more just and sustainable world.
This chapter and the next explore the world’s largest ESD programme – Eco-Schools – through comparative biopolitical analysis across sites and scales. Combined, the two chapters probe how the programme is governed globally, and how it is unpacked in different local contexts in a world marked by deep inequality. The present chapter focuses on the rationalities and techniques through which the programme is rendered governable globally. The chapter begins with a short introduction to Eco-Schools and to the programme’s national operators in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda. Thereafter, the chapter proceeds with an analysis of how Eco-Schools is governed across scales. Through this analysis, the (neo)liberal biopolitical elements that pervade the programme are laid bare. These include: the programme’s efforts to target and transform everyday life through education; techniques of self-management and performativity; decentred power structures; and the overall logic of global inclusion. A biopolitical understanding of these modalities of government will prove important as it will pave the way for the subsequent chapter’s findings from different local Eco-School settings.
Chapter 5 explored the (neo)liberal rationalities and techniques through which Eco-Schools is made governable globally. The present Chapter 6 closes in on local eco-schools and offers a comparative biopolitical analysis – between and across sites – of how the programme is unpacked in different socio-economic and geographical contexts. The chapter begins with a short introduction to the local eco-school settings in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda, where fieldwork was conducted. The subsequent analysis demonstrates how conceptions of local living conditions and sustainability problems affect implementation, and how globally standardized Eco-Schools themes are unpacked very differently in situ. The chapter further brings attention to the different roles that individuals and communities, as governmental categories, assume in discrete socio-economic and geographical contexts. Penultimately, the chapter engages with the elephant in the room – inequality – and how it is (or is not) handled in Eco-Schools implementation. What emerges from the overall analysis is an evident biopolitical pattern of distinctions between rich and poor populations which goes far beyond local variation.
This chapter sets the stage by introducing the problem and the aim, the theoretical and empirical focus, the scholarly contributions, and the outline of the book. The book’s starting point is a concern with how the idea of ESD as an enterprise that unites humanity in a common pursuit of a more just and sustainable word is reconciled with the fact that the world is enormously unequal. This leads up to the book’s aim, which is to explore how ESD is implemented in different socio-economic and geographical contexts around the globe, and how inequality is managed in these processes. The chapter briefly introduces why a biopolitical comparative perspective is relevant and how it can add to our understanding of ESD. The book’s conception of inequality is also introduced and the significance of distinguishing conceptually between inequality and difference is underscored. The chapter further introduces the book’s comparative case study approach and offers a brief overview of the empirical material and the various contexts and levels of scale where the research was conducted. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the limitations of our approach as well as the contributions of the book in relation to previous research.
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is recurrently depicted as an enterprise that unites humanity in a common pursuit of a more just and sustainable world. But how is this enterprise pursued on a planet that is enormously unequal? Drawing on biopolitical theory and rich empirical data from different contexts around the world, this book explores how ESD is unpacked depending on whether people are rich or poor.
The book demonstrates how ESD is adapted to the lifestyles and living conditions of different populations. The implication of this depoliticized sensitivity to local ‘realities’, the book argues, is that inequality becomes accommodated and that different responsibilities are assigned to rich and poor. Ultimately, the book considers alternatives to this biopolitical divide.
This chapter develops the book’s comparative biopolitical approach. The chapter begins by taking a step back and looking at Michel Foucault’s more general understanding of power as productive and his notion of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’. Thereafter, the chapter closes in on some of the central ideas and key concepts of the Foucauldian theory of biopolitics, which leads up to the book’s conceptualization of ‘neoliberal biopolitics’. The chapter then makes a quick turn to Georgio Agamben’s different approach to biopolitics and his concerns with the hierarchical separation of life. From there the chapter proceeds to the relationship between biopolitics and inequality, which paves the way for the book’s conception of the ‘biopolitics of inequality’. Ultimately, the chapter fleshes out the three dimensions of our comparative biopolitical approach – biopolitical rationalities, biopolitical techniques, and biopolitical effects – and the therewith associated sets of analytical questions that guide our exploration between and across sites of ESD implementation
This chapter provides a short history of global ESD policy initiatives as coordinated by UNESCO, alongside a biopolitical analysis of the current framework, ESD for 2030. The chapter begins by revisiting the contested concept of ESD and introducing UNESCO as its leading global promoter. Thereafter, the chapter provides a short history of the three consecutive UNESCO initiatives: the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–14), the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development (GAP) (2015–19) and ESD for 2030 (2021–30). This short history contextualizes, and traces the trajectory between, the initiatives. The chapter then proceeds with a biopolitical analysis of ESD for 2030 which brings attention to the rationalities underpinning the framework, including the conception of life and how human populations are distinguished between on socio-economic grounds. The analysis further demonstrates how notions of transformative pedagogy, community, and the individual assume functions as biopolitical techniques. While the framework invites all of humanity to join the educational quest for sustainable development, the findings clearly demonstrate how, already at the global policy level, a form of biopolitical differentiation can be discerned whereby rich and poor populations are assumed to need different kinds of ESD interventions.
This chapter offers a comparative biopolitical analysis of the prestigious UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which honours outstanding ESD initiatives around the world. The chapter demonstrates how awarded initiatives unfold in different socio-economic contexts across the globe. Starting with a short introduction to the prize and our means of exploring it, the chapter proceeds with short analytical accounts of all awarded ESD initiatives, located in different regions around the world, in the period 2015 to 2021. The analysis brings attention to: the target beneficiaries and their assorted living conditions; the addressed sustainability problems; the overall rationalities and the educational techniques used; and the (alleged) outcomes of each awarded initiative. The chapter then zooms out to draw comparisons between and trace across the awarded ESD initiatives, whereby a global biopolitical pattern of distinctions emerges. While this biopolitical pattern is laid bare, the chapter also brings attention to other rationalities at play that disrupt, or at least complicate, the general picture. Ultimately, the chapter points to the peculiar combination of unity and separation, and the commensurate inability to challenge inequality, that is characteristic of the global ESD enterprise.
In this article we explore Erich Fromm’s concept of hope within the context of contemporary social and political crises. We formulate two primary objections to his vision of a revolution of hope: the individualistic moralisation of societal problems, and the accusation that hope is persuasive and manipulative. By embedding Fromm’s ideas within a broader dialectical framework and engaging with Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on history, we reinterpret hope as a liminal, transformative state rather than a concrete, prescriptive notion. This reconceptualisation presents hope as a fundamental prerequisite for transformative political practice, emphasising its role in fostering active citizenship and collective social change. Ultimately, we argue for the critical importance of hope in navigating and overcoming the challenges of modernity.
