Segmented prizing: biopolitical differentiation in education for sustainable development

Abstract

Prizes and awards have received limited attention in scholarly research. The present paper engages with the prestigious UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development, which annually honours three outstanding projects related to education for sustainable development (ESD). Drawing on biopolitical theory, the paper explores what this prize can tell us about the global community's quest for sustainable development. While the award is global in scope and alludes to humanity's joint responsibility for the planet, the analysis shows that the winning organisations approach rich and poor populations around the world in entirely different ways; assigning to them different roles, responsibilities and lifestyles. ESD discourse thus displays a remarkable ability to accommodate the lifestyle divide that separates rich and poor; suggesting that inequality has become effectively normalised. Ultimately it is argued that differentiating practices in the global implementation of ESD constitutes an urgent area of further research for comparative and international education.

Managing the GAP between rich and poor? Biopolitics and (ab)normalized inequality in South African education for sustainable development

“…Although the paper has brought attention to some rare disruptive moments, whose significance should not be entirely underestimated, the overall contention is that ESD unfolds through a regime of practice wherein inequality has become effectively normalized. The paper has further argued that the differentiation between rich and poor can be understood biopolitically and that it is illuminative of how populations and lifestyles are separated and governed in a liberal ESD regime (Hellberg and Knutsson 2018;Knutsson 2019).…”

“…Hellberg's findings on how 'sustainable' water governance separates populations and lifestyles, prompted questions whether such biopolitical differentiation is also integral to ESD. Spurred by these concerns, Hellberg and I have recently elaborated on methodological aspects of exploring ESD biopolitically (Hellberg and Knutsson 2018) and I have also analyzed how biopolitical differentiation is instantiated in a global ESD initiative (Knutsson 2019). The present article adds to this scholarly project through an exploration of biopolitical differentiation in South African ESD.…”

“…It is only when we start comparing how ESD is unpacked in relation to different populations that a more problematic pattern is allowed to emerge in terms of how inequality, differentiation and ESD interrelate (cf. Hellberg and Knutsson 2018;Knutsson 2019). I would even go so far to argue that the eco-schools programme, at this specific event, temporarily ceases to be a biopolitical instrument for the production of self-managing 'sustainable' communities, but rather turns into a mechanism that exposes the very (bio)political nature of sustainable development.…”

“…And, if so, has inequality come to be viewed as a precondition in mainstream conceptions of 'sustainable development' (cf. Knutsson 2019)?…”

“…A biopolitical perspective places focus on the management of life at the level of populations and enables an analysis of how different lifestyles are governed and separated through ESD (cf. Hellberg and Knutsson 2018;Knutsson, 2019). The term lifestyles should be understood biopolitically.…”