Globalisation and education for sustainable development: emancipation from context and meaning

Abstract

This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribute to globalisation and homogenisation by merging two conceptualisations of ‘globalisation as connection' and the role of ‘empty signifiers' in political discourse. The ambition with the merger is not to provide a universal explanation of globalisation and ideology, instead, the intention is to outline an alternative theoretical outlook that allows for an empirical study of the processes that can be seen to feed into or interrupt the preservation of hegemony in a global setting.

Keywords:

• education for sustainable development
• environmental education
• globalisation
• discourse analysis
• ideology
• space

Notes

1. It should be pointed out here that it is not simply implicit lending from Marxist critiques of globalisation that is problematised, but that references and appeals to ESD in its essential or immediate form, which are not solely a characteristic of Marxist ontology, is seen to be problematic and in this paper reconceptualised by moving away a focus on immediate being of ESD and instead to pay more attention to the contextualised becomings of ESD that are partially constituted due to its articulation in various spaces. While this section explicitly deals with Marxist critiques of globalisation, since its associated figures of reasoning are interpreted to provide the basis for the critique that has been put forward against ESD in environmental education research, the problematisation moves beyond a critique of Marxist dependency on a base/superstructure division and instead highlights the analytical consequences of a division between two planes, one of the immediate and one of the mediate, in general. This general analytical consequence of a focus on a uncovering of the immediate or essential characteristics of ESD is seen to be at the bottom of the paradox that is described in ‘the paradox’ and is also characteristic for other styles of reasoning than Marxist thought. This division into two planes instead emerges out of and at the same time sustains an ambition to make claims regarding the relationship of ESD in relationship to objective structural forces.

2. What this distinction between structuralist and post-structuralist perspectives on relational identity within language as a system aims to highlight is that, instead of a structuralist appeal to a centre or positivity that allows for a fixation or ’objective’ sedimentation of identities, the post-structuralist perspective, which is applied in this article, shifts away a focus from an uncovering of ‘objective’ relationships or identities and instead focuses on the lapses, inconsistencies and the paradoxical ways that signifiers are used in apparently ‘subjective’ ways. The ambition is in this effort to shift away the focus on an uncovering of false or subjective uses of signifiers that an referral to objective structures would allow for and instead to delineate the limits of objectivity as the space of ‘the political’, where multiple groups in various spaces engage in determining the identity of a signifier, i.e. the being of ESD.

3. The meaning or identity of a word is therefore, to use Derrida’s terminology, characterised by différance. Différance refers to the dual characteristics of differentiation; of being different, e.g. from other words, and deferral, a postponement of the meaning to the point in time after the establishment of a relationship.

4. Similarly, Lacan (1966) shows how the barrier between signifier and signified is insurmountable and how, instead of referring to a signified, the signifier refers to another signifier. These practices of signification produce signifying chains where rings of these chains create necklaces; a metaphor Lacan (1966, 116) uses in order to depict how these necklace rings are connected to other rings and form a necklace as a whole.

5. Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 105) define articulation as ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of that articulatory practice’.

6. Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 108) definition of discourse is, in this regard, congruent with what Wittgenstein calls a language game, in which the ‘linguistic and non-linguistic elements are not merely juxtaposed, but constitute a differential and structured system of positions’. It is in regard to these linguistic elements that we are using the term signifier. Tradition can be seen to be something close to habitual repetition, which denotes a historic dimension in practice, which however does not surmounts the decision of the particular practice carried out or fully determines the practice that seems to follow the tradition. It is here that difference could be seen to be an internal possibility of every repetition.

7. Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 105) define discourse as the ‘structured totality resulting from the articulatory practice’ and further describe the ‘differential positions within discourse, insofar as they appear articulated within discourse’ as moments.

8. The meaning-making in a particular place produce or reproduce pattern of creating relations between signifiers. If this pattern is repeated a Lebensform (Wittgenstein 1953) or if you wish a space is produced. Lebensform is translated to ‘form of life’ and refers to the shared forms of practices, a way of life and doing, in communities of language practitioners.

9. Lacan (1966) speaks here of kinks in the symbolic.

10. Laclau and Mouffes stance has in regard to their rejection of a full presence and appeal to an ontological primacy of antagonism been labeled as a ontology of lack, which shares fundamental similarities to that of o Lacan and Derrida. Deleuze’s onlogical stance differs, though, from Laclau and Mouffe’s due to his ascribing of ontological primacy to difference (Deleuze 1968), and his ontology has been labeled an ontology of difference. Both Laclau and Deleuze, however, reject a notion of classical ontology, which is concerned with the reality of being or the essence or genus of being. Both Laclau and Deleuze abandon an appeal to an ontological monism and instead Deleuze elevates difference in itself, pluralism, to a generative centrality, while for Laclau it is antagonism as limit of objectivity and at the same time initiates meaning-making that aims to fix the subversive influence of antagonism.

11. As a result of its reliance on a constitutive other and its inability to create absolute objectivity, the discourses consists of dents and kinks which exist in the form of aporias and paradoxes that haunt every hegemonic articulation.

12. Our use of the term historic, as related to history, sees history as contingent and therefore does not share a Hegelian or Marxist notion of History, that is to say a (pre-)determined history (the One) as unfolding of a uniform Geist.

13. In this central concept of antagonism, the logics of equivalence and difference are opposed, yet when they are pursued to their logical conclusion they convert into the opposite. For example a system of pure difference, would render all elements equivalent to each other. It is therefore not an opposition, contradiction leading to an Aufhebung in a Hegelian sense, but a result of inherent ontological, or might we even speak of pure, difference, due to an insurmountable limit towards full objectivity. Žižek (2004) has provided a different reading of both Deleuze and Laclau in the context of Hegel, where he sees this inherent difference within the concept of antagonism as a ‘singular universal’ in a Hegelian fashion. Here, however. the authors do not see the inherent difference to derive from a singular universal in a Hegelian sense, but instead to be a result of pure temporality, as the disruptive effects of the real in a Lacanian sense, which disrupts spatialiaty that Laclau in his later work has labeled dislocation (Laclau 1990). While Laclau’s concept of antagonism, similar to Derrida, has been seen (Strathausen 2006) to be characterised by a ontology of lack, it is by reference to his work on dislocation possible to see a similarity between the effects of dislocation as pure temporality on space and Deleuzes effects of pure difference. Disclocation, as the disruption of pure temporality, an event, that produces dislocatory effects on spatial being, as historic or sedimented patterns in meaning-making, renders a overcoming of that disruption through different meaning making necessary. It is in regard to dislocation, that it is possible to draw parallels between the effects of the real as temporality on space calling for alteration and Deleuze’s concept of becoming and rhizome. The existence of alternate beings in other spaces, as it is discussed in ‘the process of creating hegemony’, can be seen to haunt a particular space and when connections are created be seen to call for an overcoming of the ghostliness, deterritorialissing effects, of an alternate being through spatial integration, as part of reterrritorialisation.

14. It might here even be possible to speak of empty elements, but the terminology of signifier underlines the pointing or naming gesture towards an empty place or absent fullness.

15. However, the hegemonising function has in order to be able to present a system as a totality the empty signifier needs its equivalential function to prevail over its differential one (Laclau 1996, 41–3). Otherwise, its subsumed identities would collapse into particularities. Further, as the the chain of equivalences is extended, i.e. more differential identities are subsumed, each concrete struggle becomes less able to remain in a differential self and to represent itself as separate from all other differential identities. At the same time, that which is creating the constitutive outer will itself come to represent the anti-community which is preventing the community from achieving its fullness. But the equivalential function of an absent fullness cannot have a signifier of its own, since this would lead to the establishing of an additional difference. The empty signifier needs to remain a signifier of absence, which a particular content is only partially able to adumbrate. The relationship between the particular content and the signifier of absence is, as Laclau underlines, a hegemonic relationship. It is in this sense that for Laclau (1996, 43), the existence of empty signifiers in political discourse is, therefore, the very condition for hegemony.

16. While ‘the need for an alternative theory’ tried to show how aporia and paradoxes are internal to spaces that a language community or Lebensform presents, the next section dealing with globalisation will show how these dents as aporias also exist among spaces. It is therefore possible to speak of a double-aporia, which is relevant for the conceptualisation of globalisation of education and ESD’s political potential.

17. The use of the term ‘methodology’ in this section is not in line with a strong empiricist notion of the term. Methodology has here not the assumed functioning of uncovering objective knowledge, but instead, in reference to discourse-analytical tradition, theory and methodology are understood to be inseparably interwoven. Methodological considerations refer here particularly to the consequences of the relationship between theoretical constitution and analytical sensitivity of a theoretical–methodological vocabulary that has been constituted with particular objectives in mind.

18. ‘Actual’ refers here to the pragmatic dimension of empirical inquiry, and highlights the interrelatedness of the two dimensions of ’analytical focus’ and ‘application of focus’ in the world in order to generate knowledge.

19. ‘Ground’ refers here to an objective structure that assumed to have attained positivity, as it can be seen to be appealed to in structuralist styles of reasoning.

20. As it will become evident in ‘process of creating hegemony’, the notion of space as discursive formation is here preferred to national contexts since national borders or notions of nationality do not have to coincide with a particular discursive formation. Further, ‘between different “national contexts”’ refers here to the situatedness of spatialisation and meaning-making as it is positioned within particular spaces. The wording of between refers here not to an in-between. According to the theoretical perspective that has been outlined there is no possibility of meaningful articulation outside of context and historicity, for example as it would take place in an above level (global) or in-between spaces that might be located in a no-mans-land.

21. The authors interpret Buenfil-Burgos' approach as sharing the same theoretical framework as the conceptualisation of the hegemonising function of the empty signifier (Laclau 1996; Laclau and Mouffe 1985), since she (Buenfil-Burgos 2000, 2009) frequently refers to Laclau and Mouffe (1985) in her work on globalisation as connection, and does not deal with the ontology of globalisation, but rather discerns different scenarios of thinking about globalisation.

22. In this way, she (Buenfil-Burgos 2000) can be seen to provide a basis for dealing with globalisation in ontic inquiry (Buenfil-Burgos 2009). The ambition of an ontic inquiry, as Buenfil-Burgos (2009, 68) outlines it, is not to provide or encapsulate an overarching explanatory logic of globalisation, but instead to adumbrate the complexities of territorial movements in the process of globalisation in the form of migration based on a ‘method for problematisation’ (Foucault 1985; Howarth 2000). However, all inquiry starts from ontological premises, i.e. inhabits an ontological position towards its object of study. Buenfil-Burgos (2009, 74) clarifies her ontological position in regard to this effort, which is congruent with Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) position as outlined above, since her positioning re-certifies the primacy of signification for the construction of identity, cultural systems as historical without a fixed universal essence. Therefore, it can be stated that the assumed ontological position reasserts that the practice of contingent signification is the ultimate point of reference for inquiry. However, as Laclau and Mouffe (1985) indicate, signification can be seen to follow certain regularities, i.e. discourses, and to involve certain logics.

23. Burgos-Buenfil uses the term ‘schemata’ instead of ‘strategies’. Strategies should, in our use of the word, be understood as regulative, authoritative sets of formulated norms and rules as captured, e.g. in policy documents or laws. The influence that such strategies have on the structuration of the social is, from a theoretical perspective, that of a particular type of discourse. The authors choose the term ‘strategy’ instead of ‘schemata’, since strategies in articulation are in line with discourses, which never determine action upon action, they instead must be seen to operate without a ruling hand. In articulation, discourse does not operate as an a priori rule, such as the terminology of schemata can seem to adumbrate. Articulation is seen to be contingent. For a further clarification see Pleasants (1999).

24. The utilisation of Deleuze and Guattari's (1980) concept of rhizome in this article is subdued to the task of visualising the process of territorial movement in the context of signification, in particular the logics of imbrication, displacement and aporia, as outlined by Buenfil-Burgos (2009).

25. The disruptive effects of an event, pure temporality, on meaning-making as repetitive practices, highlights how being is at best temporary and how meaning-making in practice always engages in and is part of becoming.

26. This rejection of a hierarchic tree-shaped deep structure is captured in the assertion by Deleuze and Guattari (1980, 12) that the rhizome has no genetic axis. This premise, the lack of a deep structure, renders studies that attempt to uncover globalising structures in expressions of systems, Deleuze and Guattari might call them tracings, meaningless. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari (1980, 12) call for mappings instead of tracings.

27. ‘Meaning-making’ is here referring to the discursive practice of articulation, where through articulation a ‘relative’ and ’temporary’ identity is constituted. Meaning-making takes according to this perspective place against the formations within the field of discusitvity that a particular space constitutes.

28. Buenfil-Burgos elaboration of these logics is, in this article, facilitated by the reference to Deleuze and Guattari (1980).

29. Similar to floating signifiers, the logic of displacement shows how, from a discourse theoretical perspective, but also as the concept of rhizome shows, the search for an origin is meaningless and, as Foucault and Derrida suggest part of a certain nostalgia. Further, the logic of displacement differs from the concept of floating signifiers, since displacement not only involves a movement between discourses, as do floating signifiers, but also highlights a movement between spaces, i.e. cultures or ‘Lebensformen’, to use Wittgenstein's terminology.

30. ‘Empty’ refers here to the extension of the length of a chain of equivalences that is created among contesting demands. The degree of emptiness can be seen to decrease when fewer demands are associated with ESD. It is therefore not a priori assumed that ESD has to function as an empty signifier, but could equally attain a deferred meaning through metonymic articulation. That is to say that ESD could be solely associated with economic growth, or environmental protection.