Environmental education in a neoliberal climate

Abstract

This introduction to a special issue of Environmental Education Research explores how environmental education is shaped by the political, cultural, and economic logic of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, we suggest, has become the dominant social imaginary, making particular ways of thinking and acting possible while simultaneously discouraging the possibility and pursuit of others. Consequently, neoliberal ideals promoting economic growth and using markets to solve environmental and economic problems constrain how we conceptualize and implement environmental education. However, while neoliberalism is a dominant social imaginary, there is not one form of neoliberalism, but patterns of neoliberalization that differ by place and time. In addition, while neoliberal policies and discourses are often portrayed as inevitable, the collection shows how these exist as an outcome of ongoing political projects in which particular neoliberalized social and economic structures are put in place. Together, the editorial and contributions to the special issue problematize and contest neoliberalism and neoliberalization, while also promoting alternative social imaginaries that privilege the environment and community over neoliberal conceptions of economic growth and hyper-individualism.

Keywords:

• neoliberalism
• environmental education
• politics
• economics
• culture

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the contributors to the special issue and the numerous reviewers who provided constructive feedback at all stages of development. Special thanks to Lyle Jeremy Rubin for comments on the historical development of neoliberalism, to Claire Drake for supporting the refereeing process, and to Alan Reid for providing guidance along the way.

Notes

1. The contrasts here, as typified by debates in newspaper lead articles, Op-Ed columns and blog postings, usually concern the qualities of economic resilience, personal and collective lifestyle, life chances across the social spectrum, and the relatively environmentally benign and culturally inclusive features of societies found in the Nordic states (yet often by those not living there); see too Wilkinson and Pickett (2009).

2. Readers should note that Environmental Education Research dedicated a special issue to resilience theory and environmental education (Krasny, Lundholm, and Plummer 2010). As environmental educators working within these paradigms and programs, we need to be critically aware of the ideological underpinnings of our work and how they interact with broader conceptions of political economy. To ignore this dimension risks, the further colonization of alternative epistemologies and ontologies that may, or may not, be more sustainable and just.

3. As with the previous note, see for example, the special issue on ‘Natural capital in education and economics: predicaments and potential’, 2005, Volume 11 (1) of Environmental Education Research.

4. Some readers may recall a flow circle version too, or the square that introduces Refuse into the ‘waste hierarchy’, and the ‘Recovery’ option, allied to ‘lifecycle thinking’.