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

Abstract

The extreme inequality in South African education is well-documented by researchers. There is also a rich literature concerned with education for sustainable development (ESD) in the country. The relationship between these two phenomena has, however, been sparsely investigated. Drawing on biopolitical theory and fieldwork conducted in South Africa, this paper queries how ESD programmes handle the lifestyle gap that separates rich and poor populations. The article demonstrates how ESD, through ostensible sensitivity to local ‘realities’, is adjusted to comply with different socio-economic living conditions, and how different roles are assigned to rich and poor in the quest for sustainable development. This differentiation, it is argued, can be understood biopolitically. The paper further argues that the differentiation between populations in rich and poor settings implies a depoliticized notion of local ‘realities’ as something isolated and given, rather than relational and produced. While the overall findings suggest that ESD unfolds through a regime of practice wherein inequality has become effectively normalized, the paper also points to rare disruptive moments where the normal is rendered abnormal. Ultimately it is argued that the South African case is a useful entry-point for discussing generic problems of globally implementing ESD in an enormously unequal world.

Keywords:

• biopolitics
• differentiation
• education for sustainable development
• inequality
• lifestyle
• South Africa

Introduction

This paper is concerned with the under-researched relationship between inequality and education for sustainable development (ESD). In the official discourse of initiatives like the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and its follow-up, the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development (GAP), ESD is typically portrayed as uniting humanity in the quest for equal and sustainable development (e.g. UNESCO 2014, 2018; UN 2005, 2015). The present paper, however, will bring attention to how ESD programmes, through ostensible sensitivity to situated ‘realities’ stripped of their political context, presuppose, accommodate, and presumably (re)produce, inequality as the GAP is implemented locally. While the study is situated in South Africa, a country known for its extreme social stratification, I shall argue that the problematics extends far beyond this particular case.

Educational inequality in post-Apartheid South Africa is well-documented. While the literature is diverse, there is still broad agreement that the country’s education system suffers from profound and persistent inequality across a variety of dimensions such as race, class, gender and more (e.g. Chisholm 2004; Lemon 2004; Morrel et al. 2009; Sayed and Motala 2012; Spaull 2013; Spreen and Vally 2006; Van der Berg 2007). Further, it is clear from the literature that although inequality along racial lines has become more complex with an emerging deracialised middle class, old patterns of racial inequality largely prevail and the legacy of Apartheid is obvious 25 years after the system was formally abolished (see also World Bank 2018).

South Africa is also home to a rich literature on environmental education (EE) and ESD (e.g. Irwin 1990; Le Grange 2002; Lotz-Sisitka 2011; O’Donoghue 2007; Rosenberg 2008; Taylor 2014; Togo and Lotz-Sisitka 2013). The literature is diverse but much of it is pragmatic, seeking to contribute to better policies, curriculum development, capacity building and learning environments for sustainable development. Yet, there are more ‘critical’ contributions, concerned with how power relations impinge on ESD (e.g. Gough 1999; Ryan and Ferreira 2019; Shava 2011). The overall context of inequality is further recognized in much of the literature (e.g. Lotz-Sisitka 2011; Rosenberg 2008). After all, it is hard to overlook it when discussing educational matters in South Africa. However, inequality has rarely been at the center of analysis in ESD-studies.

Therefore, this article queries how South African ESD programmes handle the lifestyle gap that separates rich and poor. For this purpose, Foucauldian theory of biopolitics is employed (Foucault 1998; Lemke 2011). 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. It refers to people’s ways of life as biological, social and economic beings, which in turn are subject to various and different forms of governing. It is thus both a phenomenon in the world and a governmental category, i.e. something that authorities believe can be ‘improved’ through biopolitical interventions (cf. theory section). A lifestyle includes material conditions (e.g. access to resources), and interactions with the natural environment (e.g. dissipation of energy and matter), which enables it and through which it is largely constituted.

The concept of inequality is further important. This paper draws on Therborn’s (2013) multi-dimensional conception of inequality. For Therborn inequality refers to differences between people that are hierarchical, avoidable and morally unjustified. He suggests that it entails three, interrelated, dimensions: vital inequality (socially produced differences in terms of health and survival), existential inequality (unequal allocation of freedom and respect) and material inequality (differences in access to resources, e.g. income and education). Inequality thus implies, in accordance with the above, that people are offered very different lifestyle opportunities. As this paper will argue, inequality – in its various dimensions – also matters a great deal as to how ESD is implemented.

The findings of this study, which forms part of a larger research project on the global biopolitics of ESD, are based on field work carried out in the Gauteng area of South Africa in the first half of 2018. The material consists of semi-structured interviews with 12 informants occupying significant positions in a network of actors involved in South Africa’s implementation of the GAP, representing ministerial departments, government authorities, universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international partners. Informants were selected through a purposive, reputational sampling procedure (Scott 2000), which exploited the knowledge of informants, and their interconnections with other actors in the network, to build a relevant sample. The material further includes field observations, policy documents, reports and web-based resources.

The paper is structured accordingly. The first section introduces the theoretical lens, while the second section situates the paper in relation to previous biopolitical studies of (education for) sustainable development. The third section begins with an overview of the GAP and its implementation in South Africa, followed by a biopolitical analysis of differentiating practices in a few key ESD initiatives. The penultimate section argues that this differentiation reflects a situation where inequality, in contrast to official ESD discourse, has become normalized. Yet it also points to rare disruptive moments where the normal is destabilized and even come across as abnormal. The concluding section summarizes the main findings and discusses their implications for EE/ESD practice and research.

A biopolitical lens

This article draws on Foucauldian theory of biopolitics¹ (e.g. Dean 1999; Foucault 1998, 2008; Lemke 2011, Miller and Rose 2008). Yet it also takes some inspiration from Agamben’s (1998) quite different thinking around biopolitics.

For Foucauldians, biopolitics refers to the government of life at the level of populations (Dean 1999; Foucault 1998). Foucault located the birth of biopolitics in eighteenth-century Europe. Until then, sovereign power, which operated through ‘deduction’ of people’s labor, goods, services, or – in its most extreme manifestation – even their lives, had been the dominant form of rule in European societies. However, around this time sovereignty became, according to Foucault, supplemented by a more sophisticated ‘form of power that seeks to administer, secure, develop and foster life’ (Lemke 2011, 35). This productive biopower took two forms: discipline of the individual body and biopolitics of the population, the latter being my focus here.

Unlike sovereign power, biopolitics sought ‘to qualify, measure, appraise and hierarchize, rather than display itself in its murderous splendour’ (Foucault 1998, 144). Biopolitics is essentially concerned with optimizing life, i.e. rendering it more productive, skilled, healthy, or, in our case, ‘sustainable’. Yet as Foucault’s quote indicates, efforts to optimize, no matter how benevolent, are not independent from hierarchies or practices of differentiation.

Biopolitics, again unlike sovereignty, has no center but operates through assemblages of power-knowledge, involving different institutions, rationalities, programmes and techniques. Foucault’s neologism indicates that power and knowledge is co-constitutive. One can say that power brings knowledge into its field of operation, but in the acts of collating, calculating and categorizing, it simultaneously produces knowledge. The ‘population’, for example, is both an epistemic and a political object, whose lifestyle(s) authorities (claim to) know something about through information processing, and whose conduct they believe can be shaped through programmatic interventions. The Foucauldian notion of programmes is important here. Programmes, Miller and Rose (2008, 63) argue, ‘presuppose that the real is programmable’. They ‘make the objects of government thinkable in such a way that their ills appear susceptible to diagnosis, prescription and cure by calculating and normalizing intervention’ . Hence programmes of government encompass knowledge, assumptions, rationalities and modes of problematizing, as well as technical and practical means of intervention intended to shape people’s conduct (Dean 1999; Miller and Rose 2008).

Foucault (2008) further linked the birth of biopolitics to the emergence of a liberal ‘art of government’. In Foucauldian thought, liberalism is not conceived of as a political ideology or an economic theory, but as an art of governing that uses the capacity of ‘free’ subjects to achieve its ends (Dean 1999; Foucault 2008; Lemke 2011). Liberalism entails a delicate balancing act. It attempts to shape subjects’ capacities through biopolitical measures, and to utilize their freedom for its own ends, while simultaneously respecting their liberties and rights. Hence the liberal problem is how to govern without governing ‘too much’ (Foucault 2008, 319). Classical liberalism sought to contrive a space within society where the market and enterprising subjects could operate freely. However, the transmuted descendant of liberalism – neoliberalism – works differently. Neoliberalism involves active measures to produce a culture of entrepreneurial and self-managing subjects, communities and populations, with autonomous responsibility for their own livelihoods and lifestyles (e.g. Dean 1999, Lemke 2011). In the biopolitical literature, such governmental efforts – encompassing pedagogic, legal, financial and administrative techniques – to mobilize and sensitize subjects to accept and exercise responsibility, is referred to as responsibilization (e.g. Hansson 2015; Knutsson 2016; see also Ball 2012; Dean 1999; Lemke 2011).

Biopolitics is thus a rather sophisticated form of rule, seeking to optimize life, operating in the light of knowledge, and employing the freedom of the governed. However, biopolitics also differentiates. Put otherwise, what kind of lives populations are known to lead, and how their ‘problems’ are constructed, affect how they are targeted by governing authorities. Efforts to optimize life thus unfold through a biopolitical matrix that distinguishes between its different forms.

The issue of differentiation between forms of life has been intensely discussed in the biopolitical literature. A prominent voice is Agamben, whose works are inspired by, but also in tension with, Foucault. For Agamben (1998), eighteenth-century biopolitics signify a continuation rather than a historical rupture. Hence, unlike Foucault, he does not distinguish between sovereignty and biopolitics but insists on their close connection. Agamben argues that inclusion in a political community is possible only through simultaneous exclusion of human beings that do not qualify. The main (bio)political dividing line is that between political life (bios) and bare life (zoë) which he traces to antiquity. The former represents life that is deemed ‘proper’ and included in the community of rights whereas the latter is excluded and reduced to mere physical existence.

Agamben’s work has been subject to critique by, amongst others, Lemke (2011, 59–64) who argues that Agamben’s unilateral focus on how bare life is excluded, oppressed and killed, overlooks biopolitical interventions that support life and enhance survival. The present paper is closer to Lemke’s conventional Foucauldian understanding of biopolitics as a modern, liberal life-administering power. Hence, my concern is not – in an Agambian sense – how life is included/excluded in/from the (bio)political community, but rather how different populations are targeted in different ways in this very community’s quest for sustainable development. However, and here I am indebted to Hellberg (2018), Agamben’s work is important in that it reminds us that the only right available to certain community members is the right to basic survival.

By way of summary a biopolitical perspective, as applied here, invites an inquiry into how different populations are categorized, divided and governed through ESD.

Previous biopolitical studies of (education for) sustainable development

How, then, does the paper relate to previous biopolitical studies of (education for) sustainable development? Today it is widely accepted that theory of biopower/biopolitics is useful to study education (e.g. Ball 2012; Peters and Besley 2007). That such theoretical frameworks are fit to explore the post-Apartheid education system in South Africa have also been eloquently demonstrated (Christie 2006; Tikly 2003). As far as ESD research is concerned, the concept of biopolitics has, to some extent, been applied in previous studies, relating to diverse topics and contexts such as neoliberal subjectivation in US eco-prisons (Little 2015), power relations between development organizations and indigenous knowledge communities in South Africa (Shava 2011), and discursive shifts in Australian science curricula (Gough 2017). The term biopolitics also briefly figures in Hursch, Henderson and Greenwood’s (2015) generic discussions about ESD and neoliberalism.

Unlike these previous studies, the present paper is concerned with biopolitical differentiation, i.e. with how ESD programmes are targeting different populations in different ways. This research problem has a particular lineage which emanates from critical work in international relations. Duffield’s (2007) seminal book on the biopolitics of sustainable development provides a starting point. Duffield distinguishes between ‘insured life’ in the Global North and ‘non-insured life’ in the Global South. The latter category, which he is mainly preoccupied with, consists of populations that are ‘surplus’ to the global economic system. These people are effectively irrelevant to capital accumulation but they still represent a concern to international order, e.g. through illegal immigration. According to Duffield, sustainable development has emerged as a regime of governing and containing such ‘surplus’ populations. His point is that international development is not about extending ‘Western’ modes of social protection to poor people in the Global South. Rather, the purpose of these interventions is to keep people in their place, i.e. to make them settle for a small-scale, self-reliant, ‘sustainable’ lifestyle. Hence, Duffield argues, sustainable development is essentially about making poor people accept responsibility for their own livelihoods.

Duffield’s biopolitical perspective on how poor populations are governed has been further developed by Reid (2013) in his works on the fusion of sustainable development and resilience discourse. Instead of aspiring to change the world, Reid argues, poor people are disciplined by development institutions to become resilient, i.e. to continuously change themselves to cope with enduring insecurity. There are also a few biopolitical studies that looks in the opposite socio-spatial direction by exploring how wealthy populations in the Global North are governed through sustainable development (Skoglund 2014; Skoglund and Börjesson 2014). However, biopolitical works that compare how rich and poor populations are targeted in a (neo)liberal sustainable development regime remain sparse. A few studies have been conducted in the context of South African water governance (Hellberg 2014, 2017, 2018). 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.

Managing the GAP between rich and poor

This section, divided into three sub-sections, begins with an overview of the GAP and its implementation in South Africa and thereafter proceeds with a biopolitical analysis of differentiation in a few key ESD initiatives.

The GAP in South Africa

The decision to set up the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) was actually made in South Africa at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. The Decade urged countries to integrate ESD into their school systems (UN 2005). As the Decade closed, the GAP (2015–2019) ensued, aiming to scale-up ESD worldwide (UNESCO 2018; UN 2015). The GAP is further aligned with the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). At the time of writing, United Nations just adopted a resolution concerning the next global programme – ESD for 2030 – which will build on GAP but become even closer connected to the SDGs, and which is expected to be launched officially in June 2020 (UN 2019a).

Before we turn to the South African case, a few remarks about the global level might be useful. Most countries have endorsed the GAP, which encompasses five Priority Action Areas (PAAs): (1) advancing policy; (2) transforming learning and training environments; (3) building capacities of educators and trainers; (4) empowering and mobilizing youth; and (5) accelerating sustainable solutions at the local level. UNESCO is coordinating the programme which harbors a myriad of stakeholders worldwide. Implementation is further driven through five global partner networks (one for each PAA). The networks seek to establish a ‘global community of practice’ by sharing knowledge and catalyzing action from other stakeholders. Members of the networks are so-called ‘key partners’ who are perceived to have particular expertise and extensive outreach capacity (UNESCO 2018). The networked characteristics of the programme, wherein different institutions and organizations are assembled without a clear center, as well as the knowledge-driven features and the confidence in ‘expertise’, are reminiscent of biopolitical governance and power-knowledge as referred to above.

In South Africa, EE got off to a slow start around the 1970s (Irwin 1990, 6). However, when the country transitioned into a democracy, EE was officially included in the 1995 White Paper on Education (DEA 2018) and since then progress has been remarkable. This is arguably due to the post-Apartheid state’s strong (at least rhetorical) commitment to sustainable development (Le Grange 2002; Lotz-Sisitka 2011; see also Death 2014) which is also concomitant with a worldwide policy-driven conversion from EE to ESD² (Jickling and Wals 2008). Hence, when the GAP was launched in 2014, South Africa had already come a long way in terms of national implementation of ESD.³

South Africa’s implementation of the GAP is coordinated by the national UNESCO office. The programme assembles ministerial departments, government authorities, NGOs, universities, as well as stakeholders on provincial and municipality level. The UNESCO office holds meetings with stakeholders, collects reports and arranges workshops. The informants of this study pointed out the following initiatives as key to South Africa’s implementation of the GAP.

In relation to PAA1 of advancing policy, the new National Environmental Education and Training Strategy and Action Plan 2019-2029 was emphasized. The plan seeks to strengthen the implementation of ESD in formal and non-formal education, and to improve coherence across sectors (DEA 2018). As regards PAA2 of transforming learning environments, two programmes were foregrounded. The eco-schools programme, a global programme running in 68 countries, but managed in South Africa by the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), also a ‘key partner’ to the GAP. Secondly, the homegrown South African green schools programme, executed by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) in partnership with provincial authorities. Regarding PAA3 of building teacher capacity, Fundisa for Change was foregrounded. This programme aims to strengthen ESD through training of teacher educators and teachers, and through development of curricula and freely available learning material. In relation to PAA4 of empowering youth, the Green Skills Project (Ramsarup et al. 2017), aiming to build green skills through post-school and vocational training, was emphasized. Several ‘learnership’ programmes for youth and the DEAs so-called ‘Working for/on’ programmes, seeking to combine environmental protection with job creation, were also referred to (DEA 2019). Finally, as regards PAA5 of accelerating local sustainability solutions, the Green Municipality Campaign was mentioned. Targeting local government, it seeks to promote holistic environmental solutions at municipality level.

Several of these initiatives preceded the GAP. Hence implementation partly operates through programmes already in place. Yet informants did not view GAP as redundant as it generates legitimacy and other benefits. This also confirms that GAP represents a continuation of the Decade: ‘We saw GAP as evolving from what we were doing. Re-inventing everything would be against the principle of sustainability’ (Interview, Government official, April 17, 2018). A more unique contribution of the GAP, however, is the phenomena of scaling: ‘Scaling is an important thing that was brought in by the GAP’ (Interview, International partner, May 24, 2018; cf. Mickelsson, Kronlid, and Lotz-Sisitka 2019).

We now turn to the issue of biopolitical differentiation in some of the abovementioned initiatives.

Differentiation through biopolitical production of self-managing school communities

As indicated above, the eco-schools programme, related to the GAPs PAA2, is global, and it has been subject to research in different country contexts (e.g. Boeve-de Pauw and Van Petegem 2018; Huckle 2013; Lysgaard, Larsen, and Lassøe 2015). The programme has also been explored in South Africa and studies confirm its central position in the country’s implementation of ESD (e.g. Rosenberg 2008; Ward and Schnack 2003). In a recent critical contribution, concerned with power and knowledge, Ryan and Ferreira (2019) use a postcolonial lens to explore the South African eco-schools programme as a field of tension between privileged global discourses on eco-modernization and competing local discourses promoting re-appropriation of indigenous knowledges.⁴ Their investigation of epistemological colonialism, and associated tensions between global and local eco-schooling discourses, is certainly important (Ryan and Ferreira 2019). However, the present paper is more concerned with the programme’s ability to accommodate differences across local contexts, through biopolitical means, and how rich and poor populations are assigned different roles and responsibilities in the quest for sustainable development.

The eco-schools programme is presented as seeking to shape environmental-awareness and ‘sustainable’ subjects, organized in self-managing communities. Relying on voluntary enrolment and largely exercised through techniques of self-government, the programme follows a standardized model, working through seven steps and encompassing 11 themes. The first step is to form an eco-committee composed of learners, teachers and community members. Thereafter an environmental audit is conducted which enables the school community to define its own sustainability problems: ‘based on their real-world… what they experience as their real-world issues’ (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018). This purported sensitivity to local ‘realities’ is something that I will return to below. The third step is to create an action plan, with measurable indicators, so that the community can resolve, or mitigate, the defined problems themselves. Thereafter monitoring and evaluation follow. Results should be displayed and used to refine the action plan when required. The fifth step is to integrate the programme into everyday school work. The penultimate step is to inform and involve the wider community. Finally, an eco-code, reflecting the school’s targets, is produced.

While schools are invited to define and address their own sustainability problems they are not left to their own devices. As schools are enrolled, they receive a tool kit of guidelines which helps them to get started. Capacity building is further delivered through workshops and support visits are also offered. As stated by one informant: ‘They make a plan to make it better. The best thing we give is expertise’ (Interview, NGO, February 19, 2018). This reflects a neoliberal rationality suggesting that local communities, with proper guidance, can assume responsibility for their own situation. A view of ESD that was also confirmed by a high-ranked ministerial official: ‘it is that individual ownership and responsibility that needs to come in’ (Interview, Government official, April 17, 2018).

In the programme, particular forms of analysis, information and expertise further become tools for (self-)government. The most salient feature of this is perhaps the programme’s award system. At the end of the year the school ‘develop a portfolio of evidence, collect stories and pictures and all the evidence related to the implementation of the action plan’ (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018) which is sent to WESSA for assessment. ‘If they tick all the boxes’ (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018), i.e. if there is evidence of implementation, the school receives an award. The award system, based on certificates and flags, reflects different levels of achievement and could be seen as a step-by-step scheme for self-government. It is reminiscent of what some Foucauldian scholars call a ‘technology of performativity’ (e.g. Ball 2012), which reduces complex social processes to simple categories of judgment, and which facilitates responsibilization by requiring actors to organize, evaluate, and work on themselves, in relation to specific targets and indicators.

The programme’s effort to optimize and responsibilize populations, through power/knowledge and techniques of self-government, is in many ways exemplary of a Foucauldian understanding of biopolitics. However, as we shall see, the programme also raises some of Agamben’s (1998) concerns. In the remainder of this section, two aspects will be brought into focus. Firstly, how the programme differentiates between populations and lifestyles and, secondly, how this differentiation is intertwined with ostensible sensitivity to local ‘realities’.

The eco-schools programme is open for all schools, regardless of their socio-economic status:

A good thing is that the framework appeals to all schools across the spectrum whether you are under resourced or well resourced. It speaks to everyone (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018).

However, a closer look can help us understand how differentiation is at play within this inclusive approach. The self-managing character of the programme, whereby local communities are invited to define and address their own problems, ultimately serves as a mechanism of differentiation. As an informant explained: ‘We respond to the communities. We try to make them live more sustainable in their context’ (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018). Notably, local context seems to taken as something largely given and isolated, to which ESD must be adjusted to evoke sustainability. But since local contexts differs so dramatically in South Africa, the programme is unpacked in very different ways as illustrated by the following examples. The first refers to a school in a poor area:

The focus is different there because of the immediate needs of the community. It is an impoverished community. Income goes back… Soup kitchen… It is more needs basis, more survival. It is driven by the poverty, unemployment, the socio-economic status of the community. And responding to that you know (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018).

It is certainly important to recognize such efforts to support and nourish poor children. Still, it is difficult, judging from the quote, not to resort to the conclusion that ESD, when unpacked in relation to this particular population, largely revolves around sustaining mere physical existence. Here Agamben’s (1998) concept of zoë comes to mind. Yet, this is not an Agambian case of exclusion from the (bio)political community of rights. Rather, the point is that these children are subject to a particular form of inclusion and that their rights mainly revolve around basic needs. The same informant continued with reference to a school in a wealthy area:

For them it is different. It is around prestige. Getting the flag. It is evidence of a great project being implemented. Evidence of learning (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018)

As stated by the informant we are now far away from poverty and hunger, and therefore ESD is unpacked differently. The programme is not concerned with the basic survival needs of these children but with shaping sustainable subjects within the parameters of an affluent lifestyle. These children operate within a completely different realm of entitlements and, conversely, the Agambian notion of bios comes to mind. But, again, my concern is not with in/exclusion from the (bio)political community, but rather with how different lives are separated and governed in a liberal ESD regime.

Similar accounts of differentiation were offered by another informant, starting with reference to a poor school:

You know, if there is one toilet for a thousand kids, then you gonna work on sanitation with those kids and try to find the resources to fix the toilet situation. You then might arrive at a fancy school. What is the issue here? So, you might focus your project on travelling. Once you gone off, the children are influencing their parents to select more environmental-friendly travelling options (Interview, NGO, February 19, 2018).

The first example relates to management of human sanitation at a minimum level of dignity, whereas the second example concerns informed choice of transportation when commuting or going on holiday. Both types of actions serve a purpose, but again it is hard not to get struck by the programme’s ability to accommodate the lifestyle gap. Yet, the informant took a pragmatic stance:

For me it really doesn’t matter. I find that exciting you know. We all try to change whether we are rich or poor (Interview, NGO, February 19, 2018).

This can be interpreted in different ways. What I believe that the informant is trying to say is that everybody, rich as well as poor, has to do something if sustainability is ever to be achieved. It is easy to agree with this. Arguably, however, the quote could also be read as an inkling of how normalized inequality has become in ESD; a matter that somehow ceases to matter due to prevailing circumstances.

Yet there is another point to be made from all of the above. The programme’s focus on local problems/solutions appears to give little consideration to relations between communities, or to how power, inequality and environmental destruction interlace (e.g. Knutsson 2018). The programme is repeatedly described as sensitive to local ‘realities’, whereby ESD interventions are adjusted to be locally relevant. Arguably, however, this sensitivity is ostensible in so far that it disregards the power relations through which these ‘realities’ are formed, i.e. it reflects a rather depoliticized understanding of local ‘realities’ as something given and isolated.⁵ Such a depoliticized notion conceals the existence of conflictual relationships between rich and poor people’s lifestyles, and it recasts political matters into apolitical and technical ones, presumably to be solved by people in their local context. However, as we shall see, local ‘realities’ could just as well be understood as produced and relational. Not only biopolitically, but through wider relations of political ecology and economy.

A few short field visits further confirmed that there are huge differences between rich and poor schools enrolled in the programme. When entering a privileged school, I first ended up in an endless queue of luxury cars brining pupils to school, before passing through a rigorous security structure. Once within the premises, magnificent buildings, high-tech class rooms, lush gardens and swimming pools awaited. As I visited a school in a poor area, on the other hand, one of the few cars that I saw was the taxi I arrived in myself. The school had a well-functioning eco-programme in place, but it was still under-resourced and located right beside a field subject to nightly illegal dumping of waste. Where the waste came from nobody knew, or dared to say, but it was allegedly not from the community. Needless to say, the inequality – in its vital, existential and resource dimensions – between these schools was abysmal. The case of illegal dumping further illustrates the argument that local ‘realities’ are produced and relational, and that power, inequality and environmental destruction ultimately interlace. After all, it is difficult to imagine the same problem turning up next to the rich school.

Finally, an interesting observation was offered by one informant regarding the effects of the programme in different communities. This informant claimed that it is easier to effectuate change at poor schools as compared to rich schools because the latter are more reluctant to transformation:

They have a very high carbon footprint and they are stuffing up the planet big time. They don’t care about that. But with eco-schools we measure the change over one year and the poor schools can change very, very quickly (Interview, NGO, February 19, 2018)

This statement indicates that environmental net gains from ESD interventions in poor communities are perceived to be higher. This adds new layers to previous biopolitical research arguing that sustainable development is primarily a means of governing the poor (Duffield 2007; Reid 2013). Is it, ironically, perceived as more efficient to address the poor as the rich are reluctant to any inconvenient lifestyle changes? And, if so, has inequality come to be viewed as a precondition in mainstream conceptions of ‘sustainable development’ (cf. Knutsson 2019)?

We now turn to another case of biopolitical differentiation in South African ESD.

Green skills as a biopolitical grid

In South Africa there is tendency, both in media and policy discourse, to construct many of the country’s problems in terms of shortage of ‘skills’ (e.g. Allais 2012). Therefore, it is not surprising that promotion of green skills, has become a central component of South African ESD. Several informants in this study likewise claimed skills shortage to be the single biggest sustainability problem. This section will try to show how green skills, as a policy construct, serves ‘as a grid of intelligibility of the social order’ (Foucault 1998, 93), thus telling us something significant about how South African society is conceived of in relation to the project of sustainable development.

In South African policy discourse, green skills have a wide meaning, referring to abilities, values and attitudes needed to take better care of the environment broadly, and which are required for a broad range of jobs in the (green) economy (e.g. Ramsarup et al. 2017). Hence, as we shall see, the term is elastic and can be unpacked very differently. Key initiatives for the implementation of green skills in South Africa are the abovementioned Green Skills Project and ‘Working for/on’ programmes, both related to the GAPs PAA4. The Green Skills project, which ran 2015–2018, emanated from the Environment Sector Skills Plan (DEA 2010). The project had a particular focus on the post-school sector and was oriented towards building systemic capacity for green skills development, thus reflecting South Africa’s ambitions to transition into a green economy (Ramsarup et al. 2017, see also Death 2014). The project assembled ministerial departments, sector education and training authorities (SETAs), universities, employers and funders, across all sectors, to facilitate education and training for ‘greening’ existing occupations and unlocking new green jobs. The project addressed the national system as a whole, including a wide range of levels and occupational sectors. The DEAs ‘Working for/on’-programmes, on the other hand, are limited to specific environmental sectors, e.g. forests, water, land, coasts, wetlands, eco-systems, waste, and fire-fighting. The ‘Working for/on’-programmes are seeking to combine green skills development with creation of employment. They typically address people with difficulties finding work, thus marrying job creation with concrete contributions to the environment in different areas. We shall now see how biopolitical differentiation forms part of these green skills initiatives.

At one point during my fieldwork, I conducted an interview with a ministerial official. I asked this person how the Ministry, in its pursuit of implementing ESD, are dealing with the fact that socio-economic living conditions of South Africans are so diverse. In my naivety, I had expected something of an apologetic response, referring to the legacy of apartheid and/or claiming that this is a long-term commitment that takes time to resolve. To my surprise, the informant displayed a much more ‘productive’ attitude to this state of affairs, whereby the notion of green skills came to the fore:

Okay. Let me first come to the issue of skills. There are categories. There are high skills. There are intermediate skills and what we can call the low skills. Low level skills. Different levels. So… We would have interventions at different levels (Interview, Government official, February 20, 2018).

Thereafter, the informant showed me a number of matrices, derived from the ESSP (e.g. DEA 2010) showcasing different green skills scarcities that the government had identified in relation to different categories of occupations, encompassing: low skills (elementary occupations); intermediate skills; and high skills (specialist professionals and management respectively). These matrices can, using Foucault’s term, be seen as a:

… “grid of intelligibility” within which individuals can be categorized and compared in relation to one another, and in relation to the national interest, and the management of the population as a resource.’ (Ball 2012, 61).

The matrices basically display how the national interest of ‘sustainable development’ is managed by assigning different types of environmental skills and tasks to different segments of the workforce population, and to people in various management positions. In other words, the matrices make up a biopolitical grid which enables differentiated educational interventions, adjusted to comply with different requirements and positions in the labor hierarchy.

When I probed for concrete examples, the informant referred to incorporation of ESD into technical university programmes as one means of building high green skills. Concerning green intermediate skills, interventions at TVET colleges and workplace training provided through the SETAs was mentioned. As regards low green skills, the informant took the example of a person employed in a ‘Working for’-programme, engaged in eradication of alien plants.

That person would require an intervention that will build the low skills. Where you need to know how to cut a three. How to use a chainsaw. How to spray chemicals (Interview, Government official, February 20, 2018).

The conception of chemical use and chainsaw mastering as green skills could of course be discussed but that is beside the point here. The point is that different segments of the population are addressed and educated very differently in the name of sustainable development. Furthermore, it seems quite plausible to claim that these matrices, with commensurate educational interventions, presuppose and accommodate inequality.

Yet, according to Therborn (2013, 59), inequalities are produced and sustained through: ‘institutionalized ranking of social actors, some high, others low, from some super- and sub-ordination’. Hence, one could take the argument one step further by suggesting that inequality is not only presupposed, but that the kind of hierarchization which is manifested in the green skills matrices, actually (re)produces inequality. One informant was arguing in a similar direction with specific reference to green skills in South Africa:

It maintains the status quo. […] I think it’s actually trying to say let things stay the way they are. The economic hierarchy that is there (Interview, Academic, March 26, 2018).

I believe that there is every reason for those interested in equal and sustainable development to take this problem seriously.

(Ab)normalized inequality

Without underestimating the historicity of present circumstances, it can be contended that 25 years of post-apartheid government, officially stressing the importance of equal and sustainable development, have not curbed South Africa’s immense inequality. In fact, studies confirm that inequality has increased (e.g. World Bank 2018). It is everywhere to be found and nobody in the country can evade its manifestations. The empirical examples offered above further suggests that ESD programmes presuppose, and adjust to, this inequality through practices of differentiation. And if ESD target rich and poor populations in different ways, there is an evident risk that the lifestyle gap is (re)produced or even entrenched. Notably, this is not to say that ESD programmes do not bring about any betterment as they are implemented locally, only that there are few signs, at least from the findings of this study, of these programmes challenging the order of inequality that pervades South Africa in any significant way. Inequality thus appears largely normalized, i.e. accepted as a ‘reality’ that implementers simply have to adapt to.⁶ Hence, in contrast to Therborn’s (2013) definition of inequality as something ‘avoidable’, it largely seems to be taken as a given. While I believe that this analysis can take us quite far, it is not necessarily the end of the story. As we shall see, ESD activities can at times destabilize the normalized.

As already indicated, South African implementers of ESD are not blind to the inequality problem. As stated by one informant: ‘We are aware of the dichotomies and differences and trying to address that as well’ (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018). This informant continued with an illustrative account of how annual eco-school ceremonies can serve as disruptive moments:

Once a year we bring them all together at an awards ceremony. That’s where we highlight the differences. You know we showcase projects in a township versus a project in the wealthier suburbs. Last year we had the ceremony in a private school… and like it’s just opening up people’s worlds. It is showing them, you know, there is this world too. People are shocked to see what resources they have. People are actually shocked you know. That in this day, you know, how many years after 94? That we still have these discrepancies and these inequalities and injustices in terms of access to resources and so on. So, we try to stimulate that kind of thinking as well. But this is your reality (Interview, NGO, March 6, 2018; informant’s emphasis).

This story is interesting for several reasons. Firstly, it points to the subversive potential of comparisons. When implemented in a local context, and when seen in isolation, most ESD interventions are likely to be perceived as progressive. 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. Secondly, from a Foucauldian perspective, this story illustrates how the subversive suddenly emerges within governmental programmes and thus that resistance is not exterior to power (Foucault 1998, 95). Thirdly, it is interesting that the staging of inequality that the ceremony brought about, provoked ‘shock’ amongst participants rather than everyday rationalization of the problem. After all, the participants could hardly have been unaware of the country’s extreme social stratification. This illustrates, I believe, that what is normalized and taken for granted can, under certain circumstances, suddenly strike us as abnormal. Otherwise why would people be shocked? Arguably, it also illustrates Therborn’s (2013) point that inequality is not simply a matter of income differences but that it is, ultimately, morally unjustified. Fourthly, the final sentence of the quote is interesting. While open for interpretation, I believe that it closes the circle by bringing us back to the initial point of this section that inequality has become largely normalized. In other words, while the ceremony constituted a temporal subversive moment, where the normal was suddenly abnormalized, everything switched back to normal ‘reality’ afterwards.

Conclusions

This article has explored how South African ESD programmes handle the lifestyle divide that separates rich and poor populations. In contrast to the official discourse of the GAP, wherein ESD is portrayed as a cosmopolitan quest for equal and sustainable development, the paper has demonstrated how ESD is adjusted to comply with different socio-economic living conditions, and how rich and poor are assigned different roles and responsibilities. This suggests that inequality is not only presupposed and accommodated, but presumably (re)produced or even entrenched, as ESD is implemented locally. 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).

It is, however, important not to resort to simplistic or overly deterministic conclusions concerning the possibility of individual agency. At the individual level there is, indeed, always the possibility of social mobility, both upwards and downwards. But this paper is concerned with the biopolitical level of populations and at this level, I argue, the lifestyle divide largely appears as a homeostatic condition. The basic fact that South African inequality has remained intact, and even increased, since 1994 (e.g. World Bank 2018), arguably confirms this position. The biopolitical gap certainly seems to be persistent. Furthermore, given planetary boundaries, it is extremely difficult to see how everybody on the globe would be able to enjoy the kind of unsustainable lifestyle that rich populations typically do.

I would like to conclude this article by addressing the following issues: Why is all of this problematic? What are the implications for ESD practitioners and researchers? What is the scope of the problematics discussed?

According to the latest SDG report, inequality is, alongside climate change, ‘the defining issue of our time’ (UN 2019b, 3). As argued in this paper, inequality is also ultimately morally unjustified (cf. Therborn 2013) and there is further plenty of evidence from the political ecology literature that inequality and environmental degradation intimately interact. Now, if ESD assigns entirely different lifestyles and responsibilities to rich and poor, this is likely to (re)produce inequality and unsustainable ways of living, rather than creating conditions for sustainability. The significance of this problem could hardly be overestimated. Furthermore, I believe that it is interwoven with a commonplace and depoliticized will to localize ESD.

That education must be adapted to the lived experiences of learners, and to the local contexts in which they are situated, has become widely accepted among educational scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers. Such sensitivity to local differences is typically viewed as a progressive response to crude one-size-fits-all pedagogy and to (neo)colonial forms of educational domination. There is, of course, much truth to this. However, as shown in this paper, ‘sensitivity’ to local realities, without consideration to the power relations through which these realities are formed, is an ostensible sensitivity which can actually serve to (re)produce inequality and unsustainability. Lest I should be misunderstood, I am not saying that the lived experience of learners should be ignored. Rather, my proposition is that the political subtext of these situated experiences should be carefully considered. To treat local ‘realities’ as something given and isolated to which ESD interventions must be adapted is, I argue, inadequate. Instead, these ‘realities’, and thereto associated conceptions of sustainable lifestyle(s), should be seen as relational and produced, not only through (biopolitical) ESD interventions themselves, but through wider political ecologies and economies, and through colonial legacies. Makings sense of this, together with learners, is an important task for ESD practitioners and researchers. Similarly, it is not self-evident that ESD interventions should mold responsible ‘sustainable’ subjects on the local level. ESD practitioners and researchers could just as well work to make power relations visible and ponder the possibility of localizing responsibility for environmental destruction elsewhere, e.g. among those who benefit from pollution-generating activities and among those in a position to actually bring about significant change.

Finally, a note on the scope of the problematics discussed. This study is obviously situated in South Africa, a country renowned for its socio-economic stratification. Yet, as extreme inequalities characterize our entire globe, there is every reason to suspect that the problem of differentiation is generic to the global implementation of ESD and, thus, that the concerns raised in this paper extends far beyond the South African case. Hopefully, future scholarly work will critically explore how ESD is implemented in different socio-economic contexts around the world, and enable us to understand more fully its potentially reproductive effects (cf. Hellberg and Knutsson 2018; Knutsson 2019). I believe that this is an urgent area of research as we enter the next global ESD programme.

Acknowledgements

This article forms part of the research project Education for sustainable development in an unequal world: Populations, skills and lifestyles, funded by the Swedish Research Council. I am deeply grateful to the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg, who hosted me during the fieldwork upon which this paper is based. I also want to thank my project colleagues Linus Bylund, Sofie Hellberg and Jonas Lindberg for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Finally, I want express my sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and to the anonymous informants for sharing the knowledge and experiences with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Vetenskapsrådet 2018-04029.

Notes

1 For an overview of different theoretical approaches to biopolitics see Lemke (2011).

2 While the terms EE and ESD have been hotly contested in the academic community, it is clear from the data in this study that informants use them interchangeably. For similar observations from South Africa see e.g. Lotz-Sisitka (2011).

3 At a very early point, Taylor (2014) discussed the GAP in South Africa and considered how it could support more enabling forms of ESD.

4 Notably, there is a recent discussion in the biopolitical literature on how the increasing recognition of indigenous knowledge in international policy discourse translates into subtler, but no less colonial, techniques of power (e.g. Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen 2014, 2016).

5 The phenomenon of depoliticization has been widely debated over the past decades. The following references, for example, can be consulted for more in-depth discussions about how depoliticization operates with specific reference to sustainable development (Swyngedouw 2007), ESD (Knutsson 2013) and international educational development (Knutsson and Lindberg 2018).

6 This does not preclude that there are individual agents involved in these ESD programmes that question, or even exercise resistance against, the ways in which the issue of inequality is being handled. After all, South Africa is a country with a long tradition of resistance against authorities and as Foucault (1998, 95) contended in an oft-cited phrase ’where there is power there is resistance’. However, there are no examples of such resistance in the data of this study.