Analyzing the global project of Education for Sustainable Development through a Marxist lens: dialogues with the book Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World

Abstract

In this article, I engage with the findings of the book, Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World: Biopolitics, Differentiation and Affirmative Alternatives, to argue that Marx’s method, historical-dialectical materialism, is essential to studying the global project of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In centering this method, I identify the core categories of totality, class struggle, and the international division of labor as key to such analysis. I then outline possible pathways to critique, drawing on both empirical data from the book and by highlighting unresolved concerns, such as the World Bank’s role in promoting sustainable development, the political strategies of extractive industries and the social-environmental impacts of sustainable technologies, alongside the pedagogical possibilities within resistance movements. My purpose throughout is to foster dialogue around new elements that have the potential to advance more critical forms of ESD, a key feature of which is radically incorporating the need to end inequality.