Educational Review

Vol. 58, No. 3, August 2006, pp. 273290

Education and sustainable

development: a political analysis
Stephen Gough and William Scott*
University of Bath, UK

This paper examines the inter-relationships between education and sustainable development as
these are played out in the political arena. Each of these two important areas of policy is prioritized
by the UK government: education for over a 150 years, but emphatically so since 1997; sustainable
development since at least 1992 when the Rio Earth Summit brought the issue to political (if not)
public attention, and when this (and other) governments entered into treaty obligations to advance
sustainable development through the policy processobligations which were reinforced during the
Rio + 10 Summit in Johannesburg in 2002. We have written, with others, about the rise of interest
in educations role in sustainable development in the period since Rio (Reid et al., Geography,
87(3), pp. 247255) and this paper does not go over this ground. Instead, we examine a range of
contrasting perspectives that have been taken on these issues, ask what they reveal and what they
do not, and further ask what we can and cannot say about politics, education and sustainable
development. Finally, we argue that if sustainable development is to be promoted through
education this requires that we learn to re-think our thinking about politics.

Introduction
The title of this paper, Education and Sustainable Development: a political analysis
sounds straightforward enough. One might suppose that there exists a single, clearly
defined area of political debate concerned with the inter-relationships between
education on the one hand and sustainable development on the other hand.
Unfortunately, this is not so. On the contrary, politics, education and sustainable
development form the focus of quite separate debates, each fragmented into a large
number of hotly contested sub-issues. All the elements of each of these debates can
be combined together in a multitude of ways, creating a kaleidoscope of
controversies. Worse, many substantive elements of both debates involve appeals
to natural-science or social-scientific knowledge which is itself uncertain and
contested.
The following metaphor illustrates the purpose of this paper, and the approach
taken. Firstly, let us view our topic as a large, irregular-shaped object located in the

*Corresponding author: Centre for Research in Education and the Environment, Department of
Education, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. Email: cree@bath.ac.uk
ISSN 0013-1911 (print)/ISSN 1465-3397 (online)/06/030273-18
# 2006 Educational Review
DOI: 10.1080/00131910600748026
274 S. Gough and W. Scott

centre of a large, dark space. Our task, which is to describe this object in detail, is not
impossible in principle. However, to pursue the metaphor, the equipment we have is
a pencil-beam torch. Thus, shining the torch onto the object provides valid, though
far from adequate information. If we stand at a series of different points, we will
surely see something different from each, and laboriously, a picture of sorts will
emerge, though subject to frequent error and correction. Clearly, all points of view
will be useful, though some may well appear to contradict each other in ways
impossible to resolve immediately. Thus, it will be important to avoid excluding
particular points of view, or leaping to general conclusions from information yielded
by one or two perspectives.
In the remainder of this paper we explore the most politically influential
perspectives that have been taken on our topic, looking along the many beams of
light, asking what they reveal and what they do not. We then ask what it seems safe
to say about politics, education and sustainable development and, perhaps more
importantly, what it seems we cannotwith certaintyclaim to know. It seems
important to note at this point that actual political debate frequently consists of
attempts to assert the claims of one perspective over another. Pursuing our
metaphor, we suggest that adversarial political processes of this kind are wholly
inappropriate to our task as, given the uncertainty which attendsand for the
foreseeable future must surely continue to attendissues of the relationship between
education and sustainable development, we suggest that all the perspectives we
describe need to be taken seriously. We argue this in full knowledge both, that some
perspectives may ultimately be incommensurable, and that, even taken together,
existing perspectives cannot provide a complete account. Finally, and in developing
a conclusion, we address the principle flaw in our dark object, dark space
metaphor, which is that in it the observers are separate from the object they seek to
describe, whereas human commentators on the politics of education and sustainable
development are inextricably political actors, whether they like it or not.
We are consciously leaving terms undefined; most particularly what we mean by
politics, education and sustainable development, since when people define these
key terms they are, in effect, choosing the vantage point from which their torch will
be shone, and so excluding other vantage points. To put this another way, they are
beginning their enquiry not with data-collection but with a degree of data-exclusion,
so delineating what is of interest a priori. This we wish to avoid, as far as it is possible
for any human observer to do so.
We now critically examine a range of contrasting perspectives on these issues.
Table 1 summarizes these.

The segments perspective

In relation to both politics and education, an extremely influential way of thinking
about sustainable development is that it consists of a number of constantly-
interacting segments. The most commonly-used of these formulations involves three
segments: the environmental, the economic and the social; as shown in Figure 1.
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 275

Table 1. Perspectives on politics, education and sustainable development

Perspective View of politics, education and sustainable development

Segments Focuses on understanding the nature of sustainable development. Holds that

economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development are
ultimately inseparable, and so must be addressed simultaneously. Education is
seen as one political policy means to this end.
Technocratic Focuses on specific problems of sustainable development that can be addressed
piecemeal within existing political structures using appropriate technical
expertise. Education and training can equip people with the necessary expertise
to do this.
Paradigm shift Focuses on a view of historical processes. Sustainable development requires
nothing less than a revolution in the ways we think about, and live, our lives.
Education can facilitate this (inescapably political) process.
Task-based Focuses on continuing human action and how this relates to sustainable
development. Such action may be environmental, social or educative, and may
be encouraged or discouraged by political policy. It is important to note that
many educators would seem to have a contrary view of their professional task
according to which both sustainable development and politics are marginal to it.
Nonetheless, there are strong policy initiatives in many countries that emphasize
the potential of education to address such issues.
Globalization Subsumes education and sustainable development within a wider political
discourse. Education can make a contribution to debates and understanding.
Metaphorical Conclusions about politics, education and sustainable development are reached
on the basis of metaphorical understanding. This may well be tacit and/or
unselfcritical. Education can help people appreciate the subtleties of such
reasoning.
Pragmatic Individuals who have no choice but to act in the here-and-now may be
influenced primarily by expediency, indifference, opportunism and/or
serendipity, or by commitment and enthusiasm. Their experiences may lead
policy, rather than be led by it. Education can help people understand such
processes.

Figure 1. Dimensions of sustainable development

276 S. Gough and W. Scott

Breaking up complex tasks into manageable parts is a natural and necessary thing
to do. These segments form a particularly enduring representation of sustainable
development because they reflect not only the way we usually think about things, but
also the way we tend to organize ourselves. We have specialized disciplines to deal
with each of these segments, and specialized arms of government to manage them.
However, it is important not to mistake a convenient representation of something
for the thing itself. There are no clear boundaries between environment, society and
economy, and each is fundamentally dependent on the other. Even the environment
is largely a managed artefact produced over time by its interactions with social and
economic activity. Further, it derives all the meanings that make it our environment
from such activity. Thus, the solid lines by which this model is normally divided are
very misleading.
The danger, then, is that we may allow ourselves to imagine that if we improve our
performance in each of the segments separately we will necessarily, in the aggregate,
advance sustainable development. However, we are more than likely to find that one
desirable course of action tends to be in tension with others. The triple bottom line
approach (HEPS, 2004) may turn out to be not a neat progression but a messy
political compromise involving trades-off between one desired goal and another. The
role of education might be to equip learners to make judgements about such trades-
off.
An example of such tensions and trades-off is found in a recent study. Ravenscroft
et al. (2002) examined approaches to active citizenship through participation in
public forums in England and Wales, in this case in relation to outdoor recreation.
We might expect to find active citizenship and participation among the social goals
of any drive towards sustainable development. Ravenscroft et al.s (2002, p. 729)
conclusions include the following:
Improving participation at the local level may not necessarily achieve the core emphasis
of government policy, on improving peoples experience of local government and their
willingness and ability to engage in deliberative democracy few studies have
established an enduring link between the processes of participation and the generation
of improved decision-making full political participation by local people may slow and
confuse decision-making, which is likely to prove unpopular among other members of
the public Experimentation with new methods of participation, such as citizen juries,
can further slow decision-making processes, as well as adding to the cost of local service
provision.

Hence, improving participation by citizens can lead to:

N negative social consequences: other citizens are inconvenienced and/or annoyed
by delays;
N negative economic consequences: participation is costly, meaning that other
options are foregone;
N negative environmental consequences: poor decisions may be made, and the
options foregone may be those with potential to be environmentally beneficial.

This is not to argue that such citizenship and participation are bad; rather that
benefits may not always be unqualified. The role for education here is in helping
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 277

people to manage these complex choices for themselves, not in telling them how they
should decide between over-simplified and idealistic option sets. This implies an
education that encourages learners to cross the boundaries between the segments in
Figure 1. By doing so they would challenge not only a particular way of organizing
ideas, but also the many social institutions that are sustained by that way of
organizing our thinking.

The technocratic perspective

The identification of a technocratic (technocentric) approach to environmental
issues, and the explication of its relationship to other strands of environmentalism, is
mainly associated with ORiordan (1981, 1989, 1990) who identifies,
a radical or manipulative perspective in which human ingenuity and the spirit of
competition dictate the terms of morality and conduct. (ORiordan, 1989, p. 82)

In the extreme, this technocratic view depends upon a reductionist, mechanistic

view of the natural world, and exhibits confidence in the ability of human beings to
develop scientific and technological solutions to environmental problems as they
emerge.
A recent example of such an approach is Goodland (2002), who argues for an
approach that divides sustainable development into four kinds of sustainability,
each of which can be assigned to particular experts in accordance with political
priorities. Hence, social scientists should develop our understanding of social
sustainability; economists should be responsible for economic sustainability; and
biophysical specialists should seek to explain environmental sustainability. The role
of education is to develop human capital, so contributing to human sustainability.
Although this model bears superficial resemblance to the segments perspective, in
it each of the four components are seen as substantially independent of the others.
The technocratic view of human/environment relations has been influential within
the field of education, perhaps most notably through the work of Hungerford
(Hungerford et al., 1980, 1983, 2000; Hungerford & Volk, 1984, 1990) which
develops a research-based taxonomy of goals and processes for environmental
education, to the end of creating an environmentally-aware and responsible
citizenry. Another example is education for sustainable development (Hopkins et
al., 1996). Both have been influential in practice; Hungerford because of his secure
research foundation, and Hopkins because of his institutional standing (a UNESCO
UNITWIN Chair in Sustainability at York University, Ontario) within UNESCO.
Such technocratic approaches have much to recommend them. Their appeal to
science as a source of knowledge and method is defensible, even if science is
implicated in contemporary environmental problems. As Lucas (1980) pointed out,
it seems unthinkable to attempt to resolve our problems without an appeal to the
science that enabled the technology creating those problems. For example, any
approach to the disposal of decaying nuclear submarines seems literally and
metaphorically doomed without appropriate scientific input. More generally,
278 S. Gough and W. Scott

although human ingenuity has sometimes led to problems, this seems a poor reason
to abandon ingeniousness, even if we had that choice. Finally, in relation to the
specific educational examples given earlier, there is no doubt that positive
educational outcomes have resulted from the intelligent use by teachers of the
approaches set out.
However, when we turn to the politics of technocratic approaches to sustainable
development and education we find the matter only sketchily addressed, if it is
addressed at all, because the focus is on getting the job done, without much
consideration of how the job came to be defined in particular ways, or whose
interests are served. Even this is not problematic in cases where almost everyone
would agree about the issue: e.g. safely decommissioning nuclear reactors is in
everyones interests. But where, as in the Hungerford and Hopkins examples, we
find a general emphasis on the environmentally-responsible citizen we need to ask a
number of questions, including:
N Are even Western countries with a tradition of liberal democracy actually run by
their citizens in any operational sense?
N Is the role of citizen the most important influence on behaviour in relation to
sustainable development? What about the roles of employee, employer, or
parent for example?
N What about the differential economic power enjoyed by citizens of different
countries, or by different citizens within countries?
N What about those denied citizenship rights?
N How closely correlated are what citizens learn and what citizens are taught?

The effect of such questions is to transform the notion of bringing about learning
to promote sustainable development. This cannot be a conceptually simple matter of
acting on behalf of a common human interest to understand complex problems, and
then to plan and to implement remedies. We will find problems of an irresolvable
complexity fundamentally characterized by conflicts of interest, competition for
scarce resources, and opposed views coloured by incompatible but deeply-believed
historical narratives. The technocratic view will not do on its own. We need to shine
our torch from another angle as well.

The paradigm shift perspective

The paradigm shift perspective is very different. It builds its case upon an
interpretation of the work of Thomas Kuhn (1996) whose key insight was that
scientists do not normally seek new discoveries or pursue a rigorous challenging of
assumptions. Rather, they seek evidence to support an overall framework of ideas
which is generally assumed to be true. This overall framework (paradigm) guides the
questions they ask, the evidence they choose to observe, and the arguments they take
seriously. However, over time a paradigm may become untenable. Evidence may
accumulate which it cannot explain or accommodate, and a new framework
(paradigm), if it makes possible the explanation of the anomalies, is then likely to
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 279

be embraced even if it cannot yet be empirically supported. This is a paradigm

shift. The movement from Newtons to Einsteins physics is an example of such a
shift.
Of course, society is not a science, and the paradigm shift approach to politics,
education and sustainable development is a metaphorical, not a literal,
application of Kuhns thesis. The idea it embodies is that society is informed
by a paradigmatic way of thinking. One social paradigm shift occurred, it is
argued, at the onset of the industrial revolution when, whatever it had been like
before, society became newly predicated on a reductionist, mechanistic,
industrialist, materialist, utilitarian and masculine set of assumptions (see, for
example, Robottom & Hart, 1993; Fien, 1993; Greenall Gough, 1993; Sterling,
1993, 2001).
In the present, the argument put forward is that a further social paradigm shift is
needed (or is emerging) made necessary by phenomena such as:
N the failure of science and technology to solve problems of poverty, starvation, and
environmental degradation;
N the emergence of risks which appear to have been manufactured through the
industrial application of science and technology (Beck, 1992, 1999);
N environmental crises on unprecedented scales;
N growing disillusionment with consumerism and/or globalization.

Technocrats, according to this view, are locked into the dominant social paradigm
and cannot see that, in relation to sustainable development, there are political and
ideological issues that must be addressed. By applying to environmental and social
problems the mechanistic rationale that caused those problems in the first place, say
the social paradigm-shifters, technocrats are trying to extinguish a fire by pouring
fuel on it. Worse, whilst this technocratic/mechanistic rationale is deeply embedded
in school and adult educationwhich seeks to equip learners for economic
competitivenesseducation nevertheless seems one essential means of helping
change the very foundations of peoples thinking.
Again, this is a view that adds something to our understanding of the
interactions between education, politics and sustainable development. Regardless
of whether one accepts the paradigm metaphor, it does seem that particular
ideas and ways of thinking become more, or less, predominant and accepted
across societies as time passes. Further, science and technology do not always
produce universal benefits; new risks have emerged (e.g. food and energy
technologies once judged by science as risk-free); some elements of a global
environmental crisis are now almost universally accepted (e.g. global warming;
ozone depletion); some instances of local, large-scale environmental catastrophe
are indisputable (e.g. felling or burning of forests; extinction of species); and
there is evidence of resistance to globalization and consumerism. Finally, if these
things are true then people might usefully learn them. For such learning to
happen on a wide scale would seem to require a significant reorientation of both
politics and education.
280 S. Gough and W. Scott

Task-based perspectives: social, environmental and educative

A further possible perspective focuses on human social, environmental and/or
educational actions. In practice, particular individuals and institutions have tended
to emphasize one or other of these alternatives, and for that reason they are treated
separately in what follows.

The social change focus

It is possible to begin with the assumption that the key factors to be addressed in any
move towards sustainable development are social, rather than environmental, in
origin. Thus, if bio-geophysical nature is threatened then this does not arise from the
laws of science, but rather from the behaviour of humans in contexts which those
laws govern. Such a view is likely to cast education in a central role, since education
is one way through which people can be trained, cajoled, manipulated or
empowered, the better to respond and/or act.
Of course, no one actually says cajole or manipulate to describe their intentions,
but these words describe rather well the deliberate attempts to use education to get
people to behave in particular, specified ways: that is, they describe instances where
education is a political act by the educator. Training and empowerment are words
with which most people feel more comfortable, since they have the sense of enabling
political (and other) action by the learner. It is worth noting, however, that some
appeals to empowerment as an educational goal over-specify in advance what
people are supposed to decide to do once they are empowered (Scott & Oulton,
1999). This Catch-22 version of empowerment ( if you think like me you must be
empowered; if you dont, then you need more educating) is sometimes justified by
an appeal to false-consciousness, described by Edwards (1997, p. 45) as: a deeply
embedded but patronizing position which some radicals share with conservative
critics of the contemporary world, whereas empowerment is the opposite of this:
the capacity to challenge and decide on a different point of view and line of action.
A further interesting paradox is that those whose focal concern in advancing
sustainable development is essentially social are likely to make some claim that their
position is ecocentric: i.e. it weighs the interests of other living things equally with
those of humans (Fien, 1993). However, those who focus primarily on environ-
mental ends are likely to do so because their concern is anthropocentric, arguing that
a healthy environment is necessary for human welfare.
In educational terms, an important policy insight of the social change focus is that
education to promote sustainable development should not focus exclusively on
environmental science; a second is that the content of such education may well need
to vary quite dramatically from one setting to another.

The environmental change focus

In this case educators see themselves as taking not political but environmental
action, and this is usually justified in human welfare terms: we need to understand
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 281

environmental threats to human life through the application of science, and to

change peoples behaviour appropriately through education so that it becomes pro-
environmental. In an extensive review of research evidence, Kollmuss and Aygeman
(2002) note the lack of evidence for a simple, linear relationship between knowledge
and behaviour, and the persistence in the minds of policy-makers that such a
relationship must exist.
One possible, and currently fashionable, response to this problem is to promote
sustainable development through social marketing (McKenzie-Mohr & Smith,
1999), an approach which borrows techniques from advertising in order to bring
about behaviour change. Social marketing differs from education in that its focus is
on manipulating individuals behaviour in line with priorities set elsewhere, and not
in any sense with enabling or empowering them or developing their capabilities. It is
likely to be uncontroversial where there is broad agreement about both the science
and the ethics of the particular change being induced. For example, social marketing
which leads individuals to give up smoking is likely to be welcomed by almost
everyone, but sustainable development, however defined, raises far more complex
ethical, scientific and administrative issues, and will not result from narrow changes
in individual behaviour. Certainly, if as many have argued (e.g. Fien, 1993),
sustainable development must have participatory political processes at its heart, then
we need an educational approach that is enabling, rather than manipulative, of
learners. None of this is to argue that providing environmental information is
useless, but the evidence does seem clear that the politics of sustainable development
is driven by much more than information provision.

The educative focus

Typically, in governments around the world, the strongest promotion of sustainable
development through education originates in Ministries with responsibility for
aspects of environmental management and/or development (Hindson et al., 2001).
Ministries of Education have a concern for matters such as literacy, numeracy and
the development of skills, whilst being bombarded with demands from others (e.g.
those concerned with peace, sporting performance, consumer education, animal
welfare, nation-building, health, etc.) who think that education should be a means
through which their own area of interest is advanced. Environment in general, and
sustainable development in particular, may with justification be seen as no more
than additions to this wish-list, unless it can be shown that what is being proposed is
inherently educative. There is considerable force in the claim of Jensen and Schnack
(1997) that it is not, and cannot be, the function of schools to solve societys
problems, but rather that it is the role of schools to educate children.

The globalization perspective

It is possible to argue that the relationship between education and sustainable
development can only be properly understood in the context of wider political
282 S. Gough and W. Scott

debate about globalization. Globalization, however, is contested as to its meaning

and its value. Those who think that globalization is both real and beneficial, such as
Ohmae (1990) and Reich (1991) tend to see it as a process capable of liberating
individuals from the vagaries of national government policy-decisions and resource-
management so that they can compete freely in a global marketplace. Here, the role
of education is to equip learners, through formal education and thereafter, to
compete (Edwards, 1997). An alternative view is that globalization leads to loss of
cultural diversity (Pieterse, 1995) and the destruction of traditional communities,
while offering the worlds poor next to nothing (Martin & Schumann, 1997; UNDP,
1999). In this case educations key role is seen as enabling people to resist or survive
globalization, typically through equipping them to participate in local-scale
organization and/or production. There is a third view, which is that globalization
is a myth (Hirst & Thompson, 1999).
In fact, this strongly polarized debate probably tells us more about the Wests
adversarial political processes than it does about globalization. As Dicken (1998)
notes, this polarization is probably not justified by the evidence. There is
globalization, but it is not uniform and its effects are not consistently the same
from place to place or time to time. Sometimes the poor benefit and sometimes they
do not. Sometimes the environment is threatened in new ways, and sometimes
globalization reduces such threats. Sen (1999, pp. 240241) describes the situation
as follows:
The threat to native cultures in the globalizing world of today is, to a considerable
extent, inescapable This is a problem, but not just a problem, since global trade and
commerce can bring with itas Adam Smith foresawgreater economic prosperity for
each nation. But there can be losers as well as gainers, even if in the net the aggregate
figures move up rather than down. In the context of economic disparities, the
appropriate response has to include concerted efforts to make the form of globalization
less destructive of employment and traditional livelihood it is up to the society to
determine what, if anything, it wants to do to preserve old forms of living, perhaps even
at significant economic cost.

One possible conclusion here is that the skill of learning-to-learn is key to

living sustainably in a globalized world. The importance of developing this skill
through education has been emphasized by recent research (Jemmott, 2002;
Stasz, 2001). Although this skill is not about sustainable development per se, like
being numerate and literate, it seems indispensable to all those who must learn
what sustainable development means for them as events unfold. Its development
is also inherently educative, and capable of promotion through political
processes.

The metaphorical perspective

Andrew Ross (1994) points out that two contrasting metaphors of Nature are
equally embedded in Western thinking. The first of these (Nature red in tooth and
claw) sees humans embarked upon a battle for survival in a hostile world. Nature is
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 283

there to be explored, discovered, conquered and used, and we survive through

individual and collective ingenuity. The governing principle is that of the survival of
the fittest, and the devil-take-the-hindmost. Of course, these sentiments may be
particularly associated with the period of Western colonial expansion, but they are
nevertheless:
N far from dead; the word conquered still turns up in contemporary news reports
relating to the environment. Using nature is not, of course, something humans
ultimately have much choice about.
N central to neo-Malthusian arguments for conservation, such as The Limits to
Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), which argue that the Earths resources are finite
and that if we go on as we are its carrying-capacity must be exceeded.

The second metaphor identified by Ross (the web of life) emphasizes Nature as
interdependent and mutually self-sustaining. So, where the first metaphor uses the
natural world as a justification for activities ranging from marketplace competition to
warseeing these as being only naturalthe second employs exactly the same
device to abhor aggression and self-seeking of all kinds, appealing for love, peace and
social justice. This metaphor also provides a basis from which to argue for
conservation, in this case because of Natures perceived inherent value, and because
of its capability, as an integrated whole, for sustaining and enriching human life.
All this creates a problem, at least if we believe that it should be possible to identify
some general rule of behaviour in relation to sustainable development and teach it to
people. Should we be battling or harmonizing? Should we be driven by fear or love?
In fact, as we argue later, both are valid perspectives and there is no necessity to
choose between them.

The pragmatic perspective

There are now many people whose jobs require them to engage with sustainable
development. They may have a range of disciplinary backgrounds and professional
qualifications, and work in national or local government, the private or non-
governmental organization (NGO) sectors, with responsibility for environmental
management systems, green procurement, social inclusion, waste management,
water quality, etc. They may struggle themselves, not only to make sense of the term
sustainable development and political initiatives relating to it, but also to convey its
significance to professional colleagues. Sustainable development may perhaps be
only a small, and even unwelcome, addition to their responsibilities. Finally, they
may feel strongly both that they need to learn something more about sustainable
development and that others should learn from them. This is important because
these are people who have no choice but to act in the here-and-now. They cannot
wait for all the is and ts to be dotted and crossed. Anything they can learn from
others needs to be practically focused and responsive to their immediate needs. It
would be helpful were there a means whereby we could all learn from this group as
they take action, observe the outcomes, and adjust their plans accordingly. They are,
284 S. Gough and W. Scott

after all, at the cutting edge of politics, sustainable development, education and
learning. That is where they earn their livings. Policy needs to be contingent and
adaptable if it is to take account in a timely way of their experience.

Some commonalities
There may well be other perspectives on these complex issues, and other standpoints
from which torches may be shone. In our view, however, the perspectives
represented here are those that have had the greatest political influence, and we
conclude by considering these as a whole.

Multiple rationalities
One approach which has sought to shed light on the way in which multiple
perspectives develop in relation to complex problems is that of cultural theory
(Thompson et al., 1990). Cultural theory has been influential in the fields of risk and
environmental management (Adams, 1995; Thompson, 1990, 1997; James &
Thompson, 1989; Schwarz & Thompson, 1990), although its value, scope and
applicability are contested (Sjoberg, 1997). However, the set of categories identified
by cultural theorists to catalogue multiple perspectives found within societies seem
useful ways of thinking about the present context of politics, sustainable
development and education.
Cultural theorists note that people have incomplete knowledge of the natural
environment and human interaction with it. They face uncertainty and risk, and they
cope with this by constructing interpretations of environmental reality. Such
interpretations (rationalities) may be of four archetypal kinds: the fatalistic, the
hierarchical, the individualistic, and the egalitarian (Figure 2). These archetypes are
derived from two dimensions of social organization.
Each archetype has particular expectations of the social world. For the fatalist it is
competitive and unequal. For the individualist it is competitive and equal. The
hierarchist sees it as unequal and uncompetitive. Egalitarians assume uncompeti-
tiveness with equality. These combinations give rise to quite different criteria for
establishing what, in contexts of complexity and uncertainty, makes sense; e.g.
things make sense to hierarchists when they follow the rules; the test of acceptability
for egalitarians is whether a proposition or action is just; and the individualist wants
to know whether it works. For fatalists, of course, sense is absent from events as
they unfold. One can say, at least, that these ways of judging are sometimes
apparent in social processes, and sometimes strikingly so (Gough, 1995; Thompson,
1990).
Each archetype is further associated with a particular myth of nature. For the
fatalist, nature is capricious; for the individualist it is benign; for hierarchists it is
benign within certain limits, but perverse if those limits are exceeded. Finally,
egalitarians consider nature to be ephemeral, fragile and easily destroyed. Which
interpretation or myth of nature an individual is likely to favour at any particular
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 285

Figure 2. Four archetypal constructions of environmental reality. Source: adapted from James and
Thompson (1989).

time and place is a result of social influences upon them in that context (Thompson,
1997). An individuals interpretation may shift repeatedly over time and in response
to changes of social context such as that from, say, family-home, to workplace, to
peer group. One interesting implication for formal educational settings is that the
sense individuals make of particular learning, and the significance they attach to it,
may change when they move to other settings or contexts. This may go some way to
explain the frequently-noted phenomenon of a gap between what people seem to
have learned and what they then do (Kollmuss & Aygeman, 2002).
Thompson (1997, p. 142) remarks that, humans are both a part of nature and
apart from nature, and continues:
286 S. Gough and W. Scott

The different forms of social solidarity of which we are the vital parts result in our
knowing in several different ways, and it is this plurality of knowledgesoften
contradictory knowledgesthat has to be addressed if we are to have effective policies.

In this paper we have explored different perspectives on politics, education and

sustainable development, and the archetypal interpretations or rationalities set out
by cultural theory seem to us helpful in analysing a taxonomy of such perspectives.
So, for example:
N The technocratic perspective is characterized by a hierarchical epistemology but
an individualistic theory of action. Knowledge comes from scientific procedures;
action is about getting substantive results. The pragmatic perspective shares this
concern for concrete outcomes, but may be informed by a different view of
knowledge: an NGO might seek to base locally-specific action on indigenous
knowledge, or on the notion that non-human species have rights, so
operationalizing an egalitarian epistemology.
N When individuals or organizations using these different perspectives meet in
confronting a specific problem the result may be either: (a) an uneasy political
coalition based on the shared search for effective actions, or (b) political dispute
focused on competing views of the basis for such actions. This tension is evident,
for example, every time an environmental NGO takes money from an oil company
to protect a habitat. Learning tends to happen in these circumstances to the extent
that each party engages with the others view of valid knowledge.
N The Nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw metaphor is consistent with an individualis-
tic rationality, while the Nature-as-web metaphor indicates an egalitarian view.
An idea advanced during a recent joint Russian/British conference (Planet, 2002)
is that there might be a relationship between the level of economic development
and the propensity to care for the environment. The very poor may view Nature in
egalitarian terms because they live with it, that is, they are themselves part of the
ecosystem. The very rich may also have an egalitarian view because they live in
Nature while earning their living through services-provision, or through
productive activity physically located elsewhere. Between these extremes, people
tend to live through Nature, making goods and services by using real resources.
This is an existence much more compatible with an individualistic rationality.
N This analysis offers a possible way of explaining the political dynamics through
which elements of the very rich uphold indigenous peoples as an example to
everyone else (see, for example, Devall & Sessions, 1985), and suggests that this
provides a deeply unpromising model for education and learning policy. It may be
that the indigenous model is operable only under subsistence levels of income
and population, so containing an implicit requirement that more economically-
developed societies implement large reductions in both.

The most important points to emerge from the earlier considerations are: first,
being certain in ones own mind is a poor criterion for believing oneself to be right;
secondly, and in consequence, being open to learning from others is often an
 A political analysis of education and sustainable development 287

alternative to engaging them in pointless political debate. Nothing can be gained

from arguing about solutions when it is actually the nature of the problem that is
contested. This suggests a role for education in helping people understand and value
their own perspectives while also enabling them to engage with the perspectives of
others.

In conclusion: turning the torch on ourselves

As we noted in the introduction, our dark object, dark space metaphor breaks down
when we consider the observer. We have ourselves tried in this paper to take a meta-
perspective on the politics of education and sustainable development, examining the
most influential perspectives and arguing that engaging with all of them is likely to be
more productive, given the presence of extensive uncertainties, than seeking to
choose between them. Whilst we cannot hope to detach ourselves from our
subject matter entirely, in the best spirit of post-positivism (Connell, 1997), we can
try.
There is, in Western thought at least, a deeply rooted assumption that notions of
good and evil, right and wrong are essentially dichotomous. A thing cannot, it is
supposed, be both good and evil at the same time, though good in one thing can
sometimes be traded-off against bad in another. This is the very stuff of politics,
where functioning liberal democracies organize occasional mass-choice-making
events (elections and referenda) focused around such trades-off, while asserting that
this is better than other such systems.
This may be true: but the Western bipolar way of thinking has deeper
consequences (Haste, 2001). In particular, it encourages the formation of ideas
about paradigms, worldviews, cooperation and equality, and competition and
meritocracy as internally-consistent sets of opposing ideas, which are likely to be
held or promoted, by individuals or organizations, in a consistent and predictable
way. So, one can be left-wing, or right-wing, but one cannot be both left- and right-
wing: or so we tell ourselves. Even post-modernists, having abandoned grand-
narratives, have a way of appealing to supposedly coherent sets of values as a means
to reconstruct what they have just deconstructed (see, for example, Giroux, 1990).
Others have made a case for balance between worldviews in relation to learning
(Brown & Lauder, 2001), or in relation to sustainable development (Christie &
Warburton, 2001).
We argue that this whole way of thinking is essentially conservative and defeats the
very purpose of education. It leads us to repeat what is, in the end, the same debate
over and over again. In the natural world, living things compete and perform services
for each other at the same time: webs (both literal and metaphoric) are built by
predation; predation requires that some potential victims survive. In the social
world, explicitly collectivist regimes have always been characterized by (often not-
very-well) concealed competition for resources, favours and power. Similarly,
explicitly competitive societies have sometimes been substantially run by cartels,
cliques, and nepotism. If sustainable development, in any credible definition, is to be
288 S. Gough and W. Scott

promoted through education, this requires, perhaps above all, that we learn to re-
think our thinking about politics.

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