6 - Eco-Schools for Rich and Poor: The Biopolitical Divide

Summary

In Chapter 5, we explored the (neo)liberal rationalities and techniques through which Eco-Schools is made governable globally. The present chapter closes in on local eco-schools and offers a comparative biopolitical analysis – between and across sites – of how the programme is unpacked in different socio-economic and geographical contexts. The chapter begins with a short introduction to the local eco-school settings in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda, where fieldwork was conducted. The subsequent analysis demonstrates how conceptions of local living conditions and sustainability problems affect implementation, and how globally standardized Eco-Schools themes are unpacked very differently in situ. The chapter further brings attention to the different roles that individuals and communities, as governmental categories, assume in discrete socio-economic and geographical contexts. Penultimately, the chapter engages with the elephant in the room – inequality – and how it is (or is not) handled in Eco-Schools implementation. What emerges from the overall analysis is an evident biopolitical pattern of distinctions between rich and poor populations which goes far beyond local variation. The final part of the chapter summarizes the main arguments.

Local Eco-Schools settings

This section introduces the local Eco-Schools settings in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda, where fieldwork was conducted. As readers might recall, these countries were selected because they all have Eco-Schools programmes running and represent different socio-economic categories in accordance with World Bank definitions. However, as within-nation inequality is also a considerable factor, we deliberately aspired to select certified eco-schools located in different socio-economic (high-income and low-income) and geographical (urban and rural) areas in each country.

As indicated in Chapter 5, such sampling variation was not possible in Uganda and Rwanda where the national operators exclusively target poor communities. Nevertheless, the entire sample still enables us to explore and compare how Eco-Schools is unpacked locally in relation to populations living under very different socio-economic conditions. To protect the confidentiality of our informants and the selected schools, we will not be more specific about their geographical location. The material upon which this specific chapter is based consists of interviews with school staff and field observations from a total of 31 schools, alongside interviews with representatives of, and material from, the national operators in the four countries. For the purpose of comparability, we deliberately selected schools in each country with students aged 12–18 years.