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Free-Range Children

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The Eco-Certified Child

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Education and the Environment ((PSEE))

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Abstract

The chapter problematizes how a neoliberal ideology organizes Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) and the figuration of the eco-certified child. The chapter illuminates how the individual choice is elevated in the sustainability discourse, and how individuals become accountable for solving global problems. The focus of individual choices is understood from Foucault’s theories on pastoral power: how ESE operates through describing humankind as in need of salvation. This is done through pointing out the individual as responsible for not only oneself, but also the “flock.” As well, the use of numbers is problematized: how tables, footprints, and numerical comparisons make different ways of handling sustainability problems possible respectively impossible. The chapter ends with emphasizing the need for politicizing the individualism in ESE.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This discussion continues in the chapter “Natural —With No Artificial Additives.”

  2. 2.

    A large proportion of Eon’s energy comes from hydroelectric power , which is not fossil fuel and thus does not have the same greenhouse effect as fuels like oil and coal.

  3. 3.

    Cf. also Bernstein (2001, p. 365).

  4. 4.

    These particular figures come from the PISA test in mathematics for 2012.

  5. 5.

    See further Cowen (2014), Grek (2009), Ideland (2014), Popkewitz (2011), Simons and Masschelein (2008).

  6. 6.

    I must remind readers that this is a text-based study. Soneryd and Uggla (2015) problematize the way in which this obvious steering toward consumption as the important political action really gets people to comply, or if the idea of green citizenship is renegotiated in practice.

  7. 7.

    See e.g. Bengtsson and Östman (2013), Cachelin, Rose, and Paisley (2015), Hasslöf (2015), Ideland and Malmberg (2015), Knutsson (2013), Kopnina (2012), McKenzie (2012), Sund and Öhman (2014), Van Poeck and Östman (2017), Van Poeck, Goeminne, and Vandenabeele (2016).

  8. 8.

    I have searched without success for teaching material on both the Swedish Greenpeace website (http://www.greenpeace.org/sweden/se) and the international site (http://www.greenpeace.org).

  9. 9.

    The title of the Greenpeace film is “LEGO : Everything is NOT awesome,” alluding to the song “Everything is Awesome” from The LEGO Movie from 2014. The characters of Emmet and Lucy from the original film can also be glimpsed in the Greenpeace film.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Malin Ideland

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  1. Malin Ideland
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Ideland, M. (2019). Free-Range Children. In: The Eco-Certified Child. Palgrave Studies in Education and the Environment. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00199-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00199-5_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00198-8

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