Revisiting Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World : reading back, thinking ahead

This review symposium issue brings together scholars to engage with the findings presented in our recent book Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World: Biopolitics, Differentiation and Affirmative Alternatives. Adopting a comparative biopolitical approach, the book explores how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is enacted in different socio-economic and geographical contexts around the world and how inequality is managed in these processes. In this opening piece, we first introduce the book and its central arguments. We then highlight several themes that, while addressed in the book, we believe merit further scholarly attention. These include the complex interplay of different inequalities; subtle articulations of coloniality and the ‘Malthus effect’; the potential for a democratic biopolitics; and alternative attributions of community – all considered within the broader context of the global ESD enterprise and its peculiar combination of biopolitical inclusion and separation.