Solving the Wicked Problems of the Anthropocene: Karl Marx's Paradigm and Australian Educational Research

Abstract

As a research paradigm, Marx's insights can be used to grapple with the ‘wicked problem' of the Anthropocene: to explain the current crisis; judge the various scholarly representations of it; and point towards a transcendence of the ‘problem'. In the same vein, this chapter seeks to provide a Marxist paradigm for educational research in the era of the Anthropocene. The chapter thus identifies two ‘wicked problems' and suggests solutions: firstly, the urgent need for a robust and plausible paradigm for programs of educational research seeking to discover, analyse and understand the dynamics of the Anthropocene from the micro-political to the macro-political, which Marx's paradigm provides; secondly, a guide to the type of action needed to make educational institutions democratic and sustainable and part of the solution to the ‘wicked problem' of the Anthropocene, rather than sites that reproduce a workforce ready to be exploited and oppressed, which Marx's paradigm also provides.