Assumptions are readily made about the global nature and discourse of education for sustainable development. This study challenges assumptions made about structural power as expressed through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) policy and politics of education. Focusing on the concept of sustainable development (SD) and ESD, the research examined the culturally contextualized question: How should we understand the relationship between these policy concepts, structural power, hegemony and the hegemonic discourses that articulate them? A case analysis of the political and educational history of Vietnam is used to highlight how assumptions on the hegemonic potential of SD and ESD may or may not be appropriate, or adequate, for understanding that relationship at the depth required for critical purposes. The findings of a discourse analysis of relevant policy documents suggests the meanings of these concepts are not fully determined and cannot be seen as expressions of a determinable overall state of power relations or hegemony. Instead, they are suggestive of the limits of hegemonic power and allow for the emergence of a space of contestation. This space is at play in the political contestation of the meaning of SD and ESD in Vietnamese policy.