Sustainable Development As A Sociologically Defensible Concept: From Foxes and Rovers To Citizen-Workers*

At a recent conference, we noted the following adjectives used to talk about sustainable development: vague, vacuous, sweeping and meaningless. Andrew Blowers and Pieter Glasbergen wrote, "The concept of sustainable development can easily be dismissed as all things to all people, a concept so vague as to be almost meaningless. Indeed, it has been described as a cliche, a passing fashion, even as an oxymoron" (1994:8). In this paper, we argue that the concept of sustainable development is worth saving from "the dustbin of history," and can properly be viewed as a sociologically-defensible concept. Using the case of recycling, we refine the concept of sustainable development, offering alternative images, explanations and arguments. We probe the utility of the dominant symbols and theories that revolve around current ideas about sustainability. We do not develop here a fully-operationalized concept. Rather, we draw from a variety of social science literatures to reconstruct

[1]  B. Turner,et al.  Citizenship and social theory , 1993 .

[2]  O. Williamson.  The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach , 1981, American Journal of Sociology.

[3]  T. Skocpol,et al.  States and Social Policies , 1986 .

[4]  T. Skocpol,et al.  States and Social Revolutions , 1979 .

[5]  John Kenneth Galbraith,et al.  The Culture of Contentment , 1992 .

[6]  K. Gould.  The sweet smell of money: Economic dependency and local environmental political mobilization , 1991 .

[7]  Adam S. Weinberg,et al.  PRAGMATIC CORPORATE CULTURES: INSIGHTS FROM A RECYCLING ENTERPRISE* , 1995 .

[8]  D. Williams.  Pragmatism and Faith: Selznick's Complex Commonwealth , 1994, Law & Social Inquiry.

[9]  H. Stretton.  Capitalism, socialism, and the environment , 1976 .

[10]  Adam S. Weinberg,et al.  Public Participation in Environmental Regulatory Conflicts: Treading Through the Possibilities and Pitfalls* , 1993 .

[11]  Allan Schnaiberg,et al.  The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity , 1980 .

[12]  G. Plaßmann.  The International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology. , 1994 .

[13]  David Plotke,et al.  The Springs of Collective Action@@@Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and Rebellion in California. , 1991 .

[14]  Reflections on the ‘sustainable development’ debate , 1994 .

[15]  T. H. Marshall,et al.  Citizenship and Social Class , 1987 .

[16]  T. Skocpol,et al.  Bringing the State Back In , 1985 .

[17]  R. Miliband,et al.  The state in capitalist society , 1969 .

[18]  A. Szász.  Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice , 1995 .

[19]  Noan Walley,et al.  It's not easy being green , 1994 .

[20]  A. Maslow.  Motivation and Personality , 1954 .

[21]  A. Schnaiberg,et al.  Environment and Society the Enduring Conflict , 1994 .

[22]  K. Gould.  Pollution and perception: Social visibility and local environmental mobilization , 1993 .

[23]  Margaret R. Somers.  Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy , 1993 .

[24]  N. Polunin,et al.  World Commission on Environment & Development , 1985, Environmental Conservation.

[25]  Paul Blumberg,et al.  Inequality in an Age of Decline. , 1980 .

[26]  Phil Brown,et al.  No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action , 1992 .

[27]  P. Bartelmus.  Environment and Development , 1986 .

[28]  H. Daly.  Toward A Steady-State Economy , 1973 .

[29]  Paul Hawken,et al.  The Ecology of Commerce , 1993 .

[30]  Adam S. Weinberg.  Environmental sociology and the environmental movement: Towards a theory of pragmatic relationships of critical inquiry , 1994 .

[31]  T. Lowi.  End of Liberalism? , 2020, Neoliberal Nationalism.

[32]  N. Poulantzas,et al.  Political power and social classes , 1973 .

[33]  Murray Bookchin.  The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship , 1987 .

[34]  R. Barnet,et al.  Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. , 1996 .

[35]  Adam S. Weinberg,et al.  Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production , 1996 .

[36]  David R. Maines,et al.  Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena: Toward a Narrative Sociology , 1993 .

[37]  Nelson R. Kellogg,et al.  The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism by Robert B. Reich (review) , 1993, Technology and Culture.

[38]  M. Redclift.  Sustainable development: exploring the contradictions. , 1987 .

[39]  G. Anders.  Merchants of Debt: KKR and the Mortgaging of American Business , 1992 .

[40]  B. Harrison,et al.  Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility. , 1995 .

[41]  James O’Connor,et al.  Capitalism, nature, socialism a theoretical introduction∗ , 1988 .

[42]  W. James.  Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking: Together With Four Related Essays Selected From The Meaning of Truth , 2010 .

[43]  M. Kousis.  COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL GREECE: The Case of Geothermal Energy on the Island of Milos , 1993 .

[44]  Klaus F. Zimmermann,et al.  Distributional conflicts in environmental-resource policy , 1986 .

[45]  Stephanie Coontz.  The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. , 1993 .

[46]  R. Gifford,et al.  Environmental Impact: Controlling the Overall Level , 1973, Science.

[47]  A. Schnaiberg.  Obstacles to Environmental Research by Scientists and Technologists: A Social Structural Analysis , 1977 .

[48]  G. Brundtland,et al.  Our common future , 1987 .

[49]  L. Rabasca.  Recycling in 1993: Ebbs and flows , 1993 .

[50]  M. Foucault,et al.  The Foucault Reader , 1984 .

[51]  John I. Kitsuse,et al.  Constructing Social Problems , 1977 .

[52]  J. Krummel,et al.  Energy and Land Constraints in Food Protein Production , 1975, Science.

[53]  Juliet B. Schor,et al.  The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure , 1991 .

[54]  Adam S. Weinberg,et al.  Legitimating impotence: Pyrrhic victories of the modern environmental movement , 1993 .

[55]  Alfred Friendly,et al.  Ecocide in the USSR: Health And Nature Under Siege , 1992 .

[56]  Theodore J. Lowi,et al.  Four systems of policy, politics and choice , 1972 .

[57]  D. Pimentel,et al.  Land degradation: effects on food and energy resources. , 1976, Science.

[58]  M. Redclift.  Development and the Environmental Crisis: Red or Green Alternatives , 1984 .