Unsustainability in Action: An Ethnographic Examination.
Randle, S., L. Baker, A. Claus, C. Hebdon, A. Keleman, and M.R. Dove. 2017. Unsustainability in Action: An Ethnographic Examination. In: Handbook of Environmental Anthropology, H. Kopnina and E. Shoreman-Ouimet eds., pp.170-181. London/New York: Routledge.
Posted: 28 Jul 2017
Date Written: 2017
Abstract
While increasingly ubiquitous in contemporary environmental discourse, “sustainability” and “sustainable development” are hardly self-evident concepts. Here, we interrogate the (often conflicting) meanings, values, and politics that animate these notions across scales and communities. Tracing the evolution of the concepts, we explore both the contingency of their ascendance and the processes through which they became powerful, resonant signifiers in centers of global power. We examine the power relations embedded in the concepts’ deployment, attending in particular to the ways they reframe particular groups, projects, and processes. Attendant to the sense of stasis and stability embedded within the terms, we interrogate their role in the reproduction of existing relations and structures – but also investigate the ways that the act of claiming one’s practices as “sustainable” can serve as a powerful strategy for marginalized groups. We use an exploration of sustainability’s “other” – unsustainability – to further illuminate the processes and relations through which the framework operates. Drawing together critical scholarship from environmental anthropology, cultural geography, and political ecology, our chapter unites these themes through a primary question: what is the notion of sustainability doing in the world – for whom, and where?
Keywords: sustainability, unsustainability, Peru, Okinawa, swidden, Germany, Bolivia
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