Theories of Sustainable Development

About this book

The key to achieving successful implementation of sustainability is knowing the origins and development of the term. In a series of interdisciplinary chapters, Theories of Sustainable Development offers a wide-ranging discussion on the theories of sustainable development. The book thus begins with an overview of the debate about sustainability and provides a history of the term.

Theories of Sustainable Development presents a social sciences' perspective on sustainable development contributing thus to transdisciplinary sustainability research, which means that it is oriented toward current problems, and not toward the established academic boundaries. The key aspect here is not the natural-scientific, but rather the humanistic aspect. This book advocates viewing sustainable development, not only as the establishment of a permanent, globally practicable and future-capable mode of life and economics, but rather as a complex array of problems, involving a wide range of social-scientific and humanistic disciplines – law, political science, sociology, economics, theology, psychology, philosophy.

Theories of Sustainable Development is of great interest to researchers and students of sustainable development and practitioners working with sustainable development in politics, business, administration, and civil society organizations.

Contents

Foreword

1. Perspectives of Sustainable Development - an Introduction
2. The Discovery of Sustainability: The Genealogy of a Term
3. What Kind of Theory Do We Need for Sustainable of Development - And how Much of It? Some Thoughts
4. Theory of Sustainability? Considerations on a Basic Understanding of "Sustainability Science"
5. The Quality of Sustainability Science: a Philosophical Perspective
6. Transdisciplinary Humanistic Sustainability Theory: Justice, Governance, Blocks
7. Theories of "Sustainability" and the Sustainability of Theories: For Alternatives to the Mainstream, and against Simple Solutions
8. Sustainability and the Challenge of Complex Systems
9. Sustainable Development: A Global Model - Universal and Contextual
10. The Non-Identity Problem: An Irrefutable Argument against Sustainability Theories?
11. The Definition of Society's Relationship with Nature on the Basis of Reproduction Theory - A Historical-Systematic Problem Sketch
12. The Missing Aspect of Culture in Sustainability Concepts
13. Ten Theses on a Research Agenda for Sustainable Development

Customer Reviews

Biography

Judith C. Enders is a member of the study group "Global Issues" of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). She was Senior Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, and is now conducting freelance social research.

Moritz Remig is a Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, and a PhD candidate at the University of Kassel, Germany.